Page:The Girl Who Earns Her Own Living (1909).djvu/132

 Bras out, she will sew wire and canvas together. For this she will receive $1.50 per week, unless it is a small shop and she is willing to sweep and dust out, in which case she will be paid $3 per week. If she is particularly apt, at the end of the season she may be promised promotion to the post of improver. If she has not made a good record, she must return for a second season as an apprentice, and make more bandeaux for another three months.

As an improver, she makes frames and shirs maline, chiffon, lace, velvet and other fabrics for hat foundations at a salary varying from $5 to $8 per week. These two steps usually absorb at least a year and a half of her training.

The third step is the post of preparer or milliner. Outsiders call any woman engaged in the business a milliner. To the trade, the preparer or milliner is the worker who makes the hat, covers it, sorts out the trimmings suggested, and prepares everything as ordered by the woman above her—the trimmer. Her salary during this period varies from $8 to $15. With her next step upward, her dependance upon other women ceases. From this time on she rises or falls through her own ability or inefficiency.

The fourth step is the position of copyist. Here her work consists of reproducing imported models, and if she is accurate in her imita-