Page:The Girl Who Earns Her Own Living (1909).djvu/169



chapter is designed to be a frank warning against the beauty shop and its arts as a means of livelihood for any American girl of intelligence and self-respect. I propose to tell my readers just what it means to work in such an establishment, and to induce them to seek some other means of self-support.

In penning such a warning, I speak from a verging on actual experience. A member of my household and several personal friends have undertaken the work, only to drop it almost immediately because they found it uncongenial and degrading. This was not because of the scandal which always shadows a beauty-shop, because the self-supporting girl rarely finds any trade or profession over which the slimy trail of gossip does not pass. It was because these girls, possessing a sense of honor, natural reserve and refinement, found themselves placed in a position worse than menial.

You think you could not be a second-maid or