Page:The Girl Who Earns Her Own Living (1909).djvu/173

 however, you become panic-stricken at the thought of the hard-earned money you have invested in your "course," you will begin to work desperately, cajoling and bullying those above you into giving you a little instruction.

Of this sort of girl the shop managers are very anxious to rid themselves, so very soon you will be pronounced fit for a position. This having been guaranteed, you will find yourself working in an opposition shop for perhaps eight or ten dollars a week. Here you will try very hard to do the right thing for your customers; but it will not last. To your amazement you are dismissed without warning and without cause. The proprietor of the shop will merely tell you that he is cutting down his force. Business has fallen off, etc. But in a few days you will learn that your successor is another girl from the shop or "school" where you were trained. When you become acquainted with more girls you will learn that shop managers have a system of interchanging positions that are merely temporary, in order to make good their worthless guarantee.

"You take my pupils off my hands," says one shop manager to another, "and I'll take yours." And so the fluttering moths are caught.

These tactics are followed not only in New York, but in other large cities where "schools"