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d38dd2d3dc30b8f42907be3e1d533674eb2ab6e8 | DRESSMAKING AND MILLINERY THE SURVEY COMMITTEE OF THE CLEVELAND FOUNDATION
Charles E. Adams, Chairman Thomas G. Fitzsimons Myrta L. Jones Bascom Little Victor W. Sincere
Arthur D. Baldwin, Secretary James R. Garfield, Counsel Allen T. Burns, Director
THE EDUCATION SURVEY Leonard P. Ayres, Director CLEVELAND EDUCATION SURVEY
DRESSMAKING AND MILLINERY
BY
EDNA BRYNER
THE SURVEY COMMITTEE OF THE CLEVELAND FOUNDATION CLEVELAND • OHIO
1916 Copyright, 1916, by THE SURVEY COMMITTEE OF THE CLEVELAND FOUNDATION
WM·F. FELL CO·PRINTERS PHILADELPHIA FOREWORD
This report on "Dressmaking and Millinery" is one of the 25 sections of the report of the Education Survey of Cleveland conducted by the Survey Committee of the Cleveland Foundation in 1915. Twenty-three of these sections will be published as separate monographs. In addition there will be a larger volume giving a summary of the findings and recommendations relating to the regular work of the public schools, and a second similar volume giving the summary of those sections relating to industrial education. Copies of all these publications may be obtained from the Cleveland Foundation. They may also be obtained from the Division of Education of the Russell Sage Foundation, New York City. A complete list will be found in the back of this volume, together with prices.
# TABLE OF CONTENTS
| Section | Page | |------------------------------------------------------------------------|------| | Foreword | 5 | | List of Tables | 9 | | List of Diagrams | 9 | | **CHAPTER** | | | I. Work for Women in the Sewing Trades | 11 | | The sewing trades a homogeneous group | 13 | | Sewing one of woman's traditional jobs | 13 | | Summary | 16 | | II. The Relative Importance of the Sewing Trades | 17 | | Nativity of women sewers | 19 | | Ages of women sewers | 21 | | Summary | 23 | | III. Character of Present-Day Dressmaking | 25 | | Dressmaking in shops | 28 | | Specialization | 30 | | Alteration work | 35 | | Summary | 37 | | IV. Working Conditions and Wages in Dressmaking | 39 | | Range of wages in dressmaking shops | 39 | | Wages in alteration work | 41 | | Regularity of employment | 42 | | Labor shortage in dressmaking | 43 | | Summary | 43 | | V. The Millinery Business in Cleveland | 45 | | Millinery processes | 46 | | The factory hat in millinery | 47 | | Scope of the business | 50 | | Wholesale and retail shops | 51 | | Retail shops | 52 | | Millinery departments in stores | 56 | | Wholesale houses | 57 | | Summary | 58 | | CHAPTER | PAGE | |---------|------| | VI. CONDITIONS OF WORK IN MILLINERY | 62 | | Wages in retail and wholesale millinery | 62 | | Wages, years of experience, and ages of workers | 66 | | Seasonal character of millinery | 67 | | What the millinery seasons are | 69 | | Number of weeks of work | 70 | | Difficult problem of the dull season | 71 | | Hours of labor | 74 | | Summary | 75 | | VII. LEARNING THE TRADES | 78 | | Dressmaking apprenticeship | 78 | | Wages and dressmaking apprenticeship | 80 | | Millinery apprenticeship | 81 | | Apprentices in retail shops | 82 | | Wages and millinery apprenticeship | 84 | | Summary | 85 | | VIII. TRAINING FOR SEWING GIVEN BY THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS | 87 | | Special sewing classes | 87 | | Sewing in the high schools | 88 | | Millinery | 90 | | Aims | 92 | | Elementary courses do not prepare for trade work | 93 | | High school courses do not meet trade needs | 97 | | Summary | 100 | | IX. NEEDS OF WORKERS IN DRESSMAKING AND MILLINERY | 104 | | Related subjects | 106 | | Other requisites | 108 | | Summary | 108 | | X. EDUCATION FOR THE SEWING TRADES | 110 | | Preparation in the junior high school | 111 | | How Cleveland girls enter industry | 114 | | Courses for girls who go to work | 116 | | A one-year trade school for girls | 119 | | The Manhattan trade school for girls | 121 | | Millinery | 126 | | A trade school in Cleveland | 127 | | Trade extension training | 128 | | Summary | 132 | LIST OF TABLES
| TABLE | PAGE | |-------|------| | 1. Main groups of women-employing occupations and number employed | 12 | | 2. Workers in different sewing trades, Cleveland, 1910 | 17 | | 3. Number among each 100 sewing women who are employed in each sewing trade | 18 | | 4. Distribution of workers in 23 dressmaking shops | 34 | | 5. Weekly wage rates of millinery workers in retail shops | 62 | | 6. Per cent of makers and trimmers in retail shops receiving certain rates of weekly wages | 63 | | 7. Wages of 12 millinery workers employed the year round in retail shops | 65 | | 8. Relation of wages to experience in the millinery trade | 66 | | 9. Relation of wages to age in the millinery trade | 67 | | 10. Occupational distribution of students enrolled in sewing classes of technical night schools | 129 |
LIST OF DIAGRAMS
| DIAGRAM | PAGE | |---------|------| | 1. Per cent of foreign born women in each of 13 occupations | 20 | | 2. Women of specified ages in each of 13 occupations | 22 | | 3. Range of wages of four classes of workers in dressmaking shops | 40 | | 4. Per cent of women workers employed in wholesale millinery each month in 1914 | 72 | DRESSMAKING AND MILLINERY
CHAPTER I
WORK FOR WOMEN IN THE SEWING TRADES
In the reports of the United States Census, workers in the sewing trades are grouped in four main classes. These are: first, dressmakers and seamstresses; second, sewers and sewing machine operators in factories; third, milliners and millinery dealers; and fourth, tailoresses. Another volume of this Survey series, entitled, "The Garment Trades," is devoted to a consideration of industrial education for those workers who are classified by the census as sewers and sewing machine operators in factories. The present volume deals with dressmakers and milliners.
The sewing trades provide many industrial positions for girls. They are important educationally, not only because they provide positions for a large proportion of the girls who go into industry, but also because they are largely based on the same fundamental processes of work. In some measure the place of the sewing trades among vocational opportunities for girls corresponds to that occupied by the building and machine trades in providing work positions for boys. In 1910 the sewing trades employed more than 18 per cent of the total number of wage-earning women in Cleveland. This proportion, large as it is, includes only those who were engaged in the sewing trades at one time. It gives no indication of the large numbers of women who enter these trades to earn their living for a few years and then leave to engage in household activities. The census data indicate that in Cleveland one girl in every five enters some branch of the sewing trades to work for at least a short period. Probably the proportion of wage-earning girls who enter sewing occupations before they are 20 years of age is somewhere between one in three and one in four.
The sewing trades employ more women than any other homogeneous group of occupations excepting domestic and personal service. Their importance as a field of employment may be seen in Table 1, which gives the number of women employed in each of the principal homogeneous groups of occupations in Cleveland.
| Occupations | Number employed | |------------------------------------|-----------------| | Domestic and personal service | 16,467 | | Sewing trades | 10,085 | | Clerical occupations | 8,100 | | Retail and wholesale trade | 5,942 | | Public and professional service | 4,908 | | Transportation occupations | 1,110 | The Sewing Trades a Homogeneous Group
The sewing trades—dressmaking, millinery, factory hand and machine sewing, and tailoring—have many fundamentals in common. They require facility with the needle and with needle machinery, a knowledge of different kinds of stitches applied on a variety of materials, proper holding of materials, the measuring of spaces accurately with the eye, and a knowledge of materials in their relation to the human figure.
One trade differs from another in the emphasis laid on a particular element, machine work instead of hand sewing; plain stitches in place of fancy stitches; accuracy combined with speed on firm materials as opposed to leisurely accuracy combined with care on pliable materials. One trade may require work that is nearly automatic in its repetition of the same simple process, while another requires the greatest alertness and ingenuity in making new adjustments. Skill with the needle is the common ability required of sewers over the widest range of work.
Sewing One of Woman’s Traditional Jobs
The fact that the sewing trades bear an intimate relation to the home woman’s traditional work of making clothing for the family makes them of good repute as women-employing occupations. Nevertheless this same fact has had a somewhat unfortunate effect on the attitude of many persons toward the preparation of girls for this sort of work.
It is often assumed that girls will know how to sew almost instinctively. Such an assumption is unreasonable. Sewing is no more an outcropping of a girl's natural instinct for making clothing than the skill called for in the building trades can be considered the expression of a boy's natural instinct for constructing houses. The kind of clothes which would be made by most girls if they had no sewing training would correspond to the shacks built by most boys who have had no building training.
Another effect of the relation of the sewing trades to women's traditional work has been to delude some champions of industrial education into the belief that a desultory training in sewing under the name of "domestic art" can easily be converted into trade proficiency. The fact is that there is an ever-increasing difference between sewing as a household activity and trade sewing; between the knowledge of clothing needed by the woman whose main business lies in household matters and the knowledge of clothing needed by the woman who is to earn her living by making clothing. One need only note the increasingly large number of workers who spend all their time in making clothing in shops in order to realize how much less of this sort of work there is left to be done by the woman at home.
The necessity for knowing how to make clothing is becoming increasingly less for women in general; the necessity for knowing enough about clothes to select wisely from the vast array of ready-made garments on the market is increasingly great. Every woman needs to know enough about sewing to keep clothes in good condition, to add individual touches, and perhaps to make small and dainty articles, such as fancy aprons, which may not be satisfactorily purchased ready-made. She needs to know enough about the actual construction of clothing to secure the best values for the money she spends when she purchases garments. For the same reasons she needs an intelligent consumer's knowledge of textiles, color combinations, and design.
In trade work, on the other hand, the construction of clothing is the important need. The worker's chief task is the application of fundamental sewing processes to a great variety of materials in order to make all sorts of garments. This necessitates a thorough mastery of sewing processes so that the worker can easily follow verbal directions and can do her work at the required speed while at the same time holding to a specified standard of workmanship. In this work a knowledge of textiles, of color and design is applied not to the selection of garments, but to their fabrication.
It is clear from the foregoing facts that trade sewing differs both in degree and kind from household sewing. The latter sort demands a limited amount of actual sewing, while trade work requires a large amount. The woman in the home applies her knowledge of textiles and of color and design intensively and personally to her own needs and those of her family, while the trade worker applies her knowledge extensively.
At the outset it is well to recognize this essential difference between sewing as domestic art and as trade work, a difference which is becoming more pronounced with the increasing possibility of purchasing ready-made garments of any grade of material and workmanship. It is with that special group of women who earn their living by making clothing that we are here concerned. Their problem is a special problem, the solution of which depends upon successfully supplying the particular demands of sewing for wage-earning.
Summary
The sewing trades offer women the most numerous opportunities for employment in the industrial world. They employ more than 18 per cent of the total number of wage-earning women in Cleveland. The census data indicate that between one in three and one in four of all the women who enter industry in Cleveland between the ages of 16 and 20 years go to work in some sewing trade.
The sewing trades have in common a number of fundamental characteristics which permit of their being considered together from an educational viewpoint. They bear a certain relation to the woman's traditional work of making clothing for the family, and enjoy a good reputation as women-employing occupations. There is an increasing difference between the demands of household sewing and those of trade sewing and this calls for a special consideration of the education of girls who are to earn their living by sewing for wage-earning. CHAPTER II
THE RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF THE SEWING TRADES
The sewing trades differ one from another in the number of workers they employ; in the proportions of native and foreign born among their workers; and in their comparative proportions of younger and older workers. The relative sizes of the sewing trades, grouped according to the 1910 census, are shown in Table 2.
| Workers | Number employed | |----------------------------------------------|-----------------| | Dressmakers and seamstresses | 3,472 | | Sewers and sewing machine operators (factory)| 3,454 | | Milliners and millinery dealers | 1,432 | | Tailoresses | 1,403 | | Dressmakers' and milliners' apprentices | 324 | | **Total** | **10,085** |
Dressmakers and seamstresses, and sewers and sewing machine operators in factories, form the two largest groups. According to the census explanation, it is likely that a large proportion of the workers listed as tailoresses were sewers in factories who designated themselves by their old-time appellation. It is also reasonably certain that factory sewers are today by far the largest group, so rapidly have the garment factories increased their capacity in this city in the last few years. As is stated in another report of this series entitled, "The Garment Trades," nearly 5,000 sewers were found in factories visited by the writer of the report and these factories did not include all of those in the city. Factory sewing is almost certainly the largest sewing trade in Cleveland.
Table 2 shows that there are only two-fifths as many milliners as either dressmakers or factory sewers. Millinery is important as an employer of labor among the sewing trades, but not nearly so important as the two larger branches.
The relative importance of the various sewing trades in Cleveland is somewhat different from that in the country in general. The proportion which each sewing trade employs of the total number of sewers is shown in Table 3 for Cleveland and for the country in general.
**TABLE 3.—NUMBER AMONG EACH 100 SEWING WOMEN WHO ARE EMPLOYED IN EACH SEWING TRADE IN CLEVELAND AND IN THE UNITED STATES, 1910**
| Workers | Cleveland | United States | |----------------------------------------------|-----------|---------------| | Dressmakers and seamstresses | 35 | 53 | | Sewers and sewing machine operators (factory)| 34 | 27 | | Milliners and millinery dealers | 14 | 14 | | Tailoresses | 14 | 5 | | Dressmakers' and milliners' apprentices | 3 | 1 | | **Total** | **100** | **100** | The importance of factory sewing is further emphasized in this comparison of Cleveland with the whole of the United States. It is interesting to note that the distribution of women sewers in Cleveland approaches that of New York, where 53 per cent are in factory sewing while only 31 per cent are in dressmaking.
**Nativity of Women Sewers**
A study of the different sewing trades in comparison with other occupations employing large numbers of women yields some interesting facts in regard to the age and nativity of the workers. Diagram 1 shows the proportion of native and foreign born in each of the 13 occupations employing in Cleveland 1,000 or more women and including most of the working women of the city.
Seventy per cent of the 55,000 women working in Cleveland are native born and 30 per cent are foreign born. If all the 13 occupations had equal shares of foreign born workers, each would have 70 per cent of the native and 30 per cent of the foreign. The diagram shows that these occupations draw upon the foreign born in varying degrees, from seven per cent among stenographers and typists to 69 per cent among laundresses.
Among the sewing trades two have more than their proportion of foreign born. Factory sewers are 37 per cent foreign and tailoresses 32 per cent, neither being much in excess of what one would expect were Diagram 1.—Portions of bars in black show per cent of foreign born women in each of the 13 occupations employing more than 1,000 women workers in Cleveland native and foreign born evenly distributed. Dress-making, with 25 per cent of foreign workers, has less than its share; while millinery, with only 12 per cent, stands among clerical occupations in its preponderance of native born. These facts mean that for the most part sewers are recruited from American school girls, who must get their training either while in school or immediately after they leave.
**Ages of Women Sewers**
There is a decided difference among the various sewing trades in the proportions of younger and older workers employed. Diagram 2 shows the age groups in the 13 occupations employing 1,000 or more women workers in Cleveland. Unfortunately in using census figures we must deal with such large age groups that only tentative deductions can be made as to how long women remain in them.
Of all the women who are at work in this city, 36 per cent are under 21, 54 per cent are between 21 and 44, and 10 per cent are 45 or over. If an occupation received its normal share of workers of all ages, its employees would be grouped by ages in these proportions. It is interesting to note that servants present an almost typical age distribution, as might be expected in an occupation which neither offers special inducements nor demands special qualifications.
As the diagram shows, factory sewers and tailoresses are young, one-half of them being under 21, while only two per cent and three per cent of them, 21 Diagram 2.—Portion of bar in outline shows per cent of women workers under 21 years of age, portion cross-hatched shows per cent from 21 to 44 years old, and portion in black shows per cent 45 years of age and over in each of 13 occupations employing more than 1,000 women workers in Cleveland. respectively, are 45 or over. Milliners are more mature, about one-third being under 21 and six per cent being 45 or over. Dressmakers are decidedly older. Less than one-fifth are under 21 while 21 per cent are 45 or over.
These age distributions are important both in terms of length of employment and in terms of training. Factory work is largely a temporary employment. Dressmaking is more permanent; and millinery falls between the two extremes in the matter of holding its workers. Observation leads us to believe that girls who begin machine operating in a factory are likely to stay there until they marry; that large numbers of girls begin millinery but leave it very soon to go into some other wage-earning work; and that girls are likely to remain in dressmaking for a long period of years, thus making room for a smaller number of new recruits each year. It takes a longer period of training to become a milliner than to become a factory sewer and longer still to become a dressmaker.
Summary
In order of size the sewing trades in Cleveland are factory sewing, dressmaking, millinery, and tailoring. In respect to nativity of workers, factory sewing and tailoring employ a greater proportion of foreign born than the other sewing trades, the proportions being 37 and 32 per cent respectively. This is a slightly larger proportion of foreign born than is found among the total number of working women in the city. Dressmaking employs only 25 per cent of foreign workers and millinery has only 12 per cent.
In respect to age of workers, factory sewing and tailoring employ the largest proportions of young workers, one-half of the total number in each trade being under 21. About a third of the milliners are under 21, and less than a fifth of the dressmakers. Factory sewing is often a temporary employment and dressmaking more often a permanent one, while millinery occupies a position between the two others in the matter of holding its workers. CHAPTER III
CHARACTER OF PRESENT-DAY DRESS-MAKING
Dressmaking, properly speaking, means the cutting, fitting, and making of dresses to order as distinguished from either factory work or personal work for one's own use. Dressmakers and seamstresses are grouped together in the United States Census classification, thus including both those who make dresses only and those who do other kinds of sewing as well.
There are four rather distinctive lines of work done by those who are classed under the heading of dressmakers and seamstresses: dressmaking proper, usually carried on in shops; alteration work in stores; general sewing done by the seamstress at her own home or in the home of her customer; and the work of the so-called dressmaking "school," in which the dressmaker helps her customers to do their general sewing.
The character of dressmaking has changed a great deal with the increase in the sale of ready-made clothes. Dressmaking proper is confined almost exclusively to afternoon and evening dresses and fancy blouses, and is usually specialized in its method of work. It is carried on in increasing proportion in shops placed in business buildings rather than in the proprietor's home and is organized somewhat on the factory plan.
Alteration work is a distinctive sewing trade, hybrid in its task of adjusting ready-made garments to individual peculiarities and in its personnel of workers drawn from both garment factories and from dressmaking shops. It is still concentrated in the stores where ready-made garments are sold and is offering an increasingly larger amount of employment all the time. These two lines of work are treated in some detail in this report.
The number of dressmakers who go out by the day is not large. Women who go out by the day or who work at home alone usually engage in general sewing. By many, dressmaking-out is considered highly undesirable because it is expensive of the worker's time and energy in going from place to place—sometimes very long distances. It is also precarious in that the worker does not know from one day to another where she is to go or whether she is to get work at all. Moreover, many workers cannot do as good work as they could do in a shop, for they are often hard driven by their temporary employer to get a large amount of work done in a short time. Some of the present successful proprietors of large shops, however, began as dressmakers going out by the day. They claim that by being hard pushed to put through a certain amount of work satisfactorily, they developed not only short-cut methods of work but considerable initiative in planning costumes. Information received from some of these workers indicates that earnings range in general from $1.25 to $3.00 a day. Hours are irregular and seasons are similar to those in dressmaking shops.
General sewing may include any of the following: street suits, street dresses, tailored gowns, evening gowns, children’s dresses, underwear, petticoats, towels and tablecloths, sheets and pillow-cases, baby layettes, aprons and caps, negligées, darning and mending of socks, stockings, and underwear. Women engaged in general sewing are all-round workers in that they perform all the processes concerned in the making of garments, cutting, fitting, making, and finishing. These workers carry on their work at home or in their customer’s home, or both; and they may work alone or with one or more helpers.
The statement of two sisters engaged in this kind of work at home is illuminating: “Although we give our occupation, when asked, as seamstresses, we are always put into the directory as dressmakers. We keep house and have a number of families for whom we do the family sewing—ladies’ underwear, children’s dresses, etc., principally. We work at this as our other duties permit, and when a rush comes, work evenings. We aim to earn 20 cents an hour. We have no helpers.”
The dressmaking “school” is a kind of mushroom growth in the dressmaking occupation arising from two demands, both of which are undoubtedly more or less temporary. First, the “school” furnishes occupation to many dressmakers who formerly were engaged in regular dressmaking and whose business dwindled with the increase in the wear of ready-made garments. Second, it satisfies a demand of untrained women in the home for help in making some of their own clothes. We are told that attending one of these "schools" has become a fad among women of considerable means who have little to do and who think it good fun to make up a class of their friends and get a dressmaker to help them make clothes for themselves.
The dressmaker cuts and fits garments from the materials which the customers bring and supervises them while they sew them up and finish them. Customers come individually or in "classes." There are both day and evening lessons, the day ones being mostly for women who stay at home and the evening ones for women who are at work during the day. Sometimes the "school" has a small number of day pupils who are learning the dressmaking trade and who have a regular training course lasting a year or so. Dressmakers engaging in this sort of work say that they can make just as much money as in regular dressmaking and have a much easier time. As a field of employment, however, this must be regarded as a makeshift for women experienced in the trade rather than as a dependable type of work to which the beginner may look forward.
**Dressmaking in Shops**
It is not surprising to find in the small shop business that most employers are inclined to believe that their system of dressmaking and their methods of work are unique. They are too close to their own work to realize that dressmaking processes are becoming somewhat standardized, following the trend of factory method. The various shops differ fundamentally from one another so little that workers in one shop can easily adjust themselves to the work in another in a short time. A study of 23 representative shops, among which were most of the largest and best known establishments in the city, revealed a common system of dressmaking, a similar method of work, and like needs in ability of workers.
The system of dressmaking used in all establishments consists in making a cambric lining, called a foundation or guide, to fit the customer; putting this foundation on a form somewhat smaller and stuffing it out so as to duplicate the customer's figure; fitting the lining proper upon this foundation; "building" the dress upon it in the proper lines; and fitting the draped dress upon the customer to make finer adjustments before completing the finishing operations. The making of the foundation or guide differs to a slight degree in various shops. Most shops draft no patterns because figures vary so much that it requires elaborate drafting to make a lining which will fit without extensive alterations. The trade method is to cut out a small, medium, or large plain foundation by a commercial pattern or by rule of thumb, fit it to the customer, and use it as a pattern by which to cut the lining proper. In the only establishments found using any elaborate system of measurements, a man was employed in the capacity of cutter to do nothing but draft patterns and cut foundations.
**Specialization**
The general tendency in all shops is toward specialization. Only seven out of the 23 shops visited were not openly specialized. In some of these it was evident from observation that specialization really existed but was not recognized. That is, certain girls, although known as all-around helpers or dressmakers, were really accustomed to work more particularly on a certain part of the dress, only transferring to another part when it was necessary to get work out quickly.
Workers may specialize on waists, skirts, sleeves, and on particular tasks, such as hemstitching or guimpe making. Their organization resembles a miniature feudal system. There are head girls on waists and skirts respectively. Under their supervision are finishers or makers, who in turn may have helpers. The lowest grade helpers are apprentices. There is often a head sleeve girl who may supervise helpers. The division of work and responsibility among these different kinds of workers may be arranged somewhat differently in the various shops, but the general lines remain the same.
The degree to which specialization is carried on in dressmaking is illustrated by the following list of workers found in one of the shops visited: 1 waist draper 1 helper to waist draper 5 waist finishers 6 helpers to waist finishers 1 head sleeve girl 2 helpers to sleeve girl 1 skirt draper 2 helpers to skirt draper 2 skirt finishers 2 helpers to skirt finishers 2 coat makers 2 helpers to coat makers 1 lining maker 1 apprentice 1 embroiderer and collar maker 1 helper to embroiderer 1 hemstitcher (power machine) 1 guimpe maker 1 shopper 1 stock girl 1 errand girl
The proprietor of the shop plans the gown, sometimes cuts the lining, and does most of the fitting. She explains to the head girls how the gown is to be made, and may do a part of the draping to show them how to proceed. They are then responsible for the completing of work on their part of the garment.
A draper is a specialist who does nothing but cut the outside material and pin or baste it in shape on the fitted lining so as to give the line or style to the dress. Drapers who do finishing or making in addition to draping are known as head waist or head skirt girls. Draping on the waist is much more difficult than that on the skirt, the latter being known as straight-away-work. Drapers must be able to do any sewing that may be required on their part of the garment and many of them do fitting. Perhaps the most trying part of their work is the supervision they must exercise over their helpers, for whose work they are responsible. A thoroughly good finisher or maker may become a draper in a short time, sometimes in three months.
Finishers or makers are responsible for the completion of the garment after it leaves the hands of the draper, and for this they must be expert sewers. They must be able to appreciate lines to the extent of making the garment look as it has been planned. Like drapers, they must supervise helpers, if necessity demands. It takes three or four years for a beginner to become a maker.
Helpers usually specialize on either waists or skirts. They work on sleeves and collars, partly make linings, make and put on simple trimmings, folds, and bindings. They have no supervision work, but are merely sewers, doing whatever bits of sewing they are directed to do. Many girls remain helpers all their working lives because they are unable to assume the responsibility of keeping others busy while they do their own work. In two years' time at the most beginners should become first-rate helpers.
Sleevemaking is a delicate and intricate task, requiring great care in setting in trimmings of various kinds and adjusting lace cuffs to match. There seems to be difficulty in getting girls to work on sleeves alone as it is small work and gives the worker a very limited field on which to exercise her skill. Lining making is usually a beginning job. Apprentices work up to it after they have had a little practice in ordinary stitches. It requires a great deal of accuracy, both in putting together the parts and in sewing on hooks and eyes. Linings are often made up ahead in standard sizes by all the workers during slack periods.
Embroiderers and collar makers make all sorts of fancy ornaments, frogs, bands, etc. Where there are no such special workers, this work may be assigned to other workers to do in their spare time or may be sent outside.
Stock girls have charge of all the materials which the dressmaker keeps in stock ready for selection by customers. In the highest grade of dressmaking shops the amount of stock is considerable and most of it is valuable, being imported silks and laces worth many dollars a yard. Stock keepers learn a great deal about different materials, their value, and their use in color and texture combinations. They have considerable free time which they utilize in assisting the regular sewing girls, and thus have a good chance to learn the trade.
The shopper matches materials, threads, and trimmings. Like the stock girl, she acquires a considerable knowledge of materials. Where there is a great deal of stock, she does very little shopping and thus has little responsibility. In one shop she may merely have to carry packages, the real work of selection being done by certain saleswomen in the drygoods store who understand the needs of the proprietor of the dressmaking shop. In another shop she may have very responsible work, having to select materials according to the vague description given by a busy employer. Shopping is sometimes done by errand boys, or by apprentices, or occasionally by the shop porter.
Coatmaking is carried on in most of the large dressmaking shops as a convenience to customers who want to get their entire outfit in one place. In most of the shops which have this as an adjunct to dressmaking, there is an outside man tailor who comes at certain seasons and takes charge of the work, bringing his men or women helpers with him. In a few establishments women coatmakers are employed.
The proportion of the different kinds of workers in the 23 shops visited is shown in Table 4.
**TABLE 4.—DISTRIBUTION OF WORKERS IN 23 DRESSMAKING SHOPS ACCORDING TO KINDS OF WORK DONE, CLEVELAND, OHIO, 1915**
| Workers | Per cent | |--------------------------|----------| | Drapers and head girls | | | Waist | 7 | | Skirt | 6 | | Makers | | | Waist | 21 | | Skirt | 17 | | Sleeve | 7 | | All-round | 10 | | Helpers | | | Waist | 8 | | Skirt | 4 | | All-round | 4 | | Lining makers | | | Apprentices | 2 | | Cutters | 8 | | Embroiderers, etc. | 1 | | Errand girls, stock girls, shoppers | 2 | | Total | 100 | The chances for promotion in this trade are easily apparent from a study of Table 4. One girl out of every eight succeeds in entering the aristocracy of the trade and becomes a draper. From draping the next step for the worker is to establish her own shop, where there is a wide opportunity to increase both income and skill. The rank of maker is the goal for more than half of the workers.
**Alteration Work**
The altering of ready-made garments is a growing trade, increasing in proportion with the increase in the wear of ready-made clothes. In 10 of the principal stores of this city it furnishes regular employment to more than 300 workers and part-time employment to almost as many more.
The alteration department is in charge of a responsible head man or woman. Of the 10 departments visited, six had men in charge, and four had women. There is no decided preference for either sex, emphasis being put on individual fitness. The workers are in two general groups,—fitters and alteration hands,—in proportion of one to three.
Alteration work is the reverse of dressmaking. A gown must be made over from the outside instead of being built up from the inside to fit the individual as in dressmaking. As can readily be seen, there are trying limitations within which a satisfactory piece of work can be done. Such a task as making a chiffon evening dress made for a 38 size fit a woman of 34 size and preserving at the same time the line of the dress requires an amount of ingenuity which often tries the ability of the fitter and alteration worker to the utmost.
Fitters are very responsible workers. Not only do they have to fit the garment to the person, changing the size from larger to smaller or vice versa and alter- ing the lines, but they must also be able to suggest at a moment's notice such a remaking of the garment as will persuade the customer to take it. Moreover, they must have a knack of getting along well with customers whom they fit, a very difficult task at times. Most fitters are experienced alteration hands and have been trained to their jobs by the head fitter.
Alteration hands do the sewing on the garment after it has been pinned in shape by the fitter. Each worker, unless she is a beginner, does all the sewing required in the alteration of a garment. In case she is a new worker, she is tried out on different parts of the work first, beginning with such simple operations as putting on hooks and eyes. The operations most commonly done by alteration hands are putting in hems, making the waist-band smaller or larger, and lowering or raising the waist line. On the more ex- pensive garments, where the customer has less choice of size, alterations may be so extensive as to consti- tute remaking the whole dress. Alteration hands in Cleveland stores work as demanded on skirts and dresses, and even on coats. It is only in the largest department stores that they specialize on the differ- ent garments. Most alteration hands are taken in from dressmaking shops with anywhere from six months' to two years' experience or from garment factories where they have had long experience in garment making. In stores doing a high grade of work, girls from dressmaking shops are preferred for dresses and skirts.
**Summary**
The term "dressmaking," as used in this report, means the cutting, fitting, and making of dresses to order as distinguished from either factory work or personal work for one's own use.
Four distinctive lines of work are done by those who are classified by the census as dressmakers and seamstresses: dressmaking proper, usually carried on in shops; alteration work in stores; general sewing done by the seamstress at her own home or in the home of her customers; and the work of the so-called dressmaking "school," in which the dressmaker helps her customers do their general sewing.
Dressmaking is mostly confined to the making of afternoon and evening gowns and fancy blouses. The establishments are largely in business buildings. Nearly uniform processes of work maintain in different shops and the workers in the different establishments need about the same kinds of abilities and degrees of skill. There is a strong and increasing tendency toward specialization of work.
Among each 100 workers in dressmaking shops about 13 are head girls, 55 are finishers or makers, 16 are helpers, eight are apprentices, and the rest are lining makers, cutters, embroiderers, errand girls, shoppers, and stock girls.
Alteration work constitutes a separate sewing trade and consists of the adjustment of ready-made garments to individual peculiarities. It furnishes employment to several hundred workers in this city. CHAPTER IV
WORKING CONDITIONS AND WAGES IN DRESSMAKING
From 50 cents to $25 a week represents the range of wages of workers in dressmaking shops. In general the scale of wages is graded so as to offer inducement to increase skill, to learn the next higher job, and to assume the responsibility of supervision. The weekly wages most commonly paid to each class of workers may be roughly stated as follows: apprentices, $2 to $4; helpers $6 to $9; finishers or makers $10 to $12; and drapers $18 to $20. From $2 to $5 of the wage paid to head girls is for supervision.
RANGE OF WAGES IN DRESSMAKING SHOPS
Diagram 3 shows in graphic form how the higher wage rates in lower positions overlap the lower rates in the higher positions. Apprentices earn from 50 cents to $6 per week during the first six months, according to the practice of the shops in which they work. They become helpers at a wage of from $3 to $6 and may earn up to $10 as helpers.
Beginning at $6 a week, they may become finishers or makers and increase their wage up to $18, accord- ing to the quality and speed of their workmanship and the amount of responsibility they assume for workers under their supervision. Any maker earning
$10 or more is nearly always in charge of helpers, while one earning less is usually not in charge of other workers. Head sleeve girls earn from $10 to $15 a week, and their helpers receive the usual rate paid to helpers on other parts of the garment.
From $10 to $15 is the wage rate of the "breaking-in period" of those girls who are to specialize in draping. When workers have become responsible drapers and can also take full charge of the finishers or makers under them, they may command rates varying from $15 to $25.
Other workers in dressmaking shops are too few in number to permit of generalization in regard to their wages. The following data give actual wages paid to the few workers in each occupation mentioned. Lining making, done in most shops by apprentices or helpers, pays from $4 to $6 a week. In one shop a specialist on linings received $12. Women cutters, found in two shops, and doing supervisory work similar to that done by drapers, earned from $15 to $25. Hemstitchers earn $10 to $14 and a guimpe maker in one shop earns $12. Errand girls were found at $3 and $6; stock girls at $8, $12, and $13; and shoppers at from $3.50 to $10.
**Wages in Alteration Work**
Beginners in alteration departments are started at from $5 to $7. Regular alteration hands earn from $7 to $18, the average being $9 or $10, a wage not unlike that of makers in dressmaking. The wages for fitters correspond somewhat to those for drapers in dressmaking. The average is from $15 to $18, with a range of from $10 to $25. Regularity of Employment
Employment is fairly regular in dressmaking. Workers average between 10 and 11 months' work, slack seasons aggregating from four to eight weeks during the year. Almost all establishments are closed during the month of August and many close for a week or two in February or March. January is a dull month. The busiest months are October and November in the fall and March in the spring. Fifty-four hours constitute the working week in most establishments. This is the maximum permitted by law.
Workers in alteration departments in the stores average 11 months' work. Busy seasons run according to the busy sale season for ready-made garments. Workers employed on altering dresses are busy practically the whole year. For suits and coats busy seasons are from the first of March to some time in July and from September first to any time between December first and March first. Slack time is distributed evenly, workers being laid off a few days each week during the dull season until full-time work begins again.
In alteration departments the force is doubled during the busiest months in the year by taking on extra workers who have varying periods of employment aggregating perhaps four months per year. Some of the extra workers are married women, a large number of whom formerly worked at sewing, and who now want to work only part of the year. Many are experienced workers from the garment factories who are through with their busy season's work. there and are anxious to make up a full year's work by temporary employment in alteration work.
At the height of the season there is opportunity not only for women who want to work a few weeks of the year, but for part-time workers who wish to work a few days each week or a few hours each day. Saturday is an especially busy day in alteration work and some stores are anxious to get good sewers for this one day.
**Labor Shortage in Dressmaking**
In spite of the fact that dressmaking pays good wages in the upper positions and offers regular employment, there seems to be a rather widespread shortage of labor in the shops. There is no lack of workers of the kind who "go out one door as soon as they have come in the other," as an employer expressively said, but of the kind which can be readily advanced to responsible positions. Several employers stated that they were running at much less than their possible capacity because of a lack of good makers and drapers. There are evidently many openings for girls who have acquired a facility with the needle in ordinary operations and who have adaptability and a sense of responsibility so that they can be advanced rapidly to the upper positions.
**Summary**
Workers in dressmaking shops earn from 50 cents to $25 a week. Wages are graded so as to offer inducement to increase skill, to learn the next higher jobs, and to exercise the responsibility of supervision. Apprentices earn from 50 cents to $6 a week according to the practice of the shop in which they work. Their average rates are from $2 to $4. They become helpers at a wage of from $3 to $6, and may earn up to $10 in this capacity, their average being somewhere between $6 and $9. At $6 they may become finishers or makers and increase their wage up to $18, the usual wage being from $10 to $12. A maker earning $10 or more is usually in charge of helpers, while one earning less does not usually supervise others. From $10 to $15 is the wage rate of those girls who are beginning to learn draping. When they become responsible drapers they earn from $18 to $25. From $2 to $5 is the extra wage paid to workers for supervision.
Workers in alteration departments begin at from $4 to $7. Regular alteration hands earn from $7 to $18, the average being $9 or $10. Fitters earn from $10 to $25, their usual rate being between $15 and $18.
Employment is fairly regular in dressmaking. Workers average from 10 to 11 months' work out of the year. Establishments usually close during the month of August and for one or two weeks in the spring. Workers in alteration departments average 11 months of work. Dress alteration work is steady while suit and coat alteration is irregular. Slack time is distributed evenly among workers. There is a shortage of the better sort of workers in dressmaking. Proprietors claim they have more places than they can fill for workers capable of advancing to the higher places and of supervising other workers. CHAPTER V
THE MILLINERY BUSINESS IN CLEVELAND
The mention of millinery immediately brings certain ideas to mind—Easter, spring hats and fall hats, small shops, flowers and feathers, and ingenious hand work. Each of these suggests an important aspect of the millinery business. For the small milliner, Easter is the most important day in the year. The mention of spring hats and fall hats makes the self-supporting worker remember the rush work of busy seasons and the unemployment of slack seasons. Flowers and feathers are typical of the immense amount of small "fixings" that go to make the hats for the feminine world. The peculiar kinds of artistic and skilled hand work demanded constitute for many ambitious workers the lure of millinery. Because of the difficulties of the work, advancement to positions offering steady employment and good wages is slow, and yet to many these same difficulties constitute a strong attraction despite the many unsatisfactory conditions that must be faced in entering millinery as a wage-earning occupation.
If you ask in the small shop what millinery means, many milliners will tell you in the familiar phrase that "It is making something out of nothing." You realize that this is not far from being true when you are shown in the wholesale house a great shelf of artistic hats made out of the "scrap bag" pieces left from the regular hats. In a sense millinery is a pica-yunish trade, requiring the handling of small pieces of the most varied sorts of material, most of it perishable: straw, velvet, chiffon, leather, lace, cretonne, beads, and silk. These materials must be measured, cut, turned, and twisted, and draped into a thousand designs and color combinations without soiling or creasing. They must be sewed with various kinds of stitching, ranging in difficulty from the running of short straight seams on the machine to the deftest kind of hand tacking, strong and invisible, with fancy stitching for ornamentation. The organization of the immense amount of detail involved in the trade so as to produce successful millinery requires what Stevenson calls the secret of good writing, "a constantly varying slight ingenuity of style."
**Millinery Processes**
Millinery is both a trade and a craft. Making is a trade; and trimming, which shades imperceptibly into designing, is a craft. These two constitute the main millinery processes. Makers fashion wire or buckram into the desired shape and cover it with some sort of material,—straw, velvet, chiffon, or lace, as may be specified. Making is complicated by the endless variety displayed in the shape of hats and by the fashion in which the covering is put on. In some seasons the material is put on plain and great care must be taken to place it smoothly with the grain running in the right direction and the seams in the right place. In other seasons it may be shirred. Since shirring is in the nature of trimming, this means that considerable skill is required. In a season when hats are draped, graceful folds must be arranged which requires careful planning of materials and skill in line arrangement. The making and sewing of bandeaux into hats to make them fit the head properly (or, according to recent tendencies, the manipulation of the lining for this purpose) and the making and sewing in of linings are also parts of the making process.
Trimming consists in placing and sewing on all sorts of decorative materials, ribbon, flowers, feathers, and other ornaments. A combination of the two processes, making and trimming, is known as copying. The copyist fashions from the beginning a certain number of hats exactly like one given to her to be copied. Designing is the creation of original models from suggestions received from special style exhibits, style books, and models seen in the hotels, in amusement places, and on the street.
**The Factory Hat in Millinery**
In the past few years the factory-made hat has become an important factor in millinery. The influence of these hats has been powerful not only in changing at times the bulk of the hat-making process from handwork to machine work, thus affecting number of workers and length of seasons, but also in changing the style of hat produced. The gradual evolution of a different sort of millinery taste among women has been a secondary factor in changing millinery conditions.
In the factory, straw of all descriptions is made into hats of the greatest variety of shapes on the speedy power machines and blocked and pressed into perfectly shaped and finished products. Wire and buckram frames are also made by factory machine methods and velvet covers pressed on with perfect smoothness. Milliners used to do all this work by hand. In the highest grade shops, hats are still almost entirely hand made; but in by far the greater number of shops some use is made of the factory hat, the extent varying according to the class of patrons and according to whether or not the season’s styles call for hand-made goods.
By the mass of indiscriminate buyers the hat made in the factory and trimmed or semi-trimmed by hand is desired because its low cost enables them to have several hats a year for what they formerly paid for two. Working women of all classes are more frequently calling for the plain hat which can withstand each day’s weather and still retain its good lines for a considerable period. The tendency of many women to wear the mannish hat for sports or ordinary street wear has also increased the use of the high grade factory hat. The prevalence of the use of the automobile has had its effect in reducing the demand for “fluffy” theater and party hats and increasing the demand for durable hats for daily wear. Altogether there is a decided trend toward a steady demand for the factory-made hat, while the trimmed hat made to order in the custom shop is becoming a luxury.
The sale of factory-made frames and millinery materials has also had its effect on the millinery business. Many of those who formerly had their season’s hats made by a medium grade custom milliner now buy either a frame which they cover with silk or velvet or they purchase an untrimmed ready-made hat, some ribbon, and flowers or other ornaments, and trim the hat themselves or get some friend who has millinery ability to do it for them.
All these changes are having an effect in shifting much of the volume of business from the small custom shops into millinery departments in the large stores. In all parts of the city the owners of retail shops say that the inroad of factory-made hats has so decreased the amount of work in medium grade frame making and covering that the number of workers has been cut down considerably in the custom workrooms.
The small milliner says she cannot afford to handle factory-made hats as cheaply as the department stores. Moreover it is impossible for her to offer the variety shown in the department stores. As a result, numbers of women who formerly went to the small retail shop in their own locality now find it convenient to patronize the millinery department in the large store. Here they have a wide field of selection and often save time and avoid trouble by finding a becoming hat all ready trimmed. The small shops are fighting hard to hold ground against these changing conditions and they still employ in the aggregate the bulk of millinery workers.
**Scope of the Business**
It is apparent from figures in Chapter II showing the comparative size of the sewing trades in Cleveland that millinery is relatively not a big business in this city. In 1910 there were 1,432 milliners and millinery dealers. According to a close estimate, there were not more than 2,000 actually engaged in this work during the busiest part of 1915. The number of millinery workers fluctuates constantly, not only from season to season but from year to year. In a season when factory-made hats predominate, there are milliners out of work; and in a season when hand-made hats have the ascendancy, the number of workers is not equal to the demands of the work.
Millinery workers are found in three general types of shops: retail millinery shops, millinery departments in stores, and wholesale millinery houses. The largest number are in small retail shops scattered over the city in localities easily accessible to their patrons. In the latest city directory, 221 of these small shops were listed. Forty-five of them were visited by the Survey. The number of regular workers in the 45 shops in 1914 totaled 198. If this proportion holds true for all the shops in the city, there must be upward of 1,200 milliners and millinery dealers in retail shops.
The number of millinery departments in the stores of the city amounts to about a dozen with not more than 300 regular workers. According to the Industrial Commission of Ohio, the four wholesale houses having workrooms had a total of slightly over 300 workers in the busiest month of 1914. Data were secured from seven millinery departments in stores and from three of the four wholesale houses visited by the Survey. The fourth wholesale house refused to give any information, but it seems evident from statements of former workers and from milliners who know this place that it does not differ much from the other wholesale houses.
**Wholesale and Retail Shops**
The wholesale house is the powerful originating center of the millinery business from which new ideas are sent out to the retail milliners. Through the retail shops the reactions of the public toward the new ideas are registered and passed back. The most effective way to get the new ideas into circulation seems to be by having workers sent in from the various retail milliners to work in the wholesale house long enough each season to grasp what the future tendencies are to be in materials, designs, and color combinations. At the same time these workers have the opportunity to get in touch with a high grade of workmanship which is considered by their regular em- ployers to have a stimulating effect on their work. Moreover, they often have a chance to secure positions by getting in touch with millinery dealers who apply to the wholesale houses for workers, and may even be offered a permanent place in the wholesale house itself.
The wholesale houses may be said to control the millinery situation by keeping in circulation the new ideas among retail milliners. They set the standard for millinery models and for high grade workmanship. In a sense they are clearing-houses in that they secure new positions for ambitious workers; tide some workers from retail shops over a part of the dull period; and offer increasingly steadier employment to high grade workers who manage to get places in their establishments.
**Retail Shops**
From the figures given in the first part of the chapter, it is evident that the retail shops are the leading millinery labor employers in Cleveland. Moreover, they are extremely important in that they constitute practically the entire field of training for this trade.
The 45 shops visited were in all parts of the city,—on Euclid, Superior, St. Clair, Cedar, Detroit, Wade Park, and Ontario Avenues, West 25th Street, and East 105th Street. Placed about the city in the localities from which they draw their trade, these retail shops vary in character with the class of customers who purchase from them. Each has its particular "following," whether it be "Presbyterians," "school teachers," or "women whose husbands always want to come with them to choose their hats." A somewhat homogeneous following is really necessary for the small milliner. With the erratic changes in millinery, it is incumbent on her to buy carefully and she can the more readily do this if she can select more or less along one line. Her hours of work and of keeping open her shop are more comfortably arranged if customers have similar leisure hours.
The shops range in quality of product from the exclusive custom shop to the retail millinery store which deals largely in ready-made hats. The few workers in the latter shop make trifling alterations and put on a little extra trimming. Between these two lie all the rest of the shops with varying proportions of made-to-order and factory products. In some small neighborhood shops more than half the work consists of making over old hats.
Among the 51 proprietors in these 45 shops, six were men, one of these being in business with his wife, and 21 were married women. The men were found in the type of shop which deals largely in a factory-made product. One woman was proprietor of two shops in different parts of the city.
The shops varied in number of workers from one to 30. The typical shop had a woman proprietor who did the designing and some trimming; and a working force consisting of one trimmer and one, two, or three makers, with one apprentice to "help out" while learning her trade. Among the smallest shops was one with two apprentices only for its working force besides the proprietor; another with one trimmer; a third with one maker. On the other hand, shops of considerable size were found: one with five trimmers, 25 makers, two apprentices, and five saleswomen; another with three trimmers, 16 makers, three apprentices, and one saleswoman; a third with three trimmers, 12 makers, one apprentice, and two saleswomen. Clerical and delivery help were also a part of the working force of these larger shops. Only eight of the 45 shops had regular saleswomen. In addition five had combination saleswomen and makers or trimmers. In the rest, regular workers—makers, or trimmers, or apprentices—were called from the workroom to wait on customers.
Just as in garment making, a "section" or a "team" of workers is the unit which marks organization of work, so in millinery, the "table" is the unit of organization. Having a "place at the table" signifies that one is a regular worker. In the small shop there is but one table; but in the large shops each trimmer has her own table and her own makers.
The trimmer (or designer) sits at the head of the table and acts as forewoman in giving directions under the supervision of the proprietor. About her on each side of the table sit the makers who pass on to her to be trimmed the hats they have made. The apprentice usually occupies a place at the foot of the table, when she is not jumping up to wait upon the regular workers, bringing to them from the stock shelves the materials which they ask for. Occasion- ally she sits by the trimmer to be instructed in various tricks of the trade.
When there are a few girls working together in such close team work, it can readily be seen that it is necessary for the greatest harmony to exist among them. This is not always easy to accomplish, and there are girls who, although they are good workers, are not kept on in a small shop because they do not fit into the organization. In the successful shops turning out a high-grade product, the proprietors invariably spoke of this fitting girls into an organization capable of effective team work.
More of the girls employed in these small shops live at home and many of them do not actually have to earn their own living. On the other hand a considerable proportion have to be at least partly self-supporting. It is probably true, however, that in no other trade is there such a large proportion of girls who are not entirely dependent on their own resources.
Most of the girls employed have been to high school at least a year or two, and many have finished the course. High school girls are preferred by most proprietors of small shops because they have a greater facility in handling customers and in keeping track of the details necessary in this work.
The workrooms present the usual disparity of conditions in a small shop business. A considerable number answer all the demands of the state law. Many of them are crowded with boxes and scrap bags, and are so insufficiently lighted that one wonders how the close and delicate stitching demanded in this work can be done without injury to the strongest of eyes. In one shop work was carried on all day long by electric light.
Factory inspection of these small shops is utterly inadequate. Such violations of the law as the preparation of food in the workrooms are not uncommon. A proprietor utterly ignorant of the law showed the visitor a bed in an alcove screened from the workroom by curtains where, she said, she dropped down nights during busy season instead of going home. Evidence that the age and schooling law is being violated by these small employers is not lacking. There is need for systematic and thorough factory inspection of all these small shops.
**Millinery Departments in Stores**
Millinery departments in stores range from the exclusive department doing mostly order work to that dealing almost entirely in ready trimmed factory-made hats. Millinery is carried on in a store department on a much larger scale than in a retail shop and has a marked division of workers.
The head of the millinery workroom in the store, who corresponds to the proprietor of the retail shop, is a woman who acts as assistant to a man buyer for the department. She is the designer for the department and does some of the trimming. Under her are the trimmers, each of whom acts as forewoman at the head of a table. The most common divisions of work are stock, order, practical, children’s, and popularly priced millinery. Workers at the stock table make up hats to be put on display for customers to buy outright, to have altered, or copied. They must be able to copy pattern hats which they see in the wholesale houses and to make up hats according to directions given them by the head of the department. They are the highest grade of workers. Order workers make up hats according to the orders of customers. Many of these workers are selected by reason of their speed so that rush orders can be got out on time. Practical millinery for middle-aged women who have their hats fashioned on the same lines from year to year requires very painstaking work. Usually younger workers are engaged on children’s hats. Younger and less experienced girls usually add the small bits of trimming to factory-made hats to complete the popularly priced millinery.
**Wholesale Houses**
The influence of Paris styles is of tremendous importance to the wholesale houses and they try to get into direct touch with Parisian models. The designer is thus an important worker in the wholesale house. She adapts the Parisian models to American taste and originates as many individual styles as possible. She has a special maker make each hat according to her design. If it is approved as to style and cost of making, it is given to a certain worker to be copied in exact detail as many times as may be desired. There is one designer to about 15 workers.
Three-quarters of the workers are makers and copyists. Other workers are cutters, who cut materials as specified for hats; machine operators, who do pleating, hemstitching, etc.; liners, who do nothing but line hats; shoppers; and stock or order girls who see that each table gets the proper amounts of materials.
Wholesale houses are much more like factories in their organization than are the store millinery departments or the retail shops, for a large part of their work consists in making hats in lots exactly alike. Their workmanship is, however, of high grade, since they send out many hats to be copied. Workers are classified according to the nature of the product they turn out. In general there are two kinds of product: pattern hats put on display for retail milliners to copy and other hats sold by the dozen of a kind to retail milliners to be resold. More specifically there are tailored, semi-dress, dress, and children’s hats. A house may specialize on any one of these or it may produce two or three, or all four. There are also hats graded by prices into as many as five grades, according to cost of materials and labor.
Summary Millinery requires the handling of small pieces of the most varied sorts of material, most of it perishable. The materials must be measured, cut, turned, twisted, and draped into innumerable designs and color com- binations, and sewed with various kinds of stitching. The main processes are making, trimming, and designing. Making consists in fashioning from wire or buckram a specified shape and covering it with some sort of material, such as straw or velvet. The covering may be put on plain, or may be shirred or draped. Trimming consists in placing and sewing on all sorts of decorative materials. A combination of the two processes of making and trimming, known as copying, consists in making a hat from the beginning exactly like a specified model. Designing is the creation of original models from suggestions received from style exhibits, and from models seen in hotels, amusement places, and on the street.
The increase in the use of the factory-made hat has decreased the number of workers in custom millinery; and has also had an effect in diverting business from small retail shops to millinery departments in stores where a greater variety of pleasing hats may be found. The number of millinery workers constantly fluctuates not only from season to season but from year to year. According to a close estimate not more than 2,000 workers were actually engaged in millinery during the busiest part of 1915. Between 1,200 and 1,400 were in retail shops; about 300 were in millinery departments in stores; and about 300 more were in wholesale houses.
The wholesale house acts as a sort of clearing-house for the city by keeping in circulation new ideas among retail milliners; by setting the standards for millinery models and good workmanship; by giving a few weeks' employment to workers who come to them during the dull season in custom trade; and by securing new and better positions for some of these workers.
According to the latest city directory, there are 221 retail shops in Cleveland. Forty-five of these in widely different parts of the city were visited by the writer of the report. These shops varied in grade of product from the exclusive custom shop, making expensive hats to order, to the retail millinery store dealing almost entirely in ready-trimmed factory-made hats. The shops varied in number of workers from one to 30. The typical shop has a woman proprietor who does the designing and some trimming; and a working force consisting of one trimmer and one, two, or three makers, with one apprentice to help out while learning her trade. These small shops need more adequate factory inspection inasmuch as it is evident that there are many violations of the legal requirements, such as sanitary conditions and the age and schooling certificates of workers.
Millinery departments in stores are very like retail shops except that there is a greater subdivision of work. There are stock workers who make up hats to be put on display; order workers, who make up hats to order; and various others who work especially on children's hats, hats for middle-aged women, or on popular priced hats which require little trimming.
In wholesale houses three-quarters of the workers are makers and copyists. Designers are found in a proportion of one to every 15 workers. Other workers are cutters, machine operators, liners, and stock or order girls. Wholesale houses are more like factories in their organization than retail shops, for a large part of their work consists in making hats in lots exactly alike. In general there are two kinds of product—pattern hats made for display purposes, and other hats made to be sold by the dozen. Workers are classified according to these two divisions of product and also according to the grade and kind of hats they work on. CHAPTER VI
CONDITIONS OF WORK IN MILLINERY
Comprehensive data in regard to the wages of millinery workers are not available. The State Industrial Commission's figures in the 1914 report are for workers in wholesale houses only. Wherever possible, the Survey gathered actual figures and these are presented as indicative only and not as conclusive data.
WAGES IN RETAIL AND WHOLESALE MILLINERY
The data indicate that wages are considerably lower in retail shops than in either millinery departments in stores or in wholesale houses. In the retail shops there is a striking contrast between the wages of trimmers and of makers. Table 5 presents rates of wages for these two classes of workers.
| TABLE 5.—WEEKLY WAGE RATES OF MILLINERY WORKERS IN RETAIL SHOPS, CLEVELAND, OHIO, 1915 | |---------------------------------|--------|--------|--------| | Workers | Lowest | Median | Highest | | Trimmers | $10 | $18 | $40 | | Makers | 3 | 8 | 16 | The actual wages of over half of the trimmers and about a quarter of the makers in these shops are shown in Table 6.
**TABLE 6.—PER CENT OF MAKERS AND TRIMMERS IN RETAIL SHOPS RECEIVING CERTAIN RATES OF WEEKLY WAGES, CLEVELAND, OHIO, 1915**
| Weekly wage | Makers | Trimmers | |-------------|--------|----------| | $4 | 3 | .. | | 5 | 14 | .. | | 6 | 16 | .. | | 7 | 8 | .. | | 8 | 14 | .. | | 9 | 5 | .. | | 10 | 5 | 6 | | 12 | 5 | 3 | | 14 | 6 | 6 | | 15 | 18 | 10 | | 16 | 6 | 10 | | 18 | .. | 26 | | 20 | .. | 13 | | 22 | .. | 10 | | 25 | .. | 13 | | 40 | .. | 3 | | **Total** | **100**| **100** |
Other figures indicate that the data of Table 6 are fairly accurate. Sixty-five per cent of the trimmers receive $18 or over, $18 being the rate most commonly received. Trimmers receiving the higher wage scale are really designers. Eighty-five per cent of the trimmers receive $15 or over. The proportion of makers, on the other hand, receiving under $15 is 76 per cent.
The data in regard to makers indicate that the median rate of wage is $8, that is, about the same number of workers earn amounts under $8 as earn amounts over $8. After her two seasons of apprenticeship, a maker starts out on her third season receiving anywhere from $3 to $6 per week. The average is much nearer the lower figure than the higher one. Milliners say that most girls do not receive $8 a week until their sixth season which is at the end of the third year. One of the highest grade millinery shops in the city regularly pays only $5 to girls in their sixth season. If we consider the seasonal character of millinery in connection with wage rates there is no doubt that the first few years of millinery work do not offer a sufficient money return to the self-supporting girl, unless she shows marked ability as a trimmer.
Of the 45 shops, only 22 paid any maker as high as $10. Fifteen of these shops paid as high as $12, six paid as high as $15, and only one paid $16. It can readily be seen that makers have not much chance of advancement in their own line. The smaller shops, as a general rule, have a fixed upper rate, beyond which they do not pay, no matter how expert the maker may become. The more conscientious proprietors explain to their girls that their business does not warrant paying more and advise changing to a wholesale house or to some better paying shop when they become capable of earning more than the fixed rate.
The wages of workers who are employed all the year round are most varied. Table 7 gives a dozen cases of wages of girls employed all the year round. The busy season referred to in the table lasts from 24 to 32 weeks.
**TABLE 7.—WAGES OF 12 MILLINERY WORKERS EMPLOYED THE YEAR ROUND IN RETAIL SHOPS**
| Workers | Busy season | Dull season | |--------------------------------|-------------|-------------| | Trimmer | $15.00 | $15.00 | | Trimmer | 15.00 | 7.50 | | Head maker | 15.00 | 7.50 | | Maker | 6.00 | 6.00 | | Maker | 4.00 | 4.00 | | Salesgirl (also trimmer and maker) | 14.00 | 14.00 | | Salesgirl (also trimmer) | 20.00 | 10.00 | | Salesgirl (also trimmer) | 25.00 | 7.00 | | Salesgirl (also maker) | 8.50 | 7.00 | | Salesgirl (also maker) | 15.00 | 15.00 | | Salesgirl (also maker) | 15.00 | 10.00 | | Salesgirl (also maker) | 5.00 | 5.00 |
In department stores the median rate for trimmers (most of whom are designers) is $25. A worker becomes an assistant trimmer at $15 and may possibly work up to a wage of $50 or more. Most makers earn between $8 and $12, the average being about $10. Girls with two seasons’ experience in small shops or with millinery training are taken on as helpers or as beginning makers at from $4 to $6 and may advance as makers to $15.
In wholesale shops designers earn from $25 to $60 or more. Makers start at about $5 and range from about $10 to $15, and sometimes more. Those who are employed in straight copying may earn between $15 and $20. Data presented by the Industrial Commission of Ohio in its 1914 report show that 37 per cent of women 18 years of age and over employed in wholesale houses earn under $8; 22 per cent earn from $8 to $12, and 41 per cent earn $12 and over. The 32 girls under 18 in these shops were with one exception earning under $4.
**WAGES, YEARS OF EXPERIENCE, AND AGES OF WORKERS**
The relation of wages to experience in this trade may be seen from a detailed study made in the trade in New York City in which data on this point were gathered for 1,026 milliners.\* Table 8 sums up the results of this study.
**TABLE 8.—RELATION OF WAGES TO EXPERIENCE IN THE MILLINERY TRADE AS SHOWN BY WEEKLY RATES OF WAGES PAID TO WOMEN IN MILLINERY ESTABLISHMENTS CLASSIFIED ACCORDING TO YEARS IN THE TRADE, NEW YORK, 1914**
| Years in the trade | Per cent of workers | Median rate of wage | |--------------------|---------------------|---------------------| | Less than 1 year | 8 | $4.09 | | 1 year and less than 2 | 6 | 6.04 | | 2 years and less than 3 | 9 | 7.05 | | 3 years and less than 5 | 21 | 8.99 | | 5 years and less than 7 | 16 | 11.54 | | 7 years and less than 10 | 18 | 13.13 | | 10 years and less than 15 | 15 | 15.24 | | 15 years and less than 20 | 4 | 20.50 | | 20 years or over | 2 | 16.00 |
The relation of wages to ages of workers may be seen from Table 9, which gives the results of data gathered from 1,027 milliners in regard to ages and weekly rates of wages in millinery establishments in New York City, 1914.\*
\*Wages in the Millinery Trade. By Mary Van Kleeck. N. Y., 1914. TABLE 9.—RELATION OF WAGES TO AGE IN THE MILLINERY TRADE AS SHOWN BY WEEKLY RATES OF WAGES PAID TO WOMEN IN MILLINERY ESTABLISHMENTS CLASSIFIED ACCORDING TO AGE, NEW YORK, 1914
| Age of worker | Per cent of workers | Median rate of wage | |---------------|---------------------|---------------------| | Under 16 | 2 | $4.14 | | 16 to 18 | 13 | 5.94 | | 18 to 21 | 28 | 8.76 | | 21 to 25 | 29 | 12.40 | | 25 to 30 | 17 | 14.39 | | 30 to 35 | 6 | 17.50 | | 35 to 40 | 3 | 18.67 | | 40 to 45 | 1 | 15.17 | | 45 and over | 1 | 20.00 |
These data show what the other data only roughly indicated—that high wages are not attained by a large proportion of millinery workers in general, and certainly not until after considerable experience in the trade.
SEASONAL CHARACTER OF MILLINERY
Millinery has the well-earned reputation of being the most seasonal of trades. Nevertheless, heads of wholesale houses and millinery departments in stores tell us that this trade is destined to become an all-year-round business because of the increase in the wear of between-season hats. In a few of the exclusive custom shops work is carried on practically the year round, and in some of the small retail shops the seasons are stretched out so that there is now less work during rush seasons and more work during the dull than formerly, thus making employment more regular. All these are hopeful signs; but they by no means indicate the solution of the seasonal problem. In many of the retail shops the milliners say that seasons are shorter than they used to be. One first-class milliner, who during her business of 20 years' standing has always employed her girls the year round, says that for the first time this year she is forced by the shortness of seasons to make a 14 weeks' agreement with workers.
The most significant sign in regard to the seasonal aspect of millinery lies in the almost invariable negative replies given by milliners when they are questioned as to the advisability of girls deliberately going into millinery work. With but two or three exceptions employers declared that they would not advise a girl to go into millinery unless she had exceptional ability so that she would get to the top immediately; or unless she could be supported by her family for three or four years until she reached a high wage mark; or unless she lived at home and had only partially to support herself. One proprietor who seemed fairly successful said that if she had 12 daughters, she would not let one of them be a milliner. The few employers who considered millinery satisfactory work were those whose workers were busy practically the year round and who believed that such a condition was possible in all shops if employers would keep up with the times by continually providing new styles for their customers.
There is abundant evidence to show that many girls leave millinery on account of its seasonal char- acter to go into other sorts of work. Instances were recounted of millinery workers who left their well-paid seasonal job to take an all-year-round low-paid job. One case was that of a girl in wholesale millinery receiving $10 a week for 40 weeks during the year who left to take an all-year-round position in a different line of work at $8.
**What the Millinery Seasons Are**
That there is a wide difference among the various shops in regard to seasonal activity is apparent. Shops were visited between the middle of December and the middle of January. This was the first part of the so-called dull winter season for the retail shops and the beginning of the spring work for the wholesale houses. Among the retail shops ostensibly doing no work at all several were found with locked doors; some were being moved to other parts of the city; while a few were undergoing a thorough house-cleaning. In two or three shops the girl on duty stated that the proprietor was in New York to "get the new spring styles." In a few shops the proprietor was doing a little millinery work while she waited for chance customers.
In a few workrooms the proprietor with one or two workers was starting preparations for an early spring opening. In some of the fashionable shops customers were getting their going-south hats and a good-sized working force was busy filling orders on short notice. At this time telephone conversations were carried on in some of the retail shops arranging for employment of workers in the wholesale houses. In the wholesale houses the spring work was already going with a zest, the spring opening was in prospect, and retail workers were applying for temporary positions.
In most retail shops the spring season begins about the first of March and lasts until the first of July, or in the popular phrase it is from "a little before Easter to the Fourth of July." In similar parlance the fall season is from Labor Day to Thanksgiving, or more exactly from the first of September to the first of December in about two-thirds of the shops and until Christmas in about one-third. In the millinery departments in stores the spring season is somewhat earlier than in retail shops, but the fall season is practically the same. In the wholesale houses the seasons are earlier.
**Number of Weeks of Work**
Employment is offered in the majority of the small shops for about 32 weeks in the year; in the millinery departments of the stores for from 32 to 42 weeks; and in the wholesale houses for 40 weeks.
Only the most careful case study could show just what proportion of workers are employed for different specified numbers of weeks during the year. It is sufficient for our purpose to indicate roughly for what periods workers were engaged in 1914.
In 19 out of the 45 retail shops some girls were kept the year round. In most shops only one girl was kept. In one shop nine girls out of 19 had work all the year. In another all the girls who were absolutely dependent on their own resources were employed the whole year, while the rest of the workers received equal shares of layoff during a short dull season. In a third shop all the girls had from 44 to 46 weeks' work, which was more than many of them wanted.
One department store kept its small force of workers the entire year. In another two of the head workers received 44 weeks while the remainder of the force averaged 32 weeks. In a third all the trimmers and one-half of the makers were employed the whole year. In another, 81 per cent were employed from 30 to 41 weeks; 10 per cent, 45 weeks; six per cent, 50 weeks; while the remaining three were employed less than 30 weeks. In still another a regular force of workers was employed 42 weeks of the year; while a large number of temporary workers are put on extra to supply labor at busy times.
In the wholesale houses some of the head workers are employed the year round while the main force has work during about 40 weeks. The fluctuation in the employment of workers in wholesale houses may be seen from Diagram 4, which shows the proportion employed, according to the Industrial Commission of Ohio, on the 15th of each month in Cleveland in 1914.
**Difficult Problem of the Dull Season** The majority of millinery workers are faced with the problem of tiding themselves over two dull seasons of considerable length, aggregating for the year from 12 to 28 weeks. Twice a year approximately 17 girls out of 20 in the retail shops are laid off because the season is over. The difficulty of solving such a problem can be appreciated if we consider that this means that a self-supporting girl must get at least two extra
Diagram 4.—Per cent of women workers employed in wholesale millinery each month in 1914. The largest number employed in any one month is taken as the base and is represented by 100 per cent
jobs a year, one in the summer and another in the winter, even if she is engaged regularly from season to season in the same millinery shop. This means that she must have at least two kinds of wage-earning ability.
We have spoken of the considerable proportion of workers in the small retail millinery shops who live at home and who are merely earning some extra money or only partially supporting themselves. These girls can remain at home during the dull season and help with family duties. There is also a small proportion, mostly trimmers, who make enough money during the busy season to maintain themselves decently during dull periods. The trimmer who has 32 weeks' work at the usual trimmer's wage of $18, has $11 a week to live on if she is able to distribute her money evenly over the whole year of 52 weeks. This reduces to some extent the size of the problem of employment for millinery workers during dull seasons, but it leaves the problem none the less difficult to solve.
In the matter of dull season work there is first of all to be considered the interchange of workers between wholesale houses and retail shops. Although the retail millinery proprietors speak of the wholesale houses as supplying work to their employees during the retail dull season, the situation is not so looked upon by the wholesale houses themselves.
While the better of these temporary workers may be employed for a considerable period if they so desire, an average of a week or two of work during a season may be considered the amount of employment in wholesale houses secured by the average temporary worker. From a close estimate it is likely that in Cleveland not more than 500 workers regularly employed in retail shops in the busy season have the advantage of this arrangement. These temporary workers in the wholesale houses receive a uniform wage of $1 a day. The $20 a week retail milliner receives the same wage as the $4 a week maker. Certainly, then, from the standpoint of length of period of employment and wage paid, the wholesale house cannot be considered as furnishing much assistance for the average retail millinery girl.
Probably the work most frequently engaged in by milliners during dull seasons is selling in the large stores. In the stores which have millinery departments, an effort is made to transfer from the workroom during the dull seasons every girl who has any selling ability. Heads of departments speak of patiently trying out a girl in several different departments to develop her selling ability. Those girls who are unable to sell are kept in the workroom as long as possible. Some of the proprietors of stores frankly say, however, that they cannot place all their own millinery workers who need positions.
**Hours of Labor**
Nominal working hours are almost always 54 a week, but two-thirds of the shops visited kept open from one to six evenings a week. The workroom girls are not always kept for evening work. In only one case among the shops visited were girls kept every evening. In some instances girls stay Saturday night until 9 or 10, but very often only the trimmer stays. When girls work evenings, the rule is that they are usually allowed a morning off during the week, but this is not always adhered to. In one instance girls who worked in wholesale houses during the day were occasionally taken on as extra workers to help out at night during busy times.
The 54-hour legal working week for women has made overtime work during the rush season legally impossible for employees, not for employers. Many employers visited spoke of the terrible strain lasting for two months twice a year when they sat up practically every night until very late working alone. It is a well known fact, however, that violations of the 10-hour daily limit and 54-hour weekly limit for employees are extremely common.
**Summary**
Available data indicate that the wages of workers in retail shops are lower in general than the wages of workers in millinery departments in stores and in wholesale houses. Makers in retail shops earn from $3 to $16 a week, the average being about $8. Trimmers earn from $10 to $40, with an average of about $18. Out of 45 retail shops, only 22 paid as high as $10 to any maker; 15 paid as high as $12; six paid as high as $15; and only one paid over $15.
In millinery departments in stores, trimmers, who are largely designers, earn from $15 to $50 a week or more. The rate most commonly received is $25. Makers are started at from $4 to $6 and may advance to $15, with an average of about $10.
In wholesale houses designers earn from $25 to $60 or more. Makers start at about $5 and range from $10 to $15, and sometimes more. Those employed in straight copying may earn between $15 and $20. The 1914 report of the Industrial Commission of Ohio presents data showing that of the women 18 years of age and over employed in wholesale houses, 37 per cent receive under $8; and 22 per cent receive between $8 and $12; while 41 per cent receive $12 and over. The 32 girls under 18 years of age employed in wholesale houses were with one exception receiving under $4 per week.
A study of the relation of wages to years of experience and ages of workers in the millinery trade in New York City shows that high wages are not attained by a large proportion of millinery workers in general, and certainly not until after considerable experience in the trade.
The unduly seasonal character of millinery makes it undesirable as a trade for self-supporting women. With few exceptions, employers declare that they would not advise girls to enter millinery unless they have exceptional ability; or unless they can be supported by their families for three or four years until they reach a high wage; or unless they live at home and are only partially self-supporting. Employers cite evidence showing that girls leave millinery on account of its seasonal character to go into other lines of work where employment is regular even though the wage return is less.
Employment is offered in retail shops on an average of 32 weeks or less during the year; in millinery departments of stores from 32 to 42 weeks; and in wholesale houses 40 weeks or more. A very small proportion of workers are employed the year round.
The majority of millinery workers are faced with the problem of tiding themselves over two dull seasons aggregating for the year from 12 to 28 weeks. This means that in order to have employment all the year a girl must get two extra jobs annually, one in the summer and another in the winter, besides retaining her regular millinery position. Employers report that a considerable number of retail millinery workers secure a few weeks' employment in dull season in wholesale houses, but on examination this is found to be of trifling importance in the whole problem of unemployment. A few workers in wholesale houses secure positions in retail shops in the wholesale dull seasons. Retail selling offers some employment to millinery workers. CHAPTER VII
LEARNING THE TRADES
Few workers entering the dressmaking and millinery trades have had previous school training in such work. By far the greater number enter through a so-called apprenticeship in the trades themselves. In neither trade is this a true apprenticeship. As the term is used in dressmaking shops, it does not mean the training by which the young worker learns the trade, but rather the period during which a girl is tried out to see whether she can do enough work while learning to earn the wage the employer can afford to pay her. When she has demonstrated her wage-earning ability, she is no longer an apprentice but a helper. Dressmaking shops take apprentices in order to insure a sufficient supply of workers. Retail millinery shops, on the contrary, often take apprentices in order to secure labor for low grade work, their object being to keep down workroom expenses by getting low grade work done as cheaply as possible.
Dressmaking Apprenticeship
Out of 23 dressmaking shops visited by the writer of this report, all but five took apprentices. These five were shops of the highest grade which secure good workers from other shops. In three of the shops visited it was stated that they took apprentices when they could get them. One employer, in advertising for an apprentice, spent $40, a sum which at her rate of apprentice wage would have paid four months' wages. The proportion of apprentices in dressmaking was about one to every 12 regular workers, a much smaller proportion than was found in millinery establishments which had one for every three regular workers.
The apprenticeship or trying-out period lasts usually from six months to one year, and an effort is made to keep the girl on in the shop if she is at all satisfactory. During this "hook and eye" period the girl's work consists of all sorts of small bits of sewing mostly on the inside of the garment. Besides sewing, hooks and eyes on linings, she makes sachet bags, shirrs coverings on buttons, makes fine rolling hems on ruffles, overcasts seams, learns to cut folds, to put in shields, to make small bindings, and finally to put hems in dresses. She does small pieces of embroidery if she shows aptitude for it. Aside from her sewing she may have various other duties, such as waiting on regular workers, bringing them thread, needles, etc. If there is no regular stock girl, or errand girl, or shopper, the apprentice may have to perform the duties usually performed by such workers. She may have to keep the workroom in order, and answer the telephone.
An apprentice is not really taught; she learns. She is usually not under the charge of any one to be regularly instructed, but merely does small pieces of sewing and learns how to do it by watching others at work.
**WAGES AND DRESSMAKING APPRENTICESHIP**
There is no regular apprenticeship wage. Girls start at from no pay to $4 a week and are advanced by such varying rates that they may earn anywhere from $3 at the end of one year to $6 at the end of three months. The following list of apprenticeship rates in nine different shops shows some typical variations in the matter of apprenticeship wages:
1. Six months without pay; $1.50 per week for next six months.
2. Started at 50 cents a week and advanced as rapidly as possible. Girl is supposed to be able to earn $5 or $6 at the end of six months and $8 at the end of a year.
3. Started at $1 and advanced by steps of 50 cents until at end of first year should earn $3.
4. Started at $1 and advanced by steps of 50 cents so as to be getting $6 at end of six months.
5. Receives a straight wage of $1.50 per week for first six months and $2.50 for second six months. Should earn $5 a week in two years' time.
6. Started at $2.50 per week and advanced as rapidly as possible; usually girl receives $5 or $6 at the end of one year.
7. Started at $3 and advanced in six months to work as helper at $5 a week.
8. Started at $3.50 and advanced as rapidly as possible.
9. Paid $4 for six months, after which she becomes helper at as much as she can earn.
There seems to be no relation between the work required of the girl and her apprentice wage. As much work and as good quality seems to be demanded in shops which have low rates as in those having the higher ones.
Where such conditions as these prevail, it is no wonder that girls are not attracted into the trade in sufficient numbers. The 14-year-old girl might work for the wages paid. The 16-year-old girl, however, has a sense of her age value and will not go into a trade where she cannot earn $3 by the end of a year when she can earn $6 in perhaps less than six months' time in a clothing factory. Most girls cannot afford to go into the dressmaking trade at the legal working age (16), unless they have had enough previous training to allow them to start in as helpers with a chance to earn a wage of from $6 to $9.
**Millinery Apprenticeship**
The regular method of entering the millinery trade in Cleveland is through an apprenticeship of two seasons, each 12 weeks long, in a retail millinery shop. The millinery departments of the large stores are gradually doing away with apprenticeship. Of seven stores visited, three had no apprentices, three had from one to three among from one to two dozen workers, and one had a number of apprentices who acted mainly as errand girls, doing "every single thing which would allow the regular makers to sit still at the table."
The wholesale houses take few apprentices. Of the three visited, one takes none, a second takes but one a year, while the third takes about one apprentice to every nine or 10 regular workers and gives her thorough training. The only other wholesale house in the city takes no apprentices.
**Apprentices in Retail Shops**
There is little inducement for an ambitious self-supporting young woman to enter the millinery trade through apprenticeship. In the 45 shops visited there were 54 apprentices to 198 makers and trimmers, or one apprentice for each three or four regular workers. If this proportion holds true for all the shops in the city (and it should, for these 45 were in districts all over the city), then there are about 265 apprentices altogether in these shops to 972 makers and trimmers.
So far as can be ascertained through a discussion of the matter with employers, the small retail shops furnish a good many partly trained workers to wholesale houses and millinery departments in stores. But this does not account for the abnormal proportion of apprentices in the retail shops. There is no good reason why there should be one apprentice for each three or four regular workers. Such a large number could be justified only if the number of millinery workers were increasing by about 30 per cent every year; or about 30 per cent of the workers dropped out of the trade every year. As neither of these things is happening, the true explanation is that large numbers of these young workers are not really apprentices at all, but only very cheap help taken on to do less difficult work in rush seasons and then dropped.
The growth of the trade does not warrant any great number of apprentices. From 1900 to 1910, according to the Occupational Census, the number of milliners in Cleveland increased about 80 per cent. If none died and none dropped out, an increase of only six per cent each year would result in an increase of 80 per cent in 10 years. Under the same conditions an increase of 30 per cent each year would result in an increase of over 1200 per cent in 10 years. In point of fact some do die and some do leave each year, but after making every reasonable allowance, it is still certain that in this trade, where the apprenticeship period is only one year, no such number of apprentices are needed as are actually at work in Cleveland. Indeed the available data indicate that the increase in workers in the retail shops during the past decade was hardly more than the number of apprentices taken on in one year.
That apprentices are used in many shops merely as a convenience is perfectly evident when one inquires how employers dispose of their apprentices at the end of their period of learning. In the better class of shops only a sufficient number of apprentices are trained to fill the positions that are available. In such shops we find one apprentice every year to from six to 16 regular workers or in the smaller shops, where there are only three or four regular workers, an apprentice every two or three years. In the shop where there are five apprentices to one maker and one trimmer (an actual case), it is perfectly evident that apprenticeship cannot be serving the ordinary purpose of training prospective workers in the processes of the trade.
WAGES AND MILLINERY APPRENTICESHIP
There are shops (three out of the 45 visited) in which apprentices are not paid. The usual wage is $1 a week the first season, with an increase in the second season in some cases to $1.50 or $2. This wage is spoken of as carfare. Hats are usually given to the apprentice, the materials costing $5 or $6 a season. In a few shops the apprentice starts with $1.50 or $2 a week the first season and is increased to from $2 to $5 in the second.
The low apprenticeship wages and slow advancement during the first few years practically close the trade to self-supporting girls unless they can be helped over their learning period or unless they are of such exceptional ability that they are immediately advanced to good positions. The trade is open to girls who are not in the real sense of the word self- supporting—those who live at home and can either be taken care of for the three or four years while they are working up to a living wage or who merely wish to earn some extra money for incidentals.
**Summary**
Dressmaking apprenticeship means the period during which a girl is tried out to see whether she can do enough work while learning the trade to earn the wage the employer can afford to pay her. The trying-out period lasts from six months to a year. Most shops take apprentices, the proportion in the trade being one to every 12 workers; and an effort is made to keep these new workers on in the shop if they are at all satisfactory. Beginners are taught how to make and finish linings and to do all sorts of sewing on the inside of the garment. They may also have general duties, such as running errands, waiting on the regular girls, and shopping. There is no standardized apprenticeship wage. Girls may serve without pay for six months or may start at from 50 cents to $4 a week. At the end of six months they may be earning from $1.50 to $6. The irregular and low apprenticeship wages probably account for the fact that it is difficult to get girls to enter this trade.
Millinery apprenticeship lasts for two seasons of 12 weeks each. Almost all retail shops take apprentices in large numbers, there being one apprentice to every three or four workers in the trade. Millinery departments in stores and wholesale houses take few apprentices, and the tendency is to take fewer every year. The proportion of apprentices to regular workers in retail shops is abnormally large. Available data indicate that but few of these apprentices are needed to supply the vacancies in millinery departments in stores and wholesale houses; that some of them are needed on account of the natural growth of the trade; and that a good many take the places of the large number of workers who leave the trade every year on account of its seasonal character to go into other lines of work. It is evident, however, that many apprentices in millinery are employed by the proprietors to get low grade work done cheaply and thus keep down workroom expenses. The apprenticeship wage in millinery is extremely low. The usual rate is $1 a week the first season, with an increase in the second season to $1.50 or $2. CHAPTER VIII
TRAINING FOR SEWING GIVEN BY THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS
It is difficult to describe clearly the amount and kind of training in sewing given in the public schools. This is because of the wide variation in the aims and methods of the work in the different grades and schools, and the differences in the equipment of the teachers engaged in it, the time devoted to it, and the amount accomplished.
In the elementary schools manual training sewing is given in the fifth and sixth grades. The work consists of one hour of hand sewing a week, taught by a regular grade teacher, or a domestic science, or other special teacher. The amount of sewing is limited in the fifth grade to that possible on a workbag and a small outing flannel petticoat; and in the sixth grade to a cooking outfit consisting of a dish-cloth, dish-towel, cap, apron, and cuffs. As stated in the outline according to which the manual training sewing is carried on, "the aim of this course is to give a knowledge of practical sewing which may be of use in the home."
Special Sewing Classes
In five elementary schools—Eagle, Mound, Fowler, Warren, and Marion—special sewing, consisting of both hand and machine work, is taught by specially trained teachers in the seventh and eighth grades. In Eagle it is taught also in the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades, and in Mound and Fowler in the sixth grades. About four per cent of all the seventh and eighth grade girls in the elementary schools receive this instruction. One and a half hours every week is devoted to the work in all grades and schools with the following exceptions: one and a half hours alternate weeks in the fourth grade at Eagle; one hour a week in the seventh grade at Marion; two hours a week in the eighth grade at Marion; three hours one week and one and a half the next in the eighth grade at Eagle; three hours a week in the seventh and eighth grades at Mound.
The work is directed from the standpoint of the girl's participation in the family sewing. About three garments, such as nightgowns, drawers, aprons, petticoats, princess slips, kimonos, middy blouses, gingham dresses and Christmas articles are made during the year in each grade. The three teachers who have charge of all this work, except at Marion, where it is taught by the domestic science teacher, are also engaged in teaching some special classes of retarded children. The work given to such classes is not discussed here, as our problem has to do with the mass of children in the regular elementary grades.
**Sewing in the High Schools**
In the technical high schools sewing is given during the entire four years. All girls are required to take plain hand and machine sewing the first year for three hours a week, and the second year for four hours and a half a week. In the third and fourth years millinery and dressmaking are given, with special work for those who wish to prepare themselves for trade.
The aim of the sewing in the technical high schools is (1) preparation for efficiency in the selection of materials used in sewing, and the construction of articles relating to home and family sewing; (2) laying the foundation for courses in higher schools.
The work in the two schools for the first two years does not differ much. About a dozen simple articles, mostly undergarments and aprons, are made the first year and simple waists and dresses are made in the second year. In the East Technical High School commercial patterns are adapted for this work, while in the West Technical High School the elements and application of simple drafting are given.
The advanced sewing differs to a certain extent in the two schools. Since millinery is required of all girls in the West Technical High School during the first half of the junior year, no other sewing work is given at that time. The last half of the year a tailoring course is elective from four and a half to 18 hours a week. Silk or wool dresses with fitted linings, class day dresses, graduation outfits, and evening coats or capes are made. When the work is for more than three hours a week, it is considered trade work. Girls doing trade work fill orders for customers. The teacher is a woman experienced in the trade in dress-making shops and in alteration work in stores.
In the East Technical High School manual training sewing is required four and a half hours a week in the senior year of those girls who take the college course. It is elective for other girls. The work consists of an embroidered slip, a wool or silk party dress, class day dress, and graduation dress. A course in trade dressmaking is elective for girls in any class in the school from about 10 to 18 hours a week. There are no prerequisites in the way of sewing for this course. The work is under the charge of a woman experienced in the trade. Work extends over two years and covers the following: petticoat with hand-embroidered bottom, corset cover, simple shirt-waist, white wash skirt, simple dress, silk waist, plain wool skirt, alteration of dress, any kind of home sewing. Making clothes for the girl herself is the basis of the course. As soon as girls are proficient, they do order work.
**Millinery**
During the first half of the third year millinery is required three hours a week of all girls in the West Technical High School. The first and second years of required sewing are prerequisite to this course. Millinery is elective the last half of the junior year from four and a half to 12 hours a week, and during the senior year from three to 15 hours a week. In the East Technical High School girls electing the college course of study are required to take millinery as manual training four hours and a half a week during the junior year. Millinery is elective for other girls either as manual training or as trade work, with from 10 to about 18 hours a week, 15 hours being the average. As in trade dressmaking in this school, there is no sewing prerequisite for the millinery course.
In both schools the girls taking advanced or trade work are in the same classes with those taking elementary or manual training millinery. The former are distinguished from the latter by the greater amount of time they spend on the work and the greater number of hats they make. In both schools when a girl gets to the point where she makes more hats than she can use, she begins to do order work for customers, most of whom are her personal friends. A small proportion of the girls taking the advanced work enter the trade. In West Technical High School millinery is taught by a woman who has had extensive experience as a high grade worker in the trade; while in East Technical, the teacher is a graduate of the household arts department at Columbia who has gained trade experience by working in millinery shops during vacations.
In the academic high schools, this year for the first time, a two-year elective course in sewing three hours a week is offered as a part of the home economics course. The aim of this sewing, which is called domestic art, is stated thus: "Problem: my personal appearance is one of my chief assets. What can I do to improve it?" Elementary and advanced sewing and millinery courses are given in the night technical high schools with the aim of showing girls how to make their own clothes and hats.
Aims There is no clearly defined relation among the different courses in sewing. The work done in one group of grades or schools is not based upon that done in a lower group, except that there is an effort not to make exactly the same articles. In the special sewing classes in the elementary schools, it is taken for granted that the child knows nothing whatsoever about sewing. The first year of work in the technical high schools begins with drill in using the thimble properly, gauging lengths of thread, and learning stitches, just as if the girl had never heard of sewing. This lack of recognition of any relation between the various sewing courses is wasteful of the pupil's time.
In the early pages of this report, the fact has been emphasized that there is an ever-increasing difference between the knowledge of clothing required by women whose main business lies in the home and those whose main business is making clothing. Those of the first group need very little actual sewing practice as compared to the second group. They need considerable application of the knowledge of textiles and of color and line effects. But the application is a personal one to their own or their family's problems. Those of the second group need a much more extensive application of this related knowledge in their work for many different sorts of people. Those of the first group learn to make a few garments mainly in order that they may learn the best kind of clothes to buy. Those of the second group make many garments in order to prepare themselves to make more.
If the school is to teach sewing for the home, it should work out and state clearly how much and what kind of home sewing should be taught in the sort of world we are now living in. The educational significance of the work should be formulated by teachers and supervisors and should act as a directing influence in the actual teaching. It is a question whether a good part of the present sewing is not taking the place of studies which would be much more worth while for the girl whose main business is to be in the home. This report cannot present a full discussion of sewing as a part of household arts, or as general education, or as recreation. However, certain conclusions result from its consideration of the relation of the present courses in the schools to wage-earning sewing.
**Elementary Courses Do Not Prepare for Trade Work**
The manual training sewing in the fifth and sixth grades cannot be considered as making much of a contribution to the training of those who are to go to work in any sewing trade. Indeed, the course as it stands seems unsatisfactory from almost any point of view. It is meager in amount and seems calculated to stimulate distaste for sewing from the start. In the fifth grade two articles are made, a plain workbag and an outing flannel petticoat. The child's first conception of sewing is that it is a bore; for it takes 18 weeks to make one article and another 18 weeks to make a second article. In taking out a small, unattractive garment once a week for 18 weeks and spending an hour doing five or six inches of sewing on it, she loses all zest for what she is doing.
The child's second conception of sewing, gained in the sixth grade, is that one makes by hand, out of India linen, an outfit to wear in the kitchen while one is cooking. She gains wrong ideas as to economy of time by spending 36 hours making by hand an outfit which should be made on the machine in two hours. Furthermore she has implanted in her a wrong fundamental conception of the adaptability of material to needs.
At present the manual training sewing is taught by regular grade teachers, most of whom have had no special training in sewing and many of whom have no aptitude for it. They do the best they can under the circumstances; but in general barely knowing how to make the few models required, it is no wonder that they do not appreciate the value of correct teaching of fundamental operations. This year for the first time training in sewing is being given to normal school pupils. It can readily be seen, however, that it will be many years before the present normal school pupils have much effect on fifth and sixth grade sewing work.
It is true that these teachers are supervised. But the same overburdened person who supervises the 210 teachers in charge of the manual training sewing also supervises four special sewing teachers and 29 cooking teachers in the elementary schools. Two visits a year to fifth and sixth grade sewing classes is all that this supervisor can make.
This report makes no plea for wage-earning sewing in the fifth and sixth grades. If the sewing given in these grades makes a contribution to wage-earning sewing it is only by happy chance, the correct learning of a few fundamental operations being a by-product of the main contribution of sewing to the general and cultural education and recreation of the girls.
The special sewing courses given in a few seventh and eighth grades in the elementary schools ought to offer some preparation for sewing trades, since they are in the grades from which trade sewers most largely come; they are taught by specially trained teachers; and they offer both hand and machine work. Moreover, they are in schools from which large numbers of girls go to work. Of the five schools where special sewing is being taught in the regular seventh and eighth grades, only one has adequate equipment. This is Mound, where there are four machines for a maximum of 20 and a minimum of 13 girls in a class.
In Warren, where there is only one machine for 17 or 18 girls in a class, and one and a half hours of sewing a week, each girl can get at the most an average of five minutes' machine practice a week or three hours of machine practice the whole year out of 54 hours of sewing. This is on the basis that every minute of the period is used by a girl at the machine with no time taken out for getting at work, changing places at machines, and putting away work.
In Fowler School, where there are two machines, one furnished by the Board and one by the Mothers' Club, if each machine is used every minute of the time allotted for sewing, each girl averages from eight minutes' machine practice a week in the largest class to 15 minutes' in the smallest. This amounts to from less than five hours in the largest to nine hours in the smallest class during the whole year. Counting out time for getting out work, changing places at the machine, and putting away work would reduce these averages by at least one-third.
The results of trying to teach a course in sewing where there is considerable machine work with meager machine equipment can be appreciated fully by visiting a class where the teacher is laboring under such difficulties. In two such classes at the time of visit by a member of the Survey Staff, two-thirds of the class were waiting nearly all the time to use a machine.
Waiting time is partly occupied by doing every bit of hand work that can possibly be performed, no matter whether or not it is in the right order of construction. Often, however, hand work gives out and it is merely a matter of waiting. The girl at the machine suffers too. She cannot take time to get practice in threading the machine for herself. Her main purpose is to get the seams sewed on the gar- ment and leave to make room for another girl. She sews hastily and nervously. A high standard of workmanship is most difficult to maintain under such conditions.
The teachers engaged in this work are well trained and are doing their best under the circumstances. But they are so hampered by inadequate equipment and lack of time that their ability has not much chance to manifest itself.
As we look over the work being given in the elementary schools it does not seem to offer much help to those girls who are going to earn their living in a sewing trade. Unless a girl is in one of five schools,—Mound, Eagle, Fowler, Warren, or Marion,—her sewing practice amounts to 72 hours of hand sewing on a workbag, a small petticoat, a dish-towel, dishcloth, cap, apron, and cuffs. This means that 24 girls out of every 25 finishing elementary school have had the equivalent of 12 six-hour days of sewing distributed in one hour a week periods over two years and have made seven articles in that time.
**High School Courses Do Not Meet Trade Needs**
The technical high schools cannot be considered as making large contribution to training for dressmaking or millinery. The aim of the sewing work in general is frankly for the home and for preparation for courses in higher schools. The trade work is a very small by-product. It is carried on often in the same classes with the regular work, and while it has a good effect in holding "home" work up to better standards it suffers itself in not having reproduced to any large degree those trade conditions which hold work up to acceptable trade standards.
A few girls who have completed the trade work in dressmaking and millinery classes in both East and West Technical High Schools are at present successfully fulfilling the requirements of the trades in alteration and millinery departments in two or three of the principal stores of the city. The stores report that these girls are well trained and that they prefer filling vacancies with such girls rather than taking workers trained in small shops or training apprentices themselves. This demonstrates in a small way that school-trained girls are acceptable workers.
The trade work in the technical high schools is, however, begun too late for most of the girls who enter the sewing trades. Most girls enter dressmaking from the elementary grades; and a large part of those who enter millinery have only elementary schooling or one or two years of high school. A study of girls under 21 at work showed that a much larger proportion of girls with elementary schooling went into industrial pursuits than of those with some high school training—38 per cent of the former as compared with 11 per cent of the latter. Of the girls who had only elementary schooling and were in industrial pursuits, 17 per cent entered dressmaking and millinery—about 12 per cent in the former and five in the latter trade. Of the small proportion of girls with high school training who were in industrial pursuits, 46 per cent went into dressmaking and millinery—18 per cent in the former and 28 in the latter trade. None of these girls had finished high school and only one-fifth of them had entered the third year of high school.
It is evident then that most girls who enter these sewing trades do so from the elementary schools or from the first two years in high school. Courses given in the third and fourth years of high school will not reach many girls who desire to go into trade. This brings us back to the required sewing given from the "home" standpoint in the first two years of the technical high schools.
We have said before that sewing which is directed toward the home should be of some aid to the girl going into trade work if it is well taught. It should give her the elements of sewing and of the knowledge of textiles, color, and design essential in trade work. But it is because of the difference in the standards of home and trade in regard to workmanship and economy of time that "sewing which may be of use in the home" is so seldom satisfactory as a beginning for trade work. In the minds of teachers and students alike this difference is felt. The home standard of workmanship is too often, "It's for myself so it will have to do," or "My sister's going to wear it and she won't mind." The trade standard is always "This is for Mrs. Richards and it must be exactly right." In respect to economy of time, the home standard is too likely to be, "I have plenty of time," or "I have nothing else to do," whereas the trade standard is, "This must be done by four o'clock."
The East Technical High School has been trying to give opportunity to girls to begin trade work early by permitting those students who expect to stay only two years in high school to start trade work in their first or second year. In this lies the germ of a necessary rearrangement of courses if the technical high schools are to be looked upon as offering opportunities for girls desiring trade training.
**Summary**
In the elementary schools manual training sewing, consisting of one hour of hand sewing a week, is taught in the fifth and sixth grades by regular grade teachers. In the fifth grade a work bag and a small petticoat are made, and in the sixth grade a cooking outfit consisting of a dish-towel, dish-cloth, cap, apron, and cuffs.
In five elementary schools—Eagle, Mound, Warren, Fowler, and Marion—special sewing, consisting of both hand and machine work, is taught in the seventh and eighth grades by specially trained teachers. About four per cent of all the seventh and eighth grade girls in the elementary schools receive this instruction. With some exceptions, one and a half hours a week is devoted to the work.
In the technical high schools sewing is given during the entire four years. All girls are required to take plain hand and machine sewing the first two years for an average of three and three-quarters hours a week. In the third and fourth years millinery and dressmaking are given, with special work for those who wish to prepare themselves for trade. In the West Technical High School a tailoring course is elective the last half of the junior year from four and a half hours to 12 hours a week; and a dressmaking course is elective in the senior year from three hours to 18 hours a week. The teacher is a woman experienced in the trade. In the East Technical High School manual training sewing is required four hours and a half a week of those girls who take the college course. It is elective for other girls. A two-year course in trade dressmaking is open to all girls in the school, elective for from 10 hours to 18 hours a week. The work is under the charge of a woman experienced in the trade.
Millinery is required three hours a week of all girls in the junior year in West Technical High School; and four hours and a half a week of all girls in East Technical High School taking the college course of study. It is elective for all girls in the West Technical High School the last half of the junior year from four and a half to 12 hours a week, and during the senior year from three to 15 hours a week. In the East Technical High School it is elective for all girls as manual training, or as trade work with from 10 to 18 hours a week.
In the West Technical High School the two years of required sewing are prerequisites for trade work; while in the East Technical High School girls may enter trade work without previous sewing training. In both schools girls taking advanced or trade work are in the same classes with those taking elementary or manual training sewing.
In the academic high schools this year for the first time a two-year elective course in sewing three hours a week is being offered as a part of the home economics course. Elementary and advanced sewing courses are given in the night technical high schools.
The work done in one group of grades or schools bears slight relation to that done in another group. The work is directed from the standpoint of the needs of the home, without those in charge having clearly defined what home sewing ought to be.
The manual training sewing given in the fifth and sixth grades does not prepare for trade work and is unsatisfactory because it is meager in amount, is of such nature as to create distaste for sewing, instils wrong principles of sewing, and is taught by teachers who have not adequate training. The contribution that this sewing could make to trade work would be the correct teaching of a few fundamental sewing operations.
The special sewing courses given in a few seventh and eighth grades in the elementary schools should offer some preparation for the sewing trades. They are taught by competent teachers; they offer both hand and machine work; and are in schools from which many girls go to work. These sewing classes, however, suffer so from lack of equipment that neither good workmanship nor good habits of sewing can be attained. The technical high schools cannot be considered as offering large contribution to training for dress-making or millinery because the bulk of the work is directed from the standpoint of the home, trade work being only a small by-product. The trade work itself is started too late for most of the girls who enter the sewing trades. CHAPTER IX
NEEDS OF WORKERS IN DRESSMAKING AND MILLINERY
When we speak of needs of workers in this report, we mean the needs of regular workers, of those who have passed the stages of apprentices and helpers and who are looking forward to advancing themselves into head positions. Their needs are of three main sorts: practice in sewing; a body of related technical, trade, and art knowledge; and certain more general requisites which have an important bearing on the work. In addition they should have industrial information concerning the conditions prevailing in needle trades in respect to wages, hours of labor, seasons, labor legislation, and organization of workers.
The degree of skill in sewing required of dressmaking and millinery workers is indicated in the criticisms commonly applied by employers to those girls who can sew, but who have not acquired the particular knack of sewing called for in each of these trades. "Killing the garment with sewing," and "nailing the material on the hat" are the two common phrases indicating the heaviness of hand of the inexpert sewer.
The girl who enters dressmaking needs a great deal more practice in sewing than the one who enters millinery, for she is called upon to do a much greater variety and amount of work. She should know all the fundamental hand and machine sewing operations and be able to apply them with facility on different parts of the garment and on a wide variety of materials. She must be an expert hand sewer as well as a good machine sewer. Much of the work, especially in high grade dressmaking, is done by hand, and each stitch counts almost as much as it does in millinery.
On entering a shop a girl is often tested as to her ability to make a good lining. For this work she must be able to sew the pieces of the lining together with even, straight seams and attach hooks and eyes perfectly, spacing them evenly and sewing them on neatly and strongly. Until a girl can make a satisfactory lining, she is not likely to be allowed to do anything else. This work is a severe test of the speed, the accuracy, and the neatness of the worker. It is the foundation of the dress, and it must be exactly right or the lines of the dress will be spoiled. If the seams are not made exactly of the same depth, the lining will be one-sided. If the hooks and eyes are not spaced properly, they will not meet exactly when the lining is hooked up. If the same number of stitches are not used on the different parts of the hook and eye, the pull upon these fastenings will come unevenly, and the threads on the weak side are likely to break. Such operations as overcasting seams, making fine rolling hems, small folds, and bindings, making and putting on all sorts of small trimmings, and putting in skirt hems are required to be done with the greatest neatness and with a certain amount of speed.
Millinery workers need what might be called "concentrated" hand sewing. The piece of work is always small and every stitch counts. For the most part a few stitches are used, the ordinary running stitch and blind hemming most commonly. Stitches must be made with the greatest precision and yet with the lightness of effect desirable for headgear. A knowledge of fancy stitches is of considerable value. A knowledge of ordinary machine sewing is essential in doing the small amount of seaming required on some pieces of work.
**Related Subjects**
The technical knowledge needed in these trades is slight. There are, however, many "tricks of the trade," which, if standardized and described, would form a small handbook of much value to workers. No special body of arithmetic is needed. But the worker is constantly applying measurements, in fractions of yards, in the most practical way to small pieces of material. Measuring "by the eye" is being constantly demanded of workers in millinery, as using a tape-measure is considered a great waste of time.
One of the basic needs of workers in dressmaking is a knowledge of the proportions of the human figure. On the technical side this develops into the drafting of patterns and on the art side into costume design. The drafting of plain patterns is needed not so much for direct application as for establishing in the mind of the worker relative measurements on different parts of the garment and for adjusting commercial patterns. Every girl who expects to be an independent worker or to fill an upper position in a dressmaking shop would be helped considerably by a knowledge of plain pattern drafting.
A knowledge of the proportions of the human figure is a prerequisite to a knowledge of costume design. The most practical kind of design is needed by the worker—design which takes into consideration the pattern and texture of materials as well as the color. It is nearly impossible for a worker to adapt the models in foreign style books to American figures without such knowledge.
A knowledge of materials is essential in both trades. From dressmaking shops everywhere comes the complaint that girls have no sense of materials, of their value, or their use. "They know only common materials and treat valuable chiffons and silks like calico," said one employer. The manipulation of the materials in respect to their grains to produce certain effects is one of the commonest needs of these workers.
The ability to discriminate between colors, shades, and tints, to combine colors and their derivatives in contrasts and harmonies is essential for all workers. A girl who can fashion decorations for dresses in pleasing color combinations is at a premium in her trade. In millinery, where so much of the work consists in making ornaments, a girl must have an excellent sense of design or color or both if she expects to advance to any satisfactory stage in her work.
**Other Requisites**
Both dressmaking and millinery must be relearned each year to keep pace with the changing tastes and fashions. This means that workers must have an unusual amount of adaptability and an ingenuity in suggesting new line and decorative schemes.
Girls with moist hands are not tolerated in dressmaking or millinery shops, for they cannot work on valuable materials without ruining them. In both trades, millinery especially, girls must be of good personal appearance as they must often deal with customers.
**Summary**
Workers in dressmaking and millinery need industrial information concerning conditions prevailing in the needle trades with respect to wages, hours of labor, seasons, labor legislation, and organization of workers. In both trades practice in sewing is essential. In dressmaking, workers must know all the fundamental hand and machine operations and be able to apply them with facility to different parts of the garment and on a wide variety of materials. Expert hand sewing is necessary in high class dressmaking. Millinery workers need practice in hand sewing on small pieces of material. They should also be able to sew on the machine.
The technical knowledge needed in these trades is slight. Workers need to be able to apply arithmetic practically to the measurements of materials and to learn to measure by the eye. A knowledge of the proportions of the human figure is essential to good work in dressmaking. Pattern drafting is of value and costume design is essential. The workers need knowledge of materials in respect to their value in producing certain line and texture effects; and of colors in respect to forming pleasing contrasts and harmonies for decorative schemes.
Workers need an unusual amount of adaptability for both dressmaking and millinery; and an ingenuity in planning new lines and color effects to meet changing tastes and fashions. Girls must have habits of personal cleanliness, and must be of good personal appearance if they wish to advance to those positions where they deal with customers. CHAPTER X
EDUCATION FOR THE SEWING TRADES
According to available census data, one girl among every five or six is destined to earn her living, perhaps for a short time, perhaps for a few years, perhaps all her life, in some one of the sewing trades. Training in sewing thus demands careful consideration as a part of the educational problem. If the school could consider meeting the needs of this one group of prospective workers alone, the problem would not be difficult. But it must meet the needs of girls going into other lines of work as well and the needs also of those who are never to engage in wage-earning.
From the standpoint of administrative possibilities the needs of the girl going into a specific sewing trade, such as dressmaking, can best be met by giving her along with the general training necessary for both boys and girls: first, such training in the fundamentals of sewing as are applicable in any sewing trade; second, an opportunity before she leaves school to specialize somewhat broadly along the specific line in which she wishes to engage. It is the opinion of the Survey Staff that such a plan can be carried out by a modification of the course in the present junior high school and by the establishment of a one-year trade school for girls going into industrial work.
**Preparation in the Junior High School**
The junior high school is one of the units of a school system made possible by an organization which substitutes for the conventional eight-year elementary course and four-year high school course, a six-year elementary course, a three-year junior high school course, and a three-year senior high school course.
The junior high school, consisting of the present seventh, eighth, and ninth grades, brings together boys and girls in that age period during which they are breaking away from the irresponsibilities of childhood and taking upon themselves the small but growing responsibilities of youth. Not only are present needs emphatic as in childhood, but future needs lay hold upon the youth and a different educational treatment is demanded from that which was adequate in his earlier school days. The majority of boys and girls leave school some time during this period to go to work. The demands of the work into which they expect to go create a desire for some preparation directed especially toward it; and the anticipation of this departure changes their whole attitude toward their school work.
There are two junior high schools in Cleveland, and the Board of Education plans to increase their number as rapidly as conditions will permit. In view of this fact, it is necessary to discuss somewhat in detail how this aids in dealing with the problem of training girls who are to go to work.
If the junior high school is to deal adequately with the problem of training girls who expect to go to work as soon as the law allows, two facts must be reckoned with. The first of these is that girls must advance in the elementary work at a normal pace in order to be able to take advantage of junior high school training before they leave school. The second is that girls must be kept in school until they are of legal working age in order to get the full benefit of junior high school training.
If girls entered school at the usual entrance age of six or seven years and made normal progress, they would be in the seventh grade at the age of 13. The normal ages for the three grades of the junior high school would thus be 13, 14, and 15 respectively. In June, 1915, there were approximately 3,500 girls 13 years of age in the Cleveland public schools. Only 29 per cent of them were in the seventh grade while 39 per cent were in grades below the seventh. The 3,500 girls were scattered through all the grades from the first elementary to the last year of high school. It is evident that one of the first requisites to secure the most valuable results in the junior high schools is to reduce retardation throughout the school system so that pupils can take advantage of courses planned for their preparation for business and industry.
According to law, girls cannot leave school and go to work until they are 16 years of age, so that there should be about equal numbers of girls in school in each age group at 13, 14, and 15 years. As a matter of fact, many girls in Cleveland drop out after the age of 13 because of lack of enforcement of the compulsory attendance law. In June, 1915, when there were 3,500 girls 13 years old in the public schools, the number of 14-year-old girls was not quite 3,200, the number of 15-year-old girls was only 2,300, and the number of 16-year-old girls only 1,200. Evidently, between a third and a half of the girls drop out of school before the end of the compulsory attendance period.
At present out of every 100 girls, 10 permanently drop out from grades below the junior high school, 60 drop out of the junior high school, and 30 continue to the grades of the senior high school. Enforcement of the compulsory attendance law would in all probability change conditions so that seven out of 10 girls would drop out during or at the end of the junior high school course. The importance of the junior high school as a preparatory school for the senior high school becomes, in this presentation of facts, slight in comparison to its importance as a preparatory school for young workers. The fact that girls are to leave so soon to go to work and that they may never again have an opportunity of securing systematized training makes the task of planning adequately for them a heavy one. How Cleveland Girls Enter Industry
The figures that have been cited as to the ages and grades at which girls in this city leave school and go to work have been derived from a study of the enrollment records of the school system for the past three years. More extended discussion of the data will be found in the volumes of this Survey entitled "Child Accounting in the Public Schools" and "The Garment Trades." In addition to this general study a more intensive inquiry was conducted by the Consumers' League of Cleveland in the spring of 1916 in cooperation with the Survey.
An attempt was made to follow up the cases of all the children who had left one public elementary school during the period of one year preceding the study. The work was done by the case method and the homes of the children were visited.
The total number of cases studied was 117, of whom 89 were girls. It was found that one-third of these children had graduated and gone on to high school. Another third had gone to work, and of these, 40 per cent had done so without graduating. The children constituting the remaining third were staying at home, and among these a majority had dropped out without graduating.
For the purposes of the present report the cases of the girls are of special interest and substantiate in emphatic manner the conclusion that in this city many girls drop out of school illegally and go to work illegally. Among those who were eighth grade graduates one-half were found to be illegally em- ployed as they were less than 16 years of age. Among those who dropped out and went to work before completing the course 80 per cent were illegally employed. They were either less than 16 years of age, or they had not completed the seventh grade, or they did not fulfil either condition.
The findings of this study reinforce the conclusions reached by the other study of the same problem. It is clear that the enforcement of the compulsory education laws in this city is particularly lax in its application to older girls. It is also evident that the legal provisions concerning age and schooling certificates for girls are being widely and regularly violated.
The fact that many girls drop out without graduating and before the end of the legal attendance period and remain at home indicates that most of them do not leave on account of financial necessity. This conclusion is substantiated by the testimony of the girls and their parents, many of whom say that the girls left simply because they grew tired of attending and did not see the value of remaining.
All these findings point to the necessity for much more effective work in enforcing the compulsory attendance laws, for far better inspection of shops and factories to detect violations of the child labor laws, and above all to such a reform of the schooling opportunities provided for older girls as will make them and their parents see the value of securing the advantages of the training provided. Courses for Girls Who Go To Work
The recommendations made in other volumes of this Survey series with regard to the work which might profitably be given in the junior high schools to boys who are going into industrial work apply with equal force to the work which might profitably be given to girls. The work should be made as practical and as concrete as possible. The value of every bit of training offered should be demonstrated, and no subject should be retained unless it can be shown to be of more value than some other subject that might be substituted for it.
Girls as well as boys need to be able to make practical application of arithmetic. They have no more use than boys for mere abstractions. Like the boy, the girl should have an opportunity to take courses in industrial information, mechanical drawing, elementary science, and elementary mechanics. Not only those women who go into the industrial world and come in contact with the comptometer and the power sewing machine, but those who engage in household activities and must use or supervise the using of the clothes washer and the sewing machine, need to know how to use ordinary tools and to make minor adjustments to machines.
It is recommended, therefore, that the work which girls do in mathematics, history, geography, and language be made as concrete and as related to the demands of later life as possible. It is recommended that courses in industrial information, in mechanical drawing, elementary science, and elementary me- chanics, designed to give basic preparation for industrial work, be made available to girls.
Since most of the girls in the industrial group will go into some of the sewing trades, it is recommended that thorough courses in sewing be provided. These courses should be planned from the standpoint of the requirements of trade and taught with the trade in mind. In this they would differ considerably from the present domestic art courses given in the elementary schools and in the technical high schools. They should be intensive rather than extensive and should insist on high standards of workmanship rather than the turning out of a certain number of garments for personal wear.
The courses should be planned and carried out so as to establish correct sewing habits and develop skill in the fundamental hand and machine sewing operations. They should include such fundamentals in hand sewing as proper use of the thimble, quick threading of the needle, gauging lengths of thread, tying good knots, selection of the proper kind of needle and thread for various sorts of operations and materials, making the different stitches accurately and easily, and applying them to the proper operations and materials, sewing on fastenings and ornaments neatly and strongly, and holding correctly materials cut on different ways of the goods. Work in machine sewing should include threading the machine, running the machine with a minimum of effort, caring for it, adjusting needles and stitches to materials, adjusting various special attachments for different operations, and manipulating different sorts of materials under the needle.
The fundamental operations of all the sewing trades should be included in this general industrial course in sewing. The teachers ought to know the trades well enough to stress similarities and point out differences. They should know the small but important fundamentals so that no such incorrect habits of work could be formed as using a millinery needle in a tailoring operation.
In connection with this work a study of textiles most commonly used in the trades should be given with respect to their comparative advantages in working out effects. A study of colors sufficient to show their relative values in harmonies and contrasts should be given. The proportions of the human figure should be correctly taught and related in a simple manner to pattern study and costume design. Pupils in the general sewing course should be instructed especially in regard to general industrial conditions and in comparative conditions in all the sewing trades, such as wages, seasons, and hours of labor.
In two years' time correct sewing habits should be firmly established and considerable facility in ordinary operations developed. In another year the essentials of a specific trade could be learned. The first year of general sewing should probably consist of hand sewing and the second of machine work, after which a girl should be given a chance to specialize somewhat broadly in the particular sewing trade in which she wishes to engage,—power operating, dressmaking, or possibly millinery.
A One-year Trade School for Girls Courses of preparatory training are prerequisites to entering some sorts of trades and occupations; they are valuable but not essential for others; and they are of but slight utility in the case of still other sorts of work. A formal course of training is essential to the stenographer. The cook profits from formal training, but that it is not essential is demonstrated by the fact that very many good cooks have had neither regular courses in cooking nor apprenticeship in the work. The girl whose work consists of pasting labels on bottles learns the operation in a forenoon and then acquires speed through practice.
In general, work which requires preparatory schooling is of such a nature that it cannot be learned by mere contact, observation, and participation. The sewing trades discussed in this volume are of such a nature that they can be learned without a formal course of schooling or prolonged apprenticeship, but can be learned much more quickly and better if the prospective worker can enjoy the advantages of a short preparatory course.
The highly competitive conditions, the increasing subdivision of operations, and the rapid changes from season to season in these trades make it very difficult for employers to assign high grade workers to the task of teaching beginners, and set aside ex- pensive machines and costly materials for practice work.
Because of these conditions it seems desirable to establish one-year courses in a trade school for the training of prospective workers in dressmaking and millinery. The establishment of a trade school for boys has been advocated in other volumes of this Survey report dealing with the printing, building, and metal trades. The volume on the clothing trades has recommended a trade course for girls in machine operating. Reasons similar to those which indicate the wisdom of establishing preparatory trade courses for these trades point to the advisability of providing training for prospective workers in millinery and dressmaking.
The lessons of experience in other cities show the characteristics that such trade courses must have in order to succeed. They must be given in a trade school which must have up-to-date equipment of machines and materials. The teachers must be proficient trade workers. The product must be a saleable one and this must be continually insured through placing on sale the articles produced.
It is not necessary at this stage of progress in vocational education to enter into a theoretical discussion of the possibility of running a trade school for girls. We have many examples of privately run trade schools for girls, among which the Clara de Hirsch School and the Hebrew Technical School for girls in New York City are well known. Among those which are part of the public school system the Boston Trade School and the Manhattan Trade School are notable examples.
**The Manhattan Trade School for Girls** The Manhattan Trade school has been notably successful in training girls adequately and in securing the employer's confidence. This school aims to train girls to be self-supporting as quickly as possible. Established as a private undertaking in 1902, it was made a part of the public school system of New York City in 1910. The fact that it was taken over by the Board of Education demonstrates that the school had made good.
Instruction is offered in occupations in which there is the greatest demand in the city for women workers. Training is given in the following trades: dressmaking, millinery, clothing machine operating, straw machine operating, embroidery machine operating, sample mounting, novelty work, and lampshade making. In connection with the training for these trades other subjects are given: designing and perforating for embroidery, drawing and costume designing, cooking, physical training, business arithmetic and accounts, business English, textiles, and industrial conditions and trade ethics. About five hours each day, or 25 hours per week, are devoted to trade practice, and the remaining time to related subjects.
Girls who have graduated from elementary schools, and those 14 years of age and able to pass the work of the sixth grade in the elementary schools are admitted to the school. They may enter on Monday of each week and may choose the trade they wish to learn. The instruction is individual and girls are promoted as rapidly as their work will permit. The course can be completed by the average girl in one year. A diploma is given to girls who complete the course and give evidence of three months satisfactory experience in trade work outside. The placement secretary of the trade school endeavors to place all graduates in good positions. The school is in session throughout the year except during August, with 35 hours of work a week.
Materials for the training are furnished by the school free of all expense to the pupils, and the finished product is disposed of by the school and the proceeds expended to purchase more materials. A salesroom is maintained at the school and orders are taken for various articles. Through maintaining a high standard of work and business-like methods, the school is financially successful. The 1913–14 report of the city superintendent of schools in regard to this school stated that the income from the sale of finished product returned to the auditor covered not only the expense of materials used in trade classes, but also all supplies for the art, physical training, and non-vocational classes, the cost of running the offices and salesroom, the cost of repairs to machinery, the expense of all new equipment constantly needed to replace the old, and to keep the trade departments up-to-date. The returns for finished product were sufficient to make it unnecessary to ask for any appropriation for supplies for the ensuing year.
The school is training acceptable workers, as is shown by the fact that it cannot fill all the calls which come to it during the seasons of the trade. Many calls come to it for more girls like those who have been placed in positions. Many employers pay at once the wage recommended by the school, showing their confidence in its judgment to gauge the worth of workers. Wages are relatively better to beginners from the trade school than to beginners without trade training, and girls advance readily to the higher wage rates.
In the dressmaking department the purpose is to train girls to be finishers or assistants on skirts, waists, and sleeves. The department is divided into sections as follows:
**Elementary sewing** Six weeks’ hand and machine practice on making school aprons, gymnasium bloomers, and worker’s equipment.
**Intermediate sewing** Six weeks’ work on children’s dresses, rompers, guimpes, and undergarments.
**White work** Six weeks’ sewing on fine hand and machine made underwear, using embroideries, laces, insertions, etc.
**Wholesale class** Three weeks’ speed tests in hand and machine made garments. Elementary dressmaking Three months' work on shirt waists, linen, cotton, and lawn unlined dresses.
Advanced dressmaking Three months' work on lingerie blouses, street and evening gowns of silk, chiffon, velvet, etc.
In elementary sewing the school furnishes all materials for the articles made. All of the work is sold to customers or to pupils for about the cost of the materials. Each girl must furnish her own sewing outfit, consisting of thimble, needles, scissors, tape measure, emery, and white apron. The work of this elementary section is largely class instruction with individual criticism. The girls are taught the proper position of their bodies while at work and the proper handling of their work. Individual records are kept of the grade of work done and the time taken to finish each piece of work. Before a pupil is allowed to go into the intermediate section she is tested in regard to her ability to work and to think and carry out ideas. If she is not adequately prepared for the intermediate work, she remains longer in the elementary section.
In the intermediate sewing emphasis is placed on machine rather than on hand work. Garments are made for individuals or business houses at a trade price. The girls do independent work under supervision. They must have good quality of workmanship and keep up speed.
The aim in the dressmaking section, which is called the "business" shop, is to reproduce a moderate- sized dressmaking establishment, with the trade conditions existent in commercial establishments. The work is supplied by custom orders. Customers come to the school, where estimates are made, measurements taken, dates for fittings fixed, and records are made of the information secured. Materials are then purchased, garments cut, and the work is distributed to the different tables, each under the charge of an instructor with practical trade experience. Records are kept of all materials used, and bills are made out. A stock-room is maintained and managed as in regular trade establishments.
Cutting, fitting, and draping are not taught, for a young girl cannot obtain or hold a position in such work on account of her lack of judgment and experience. By seeing such work performed, however, the girl learns a great deal about it and can readily advance into such positions when she has acquired experience in less skilled work. No girl makes a complete garment, but is given practice on every part of the garments made.
This shop is managed by a dressmaker with many years' experience in managing a shop of her own. Besides the regular trade instructors at each table, an experienced man tailor and several workers are employed to do parts of the work which are not taught to the girls or parts which involve much repetition of the same process.
The correlation of drawing with the dressmaking work is interesting. Girls begin on lines such as are used in making hems and tucks, piecing on the bias, and mitering corners. Angles and figures are drawn with a view toward an intelligent use of patterns for waists and skirts. Simple designs for shirtwaists and decorations are made and proportion of figures and color harmony in dress are studied. Copying is done from magazines to secure mastery of trade technicalities.
**Millinery**
The work of the millinery department is in three sections. Girls first take elementary sewing as for dressmaking with emphasis on hand sewing. In about four weeks they start elementary millinery. They spend about three months making linings, bands, frames, facings, and covering frames. In the advanced millinery, which takes about five months, they make hats in spring and winter materials. In addition girls spend about three months learning lamp-shade making as a means of tiding themselves over dull seasons in millinery.
The aim of the millinery work is to train assistants for wholesale and custom work rooms by cutting off several seasons for the learner. On account of low beginning wages, irregular seasons, and slow advancement, this trade is not favored by the school as work for the young girl who must earn her own living. The experience of the school has shown that the girl who must support herself becomes discouraged after a short experience with millinery and enters some other occupation. To rise into the higher positions takes long experience and exceptional ability. The school therefore discourages girls from taking millinery. A girl who decides to take it is watched carefully to see if she is adapted to it. If she is a mediocre worker, she is urged to go into another department.
A TRADE SCHOOL IN CLEVELAND
The trade school for girls recommended by the Survey would consist of courses in power operating, dressmaking, and millinery. In view of the unsatisfactory conditions existing in millinery in respect to regularity of employment and wages during early years at the trade, it is recommended that great care be taken to limit classes in this work to those girls who have much more than average ability at the trade.
The school would be run on the same general lines as the trade school described above. It should furnish materials and dispose of the product, all of which should be saleable. Materials for power operating might be furnished through coöperation with garment manufacturers.
The girls eligible for admission would be those under 15 who had completed the two years of general sewing in the junior high school and any girl 15 years of age. Inasmuch as girls would be a year or two older at entrance to a Cleveland school than those in New York and would thus be better fitted to take the training given them, a Cleveland trade school, if properly conducted, should turn out on the whole better trained girls than the New York school.
**Trade Extension Training**
The only instruction related to the sewing trades and available to workers already in these trades is that given in the sewing classes in the evening technical schools. These classes are held in the technical high school buildings, and are mostly taught by teachers of the day technical high schools. The night school year consists of two terms of 10 weeks each. The pupils attend two nights a week, or a total of 40 hours per term. A fee of $5 a term is collected from each student, of which $3.50 is refunded if the student maintains an average attendance of 75 per cent. Some of the classes are continued for several weeks beyond the closing of the regular term.
The enrollment in the night sewing classes during the second term of 1915–16 was 229. According to information received concerning the day occupations of girls and women in these classes, only a small proportion make their living by any sort of sewing in factory, shop, or home. Less than 15 per cent are engaged in sewing during the day, while nearly half are commercial, clerical, or professional workers. Approximately one-third are not employed in wage-earning occupations. The distribution among the various types of occupations in which students are engaged is shown in Table 10. TABLE 10.—OCCUPATIONAL DISTRIBUTION OF STUDENTS ENROLLED IN SEWING CLASSES OF TECHNICAL NIGHT SCHOOLS
| Workers | Number | |---------------------------------|--------| | Commercial and clerical workers | 94 | | Home workers | 73 | | Miscellaneous factory workers | 18 | | Sewing workers (not in factory) | 16 | | Clothing factory workers | 16 | | Professional workers | 8 | | Domestic servants | 4 | | **Total** | **229**|
In both schools the emphasis is laid on training for home sewing rather than on training for wage-earning in the sewing trades. As described briefly in the report of the East Technical Night School the aim is "to teach girls to make their own clothes, through talks by the teachers and practical work in making garments." In this school the work is arranged so as to be given in four courses, each of which covers one term. The first includes the making of an apron and four undergarments; the second the making of a simple house dress, a lingerie waist, a tailored wash skirt, and a simple afternoon or party dress; the third the making of a woolen dress and a silk dress. The fourth term's work provides for the making of a silk or party dress on an original design, and for the study of textiles in relation to dress. In night millinery classes in this school the same line of work is done as is carried on in day classes.
In the West Technical Night School three courses in sewing—elementary, intermediate, and advanced— and a course in millinery are given. According to the report of the principal, the work is carried on in the following lines: The elementary sewing is designed to give the beginner instruction in the fundamentals of sewing, by class demonstration and individual work. Each pupil is required to make four undergarments, a lingerie waist, and a simple dress, and is taught to use and alter patterns correctly. Discussions are given in regard to suitable materials and trimmings for undergarments, and attention is directed to simple styles. For admission to the intermediate course, one term of night school training in elementary sewing or its equivalent is required. Kimonos, silk waists, woolen skirts, lingerie dresses, and woolen dresses are made; and pupils are taught the elements of fitting and altering. In the advanced work instruction is individual. The student may make a woolen dress, a silk dress, a suit, a separate long coat, or an evening coat or cape. The course also includes the making of tailored buttonholes, the alteration of patterns, cutting and basting, fitting, pressing, and finishing. The millinery course is designed to give the manipulation of millinery tools and materials. It includes the selecting, making, and covering of frames and trimming.
The students furnish all the materials for the night school work except thread and scissors, and the garments when completed belong to them. Few attend more than one or two terms. Of those enrolled in February of this year, less than seven per cent had attended more than two terms. The courses now given are not planned for workers in the sewing trades, but to help women and girls who want to learn how to make, alter, and repair their own garments. It is doubtful whether the courses and equipment available in the night schools as they are organized at present are such as to warrant undertaking specialized trade training. What workers already engaged in the sewing trades need is help along particular lines, either to extend their knowledge of their present work or to give them aid in advancing into some other kind of work. Millinery workers need short unit courses, such as drafting and blocking of buckram shapes; covering and trimming of buckram frames; making wire frames; making hats of lace, net, and chiffon; making all sorts of novelties and ornaments; making children’s hats. In dressmaking, a host of short courses can be made available to workers. Among these are the making of a particular kind or quality of garment, such as tailored skirts, woolen dresses, silk dresses, fancy waists, shirtwaist suits, and party dresses; waist draping; drafting and pattern making; costume design; color study; and the making of all sorts of dress trimmings.
If a trade school of the kind described in the previous section were established, it would be possible to give such short unit courses at night to those workers who wish to broaden their experience and prepare themselves for advancement, utilizing in the night classes the equipment of the day school. Summary
The importance of the sewing trades in furnishing industrial opportunities for girls is shown by the fact that one girl in every five or six in Cleveland enters some branch of sewing during her early working years. For this reason training for sewing is an educational problem of considerable importance.
The needs of girls who are soon to leave school and go to work can best be met by a modification of the junior high school course and by the establishment of a one-year trade school for girls. Before a reorganization of the junior high school work is made to meet the needs of these girls, two preparatory steps must be taken. The first of these is to reduce retardation so that more girls will reach the junior high school before the legal working age and thus secure enforcement of the compulsory attendance laws so that girls will be kept in school until they are of legal working age and thus may get the full benefit of junior high school training. The reorganization of the junior high school work to meet the needs of prospective workers assumes great importance from the fact that seven out of 10 girls drop out some time during their junior high school period. Courses should be reorganized so as to give basic preparation for wage-earning and should be as concrete and real as a thorough understanding of the requirements of the gainful occupations can make them. Thorough sewing courses planned from the standpoint of the sewing trades should be offered extending over two years.
It is recommended that a one-year trade school be established for preparing girls to enter power operating, dressmaking, and millinery. The history of trade schools for girls, both private and public, indicates that such a school, if properly conducted, would be highly successful in Cleveland.
The sewing classes in the evening technical high schools do not offer extension training for workers in the sewing trades, and it is not likely that they could be easily reorganized to furnish such training. It is recommended that if a trade school of the sort described in this report is established in Cleveland, short unit courses in sewing and related subjects, such as design, be given at night in it. CLEVELAND EDUCATION SURVEY REPORTS
These reports can be secured from the Survey Committee of the Cleveland Foundation, Cleveland, Ohio. They will be sent postpaid for 25 cents per volume with the exception of "Measuring the Work of the Public Schools" by Judd, "The Cleveland School Survey" by Ayres, and "Wage Earning and Education" by Lutz. These three volumes will be sent for 50 cents each. All of these reports may be secured at the same rates from the Division of Education of the Russell Sage Foundation, New York City.
✓ Child Accounting in the Public Schools—Ayres. ✓ Educational Extension—Perry. ✓ Education through Recreation—Johnson. ✓ Financing the Public Schools—Clark. ✓ Health Work in the Public Schools—Ayres. ✓ Household Arts and School Lunches—Boughton. ✓ Measuring the Work of the Public Schools—Judd. ✓ Overcrowded Schools and the Platoon Plan—Hartwell. ✓ School Buildings and Equipment—Ayres. ✓ Schools and Classes for Exceptional Children—Mitchell. ✓ School Organization and Administration—Ayres. ✓ The Public Library and the Public Schools—Ayres and McKinnie. ✓ The School and the Immigrant—Miller. ✓ The Teaching Staff—Jessup. ✓ What the Schools Teach and Might Teach—Bobbitt. ✓ The Cleveland School Survey (Summary)—Ayres.
✓ Boys and Girls in Commercial Work—Stevens. ✓ Department Store Occupations—O'Leary. ✓ Dressmaking and Millinery—Bryner. ✓ Railroad and Street Transportation—Fleming. ✓ The Building Trades—Shaw. ✓ The Garment Trades—Bryner. ✓ The Metal Trades—Lutz. ✓ The Printing Trades—Shaw. ✓ Wage Earning and Education (Summary)—Lutz.
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5db71d14e8baa6f1100a8ede5fa00a0825d645db | Fine Millinery
Fall and Winter Styles For Ladies' Misses' and Children.
1899-1900.
H. O'Neill & Co. 6th Ave. 20th to 21st St. New York. Your Special Attention is Directed
To our Fall and Winter collection of Trimmed Hats now shown in our Millinery Parlors 2nd Floor
Hundreds of beautiful Creations by the best Milliners of Europe will be seen as well as an exceptionally brilliant group of Exclusive Styles from our own workrooms.
The following pages will give you an idea of the many beautiful Combinations appropriate for this season.
In the Untrimmed Hat Section
You will find a choice assortment of the leading shapes and colors including a number manufactured exclusively for us. Also Elegant Novelties in Fine Flowers, Feathers, Birds Wings, Aigrettes and other Millinery Trimmings. THE HENRY FRANCIS du PONT WINTERTHUR MUSEUM LIBRARIES A CORNER IN OUR MILLINERY SHOW ROOM. FANCY TOQUE. PICTURE HAT. FEATHER TURBAN. The New Dress Goods
Our collection of the New Dress Fabrics for the Fall and Winter is now complete and embraces all the new weaves and materials in plain and novelty goods.
Scotch Tweeds, Reversible Cloths, Camel's hair Plaids, Scotch Homespuns, Mixed Cassimere Brocades, Venetians, Bedford Cords, English Worsted, Scotch Plaids, Check Meltons, Silk Striped Velours, Plain and Mixed Cheviots, Etc.
The New Silks
In the big Silk section we are showing a complete line of new Fall Silks comprising all the latest Cords in solid and fancy effects.
Elegant Novelties in Fine Velvets, Laces & Neckwear, Wraps and Costumes.
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