average as learners had had previous training in
* Table 40, p. 260.
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needlework or had had an opportunity to know
something about millinery before beginning to
work in a shop. For instance, a Russian girl had
been a saleswoman in her sister's millinery shop
on the lower East Side, and this gave her a chance
to learn about the trade, so that she went to work
not as a learner but as a preparer in a Division
Street shop at $5.00 a week. After two months
she found work in a Broadway wholesale estab-
lishment at $10 a week. Hers was an unusual ex-
perience. In another instance the girl's mother
had had a millinery business and she began as an
improver at a wage of JJ55.00. Another said that
she did not begin as a learner because she had al-
ways been interested in millinery and had "made
hats for fun" so often that she, too, was ready for a
five-dollar wage. Another girl learned cheap whole-
sale processes by helping her sister make hats at
home for a contractor. Of the 242 girls who gave
information about the kind of work done in their
first positions in millinery, 189 had been learners
and 18 had been errand girls, with no sharp line of
demarcation between these two groups. Of the
others, 11 had been preparers, 10 improvers, 5
copyists, I maker, 3 stock girls, 2 saleswomen,
I shopper, i operator, and i frame maker. The
majority of the 252 girls, 144, began work in retail
shops, 12 in department stores where the work was
also for the retail trade, and 90 in wholesale (six
not reporting).
It is noteworthy that a large group, 203, began
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<
C
2
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work in millinery as soon as they left school, while
24 others were in some other division of the sewing
trades.* The majority, 163, were not yet sixteen
years old when they began to work for wages.
Of the 196 who told us how they found their
first positions in millinery, 70 had been placed by
friends, 35 by relatives, 60 had answered adver-
tisements, 24 had applied directly to an employer,
in some instances after seeing a sign at the door
announcing that workers were needed, 6 had found
work through the recommendation of a trade
school which they had attended, and i through
an employment bureau.
Tables 25, 26, and 27 show in order the age when
these girls left school, the last schools attended,
and for those who had been pupils in New York
City public schools, the grade reached.
TABLE 25. — AGE AT LEAVING SCHOOL OF MILLINERY
WORKERS INTERVIEWED AT HOME
Age at leaving school
Women
Under 14 years
14 years
>5 years
16 years
17 years
18 years or more
48
95
53
2
Total
228 <^
* Of the 252 women interviewed at home, 6 had never attended
school and 18 did not state age at leaving school.
* Four did not report on this point, and 2 1 had been in other occu-
pations.
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TABLE 26. — LAST DAY SCHOOL ATTENDED BY MIL-
LINERY WORKERS INTERVIEWED AT HOME
Last day school attended
Women
New York City school
Public
Parochial
All other
. 141
15
I
Total
157
Schools in United States outside New York
City
Foreign school
None
"l
Grand total
249'
* Of the 252 women interviewed at home, three did not give in-
formation as to the last day school attended.
TABLE 27. — GRADE AT LEAVING SCHOOL FOR MIL-
LINERY WORKERS WHO LAST ATTENDED DAY
SCHOOL IN A NEW YORK CITY PUBLIC SCHOOL
Grade at leaving school
Women
4th grade or lower
5thgrad«
6th grade
7th grade
8th grade
Elementary school graduate.
High school
Non-graduate
Graduate
I
5
22
18
40
I
Total
130*
» Of the 141 women who last attended day school in a New York
City public school, 1 1 did not state their grade at leaving school.
Of the 234 reporting, six had never attended
school and 48 had left even before they were four-
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LEARNING THE TRADE
teen years old. As many as 148 left at the age of
fourteen or fifteen and only 32 stayed until they
were sixteen or older. Seventy-five had attended
foreign schools and 157 had last attended school in
New York City, 141 of these having been public
school pupils. Of these 141, the number who re-
ported the grade reached was 130, of whom 54
had graduated from elementary school, 14 of these
going to high school, but only one graduating.
Twenty-eight left before reaching the seventh
grade.
A surprisingly large group, however, had not
been content with this schooling, 151 reporting
attendance at schools or classes after going to
work, and 21 of these taking more than one sup-
plementary course of this kind. Thus 100 reported
attendance at public evening elementary schools,
25 at evening high schools, 24 at trade schools, 7 at
business schools, and 16 at other schools or classes.
Two facts stand out as perhaps the most sig-
nificant in all these figures. The time for schooling
is brief for milliners as it is for the great majority
of girls working in trades, but they welcome op-
portunities for additional training during the wage-
earning period.
TRAINING CLASSES FOR MILLINERS
The millinery trade affords an excellent example
of the problem of industrial education for girls.
With dressmaking it is usually the first choice
among trades to be included in the curriculum of a
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trade school. The Manhattan Trade School for
Girls made it one of its four departments when
the school was started in 1902. The Boston Trade
School has had a millinery department from the
beginning. Following the educational survey of
Cleveland in 19 16, the organization of a trade
school to teach millinery, dressmaking, and ma-
chine operating was advocated.* As a result of the
Minneapolis Survey a two years' course of train-
ing, with three months' probationary period at the
beginning, was planned in conference with employ-
ers of milliners, dressmakers, machine operators,
saleswomen, and nurses.f
In 1908-09, in the beginning of our investiga-
tion, we visited no less than 62 classes in millinery
in New York City, and it is probable that we did
not exhaust the list. The majority of these classes
aimed merely to teach girls to make their own hats,
but some of the best organized, such as the courses
in Pratt Institute, the Clara de Hirsch Home or
the Manhattan Trade School, were definitely seek-
ing to train workers for the trade, and it was trade
training and not merely training for home use
which was recommended in the Cleveland Survey
and the Minneapolis Survey.
* Bryner, Edna: Dressmaking and Millinery, p. 127. Cleveland
Education Survey Report. Cleveland, 19 16.
t Report of the Minneapolis Survey for Vocational Education,
pp. 432-435. National Society for the Promotion of Industrial
Education, Bulletin 21. January i, 1916.
It was made a part of an agreement proposed between schools and
employers that at the end of this course a wage of no less than |8.oo
should be paid those who had had this training.
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The arguments in favor of including millinery
in a scheme of industrial courses for women are
clearly set forth in the Cleveland Survey. A large
proportion of .wage-earning girls find their oppor-
tunities for employment in the sewing trades of
which millinery is a part. Millinery is an occupa-
tion in which training is possible and desirable.
It demands practice in the use of the needle, knowl-
edge of line and color, and skill in adapting ma-
terials to their uses. It offers opportunities ahead
for increasing skill and developing aptitude. A
preliminary ground work of training makes pos-
sible the development of greater skill under shop
conditions.
Nevertheless, although these underlying facts are
as true in New York as in Cleveland or Minneapolis
or Boston or many other cities, our interviews
with employers and with workers in New York,
supplemented by visits to 62 millinery classes,*
raised some interesting questions as to the desira-
bility of organizing classes to give preliminary
training to future milliners.
It was clear in the first place that millinery
classes were not popular either among employers
or workers.! "In the schools they miss the point
of it somehow,*' said a successful owner of a retail
shop. "There are a thousand little things the girls
* Barrows, Alice P., and Van Kleeck, Mary: How Girls Learn the
Millinery Trade. The Survey, XXIW: 105-113 (April 16, 1910).
t Both employers and workers spoke very bitterly of the schools
run for profit, some of which attract pupils by the promise of an
equipment quite impossible to supply in a brief period.
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get in a shop that they don't get anywhere else."
"The mechanical part of millinery can be acquired
through training, but trimming is more and more
an art," said another employer in one of the best
of the retail shops. "The schools teach girls to
measure too exactly. They are never well trained
for work in an establishment of this kind." "Trade
schools are not successful because they do not deal
directly with the business," said an employer in a
wholesale shop. "The fundamental purpose of
business is to make money. To make money you
have to get out the goods. To get out the goods
you have to give people what they want and to do
that you have to deal directly with the customers."
"Conditions change so that I would not myself
know how to plan a course," said another, and the
same idea was expressed by the woman who said
that a course was not feasible because "millinery
is different every year." "Trade schools teach you
too much," said one of the workers; "for instance,
just how much material you will need for each part
and how to measure everything you need. But
in a shop you never need to cut your own ma-
terials. It is always done for you." Another worker
declared that "classes in the school are not so care-
fully supervised as the work in a shop. In the
schools the classes are too large. In a shop each
girl's work is watched and she is often obliged to
do it over." Yet an apprentice in a shop who was
also attending an evening class in millinery said
that she was learning more in the school than in
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the shop, because "in the school they have more
time to show you how to do the work."
Such criticisms, which were very frequent, re-
late more to the methods adopted in the schools
than to the more fundamental question of whether
it is desirable to give any preliminary trade training
to future milliners. Several of the more thoughtful
girls were quite emphatic in their disapproval of a
too rapid increase in numbers in an already over-
crowded trade. "There are too many milliners
looking for work," said one girl of twelve years'
experience. "If trade schools train too many,
their training will not bring them higher wages
because the increased numbers will keep the wages
down." She added, however, that trades should
be taught in the evening schools to enable girls
already at work to learn the things which they are
not taught in shops.
Her comments, like those of several others,
clearly suggest the current idea that through of-
fering equipment in a few trades only, a system
of industrial education may complicate the prob-
lems of an industry. At present, one of the few
checks against too excessive irregularity of em-
ployment in any trade is the difficulty of securing
competent workers and the consequent necessity
for retaining the force as long as possible. On the
other hand, the presence of a large supply of labor
enables employers to meet the problem of short
and irregular seasons by offering employment for
brief periods. As millinery is an attractive trade,
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interesting and socially desirable, as it is also one
of the traditional pursuits of women and within
the reach of the many who have had some practice
at least in handling a needle, it has about it always
a potential supply of labor in the groups of women
and girls who may be persuaded by a very slight
inducement to become wage-earners. Moreover,
because of its attractions, the occupation appeals
to a disproportionately large number of girls who
know that they must earn their own living. A
large number of classes oflFering training to equip
women to find positions in millinery would, it is ar-
gued, aggravate unduly conditions tending already
to increase the supply of workers in the trade, and
to that extent to encourage employers to shorten
the period of employment. Statistical evjdence as
to such a result is lacking, however.
Such an argument applies not to all forms of
trade training, but merely to the so-called pre-
liminary trade school which offers courses to equip
workers for wage-earning positions. Unless such a
scheme provides a place for practically all of the
occupations of the community, it is open to the
objection of encouraging an artificial selection of
vocations on the part of its pupils. But the organ-
ization of schools or classes to give supplementary
training to those who have already found their
places in work is a suggestion which met with
instant approval among some employers and
workers. Evening classes, for instance, might
train girls in a better understanding of color and
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A Millinery Class in a Public Evening School
"You cannot do millinery at school desks"
Making Hats for the Wholesale Trade
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LEARNING THE TRADE
line, supplementing the practice which they would
be gaining at the same time in the workroom. "I
don't think 1 have ever had a girl in my workroom
who could see a line/' said a retail milliner. "That
is where we are weak in this country. We are not
artists. You tell a girl a line is not right and she
tells you the measurements are correct. A bow
may have just the right measurement but because
of a touch there will be a wrong curve."
Certainly it would seem to be true that if the
movement for industrial education means any-
thing, it means that the schools will some day offer
to all the workers in the community the oppor-
tunity to learn whatever subject matter for teach-
ing may be involved in their work. As one French
girl expressed it, in defending the need for proper
training for an occupation, "Pour vivre, il faut
travailler; pour travailler, il faut savoir; pour
savoir, il faut apprendre." The fact that there is
a great deal to understand in millinery justifies its
inclusion in a scheme of industrial training. What
its place shall be in that scheme must be deter-
mined in the light of the effect of any given policy
upon present trade standards and problems. These
conditions must also determine the kind of advice
to be given by teachers to those who aspire to be
milliners. The policy of the Manhattan Trade
School in describing fully the conditions of the
trade, its short seasons and the low wages for be-
ginners, to those who apply for enrollment in its
millinery classes, and in transferring to other de-
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partments those who show no marked aptitude
for millinery is an example of the way in which a
public trade school may relate its practice to con-
ditions in the trade in its own community.
It is not through trade classes only, however,
that the schools may have an influence on the
careers of milliners. To retain their pupils in school
long enough to give opportunity for better de-
velopment mentally and physically would in itself
be a contribution to industrial efficiency. Sta-
tistical proof of the advantage of staying in school
longer than the law requires is not easy to secure
because the factors affecting wages are so compli-
cated. But at least it is interesting to note the
wage rates attained by those who began wage-
earning before they were sixteen as compared with
those who began at the age of sixteen or later.
Table 28 shows these facts.
The table shows the median wage rate for each
group according to years of experience as wage-
earners. For the group as a whole and for each
period of experience except one, — ^those who have
worked twenty years or longer, — ^the advantage
is with those who began when they were older.
The exceptional group numbers only 18 and may
be too small to serve as a basis for conclusions.
The persistence of the difference in all the other
groups in favor of those who did not go into in-
dustry until after they were sixteen indicates that
for some reason higher earnings are attained if the
beginning of the wage-earning period is postponed.
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LEARNING THE TRADE
If true in any large number of industries, this fact
adds further evidence of the constructive value of
increasingly stringent child labor legislation.
TABLE 28. — ^MEDIAN WEEKLY WAGE RATES, BY AGE
AT BEGINNING WORK AND YEARS SINCE BE-
GINNING WORK, FOR MILLINERY WEEK WORKERS
ON CURRENT PAYROLL. I914'
Years since beginning work
Median weekly wage rate
of women who began workb
Under 16
years of age
At 16 years
of age or more
Less than i year
1 year and less than 2 . . .
2 years and less than 3 . . .
3 years and less than 5 . . .
5 years and less than 10
10 years and less than 15.
15 years and less than 20 . . .
20 years or more
$2.71
5.21
6.62
8.43
12.22
14.27
17.50
20.00
fe.33
6.94
9.14
13.14
16.76
21.50
15.00
Total .
$10.75
$11.66
a For more detailed data, see Tables 50 A and 50 B, pp. 232-233.
h See footnote b, Table 10, p. 83.
SUMMARY
Millinery illustrates, then, some characteristic
problems of industrial education. Its .processes
offer scope for taste and skill. As a craft with some
elements of creative ability it affords a basis for
a training course which would have a legitimate
place in a school curriculum. From the practical
point of view, success in preparing pupils to be good
milliners depends upon the possibility either of
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reproducing trade conditions and trade require-
ments in a school or of forming such an alliance
between school and shop as shall enable the school
to supplement the practical experience of the shop
with the additional training in line, color, and ma-
terials which the shop gives only indirectly. This
additional training by the schools seems more
necessary than the chance to practice the actual
processes of hat trimming since millinery is still
largely a hand industry and in the retail branches
especially careful training is given in many estab-
lishments.
The outstanding problem in the trade which
complicates the question of industrial training is
the irregularity of employment, due chiefly to the
short seasons, whereby wages are reduced to less
than a living wage for a large majority of the
workers. One element in this irregularity of em-
ployment is the apparently large supply of workers
for which the millinery schools and classes are held
partly responsible by both workers and employers
in the trade. Another factor in irregularity is un-
doubtedly inefficiency. Employers make less effort
to retain unsatisfactory workers. Those who lack
skill or aptitude are likely to be drifters in the
trade. A wise policy of industrial education could
partly remedy this. No policy, however, would be
wise which was not safeguarded carefully to pre-
vent an unwise selection by girls with little apti-
tude for millinery, or by those who could not af-
ford to work for low pay in so markedly seasonal
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an occupation . Moreover, any policy of industrial
training in the public schools should be directly re-
lated to the efforts to control the standards in the
trade through labor legislation, by preventing child
labor, restricting the hours of work, regulating sani-
tary conditions, and possibly in time, providing
machinery for collective bargaining to establish a
higher standard of wages. Proposals regarding
wage regulation will be discussed in the following
chapter.
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CHAPTER VI 1
PUBLIC CONTROL IN THE MILLINERY
TRADE
PICTURESQUE, bizarre, or otherwise con-
spicuous though its products may be, the
millinery trade has not yet captured the
imagination of the public as an industry of any
significance in the labor movement. It is chiefly
in times of industrial conflict that now one trade
and now another emerges from obscurity and chal-
lenges attention. Thus recently even the most in-
difl^erent citizen has learned many things about
garment workers, about street-car conductors,
and about brakemen on freight trains. Millinery,
however, happens to be a trade which has never
had a public hearing because widespread conflict
is as yet unknown in it. For that very reason,
indeed, employes in millinery shops need atten-
tion since they are part of the large group of work-
ers in industry who have not yet learned to act
together or even to express their needs in a com-
mon language. Their problems are often more
urgent than are those in occupations in which com-
mon action by the workers has become habitual.
In so far as control by the state may be exerted for
the improvement of working conditions on a sound
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PUBLIC CONTROL
basis of public policy, action should be taken in
time to avert unnecessary conflict and suffering.
It was because some form of state control, at least
in the matter of wages, might prove to be possible,
that millinery was included among the occupa-
tions studied by the New York State Factory
Investigating Commission in 19 14.
After a remarkably thorough investigation of
the wages of more than 100,000 men and women in
four important industries besides millinery, and
after careful inquiry into the cost of living, this
official commission reported to the legislature
which had created it that the lowest sum neces-
sary for decent maintenance for a working woman
in New York City is $9.00 a week, but that
"one-half of all the wage-earners, including men
and women, in the four principal industries in-
vestigated (confectionery, paper box, and shirt
manufacturing and mercantile establishments) re-
ceived less than $8.00 a week. Out of a total of
104,000 persons, one-eighth received less than
1^5 .00, one-third less than jj57.oo, two-thirds less
than jj5 10 and only one-sixth are paid ? 1 5 or more."*
In stores, no less than 54 per cent of the girls in-
vestigated received less than ^7.50 a week, in-
cluding commissions. In the shirt industry 54 per
cent received less than I7.00 a week, while the
records of box factories showed approximately
* New York State Factory Investigating Commission, Fourth Re-
port, 19 1 5. Vol. I, p. 34. For report on cost of living see Vol. IV,
pp. 146 1 ff.
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the same propprtion of underpaid workers. Less
than $6.00 a week was the utmost that more than
half the women and girls employed in making
candy could earn.*
As a remedy the commission proposed a bill "to
protect the health, morals and welfare of women
and minors employed in industry by establishing
a wage commission and providing for the deter-
mination of living wages for women and minors."t
The millinery workers with whom we discussed
this proposal greeted it with enthusiasm and sev-
eral of them justified their wish for improvement
in the trade by writing out budgets showing how
far their wages now fall short of a desirable stan-
dard. Bertha, for instance, was born in England
of a Russian father and a French mother, and came
to this country with her family, at the age of ten.
Her father had become totally blind and her
mother hoped to find better opportunities here to
support the children. Bertha and her brother and
sister went to school for five years until their
mother died and their home was broken up. After
a brief but good course in a millinery class main-
tained by a social organization, she began her
career as a milliner in the wholesale trade. We
interviewed her two years later, when she and her
sister were boarding, sharing a small room with
the daughter of the family with whom they lived.
Bertha had never earned more than $7.00 a week
in millinery. In the slack season which lasted at