question in a course upon social life and the school curriculum: “Upon
what questions in the community would you desire to be informed so as
to adapt a course of study to the social conditions in that community?”
That question sums up the problem of industrial education. The schools
which have just been described exemplify some of the chief methods
advocated at present for making this adaptation. A study of them
also shows what happens when there is little or no information, or
desire for information, about the social conditions of the community
in which such courses are being given. One of the best known city
superintendents of schools writes in a recent report:[33]
“The establishment of trade schools by the public school authorities
is now a matter of discussion in every manufacturing city in the
land. Manufacturers and philanthropists alike are clamoring for the
introduction of industrial training into the public schools.... The
true reason for industrial education lies ... in the fundamental
conception of modern education--to fit the child for his life
environment.... In the public discussion of this subject there has
been much exhortation, much denunciation, much eloquence, but little
practical wisdom or suggestion.”
Such a quotation is itself full of practical wisdom, for it goes to
the root of the difficulty in stating that the object of education
is to fit the child for his environment. Yet if this is the purpose
of schools, it is obvious that accurate knowledge of the environment
is a first essential in educational plans. This raises a fundamental
question in regard to trade-school training. Should we not start a
department of investigation even before we form the trade school,
and should we not continue such a department as long as the school
continues? If the trade schools which everyone is advocating are not
based upon accurate knowledge of the conditions they have to meet, it
seems safe to say that they will result only in the disappointment
of the girls, the increased exasperation of the employers, and the
humiliation of the schools. Familiarity with some establishments, and
“being in touch” with trade is not knowledge of trade conditions. Trade
is complex. Preparing for trade is like preparing for the weather. You
never can tell what is going to happen next. Weather prophets are not
infallible, yet experience has proved that it is desirable at least to
attempt to work out a scientific method of studying weather conditions.
There seems to be no good reason why we should not apply scientific
methods to the study of social as well as physical conditions.
For instance, investigation of the millinery trade proved it to be an
industry in process of transition from home to factory, with all the
confusion in processes that is involved in such transition. Yet only
one of all the schools studied made any attempt to discover the demands
of this trade. Investigation showed that an understanding of industrial
conditions is as necessary for efficiency as ability to make a hat.
Yet only one school tried to give an understanding of those conditions,
and the time given to such study was totally inadequate. Investigation
proved that one cause contributing to short seasons and low wages was
the oversupply of workers. Yet there were more classes in millinery
than in any other trade in the city, except one. Investigation revealed
the fact that instead of specialization, the ability to adapt is
of primary importance to the worker. Yet psychology and practical
experience alike make it clear that such ability cannot be given in a
six months’ course.
This brings us to the second factor in the problem about which there is
little information--the workers themselves. When the whole subject of
industrial training is in such an experimental stage it is unfortunate
that only one school has attempted to keep systematic records of
pupils. To fail to keep such records is like trying to erect a building
with no knowledge of the materials. If such records had been kept it
is probable that the attempt to train immature fourteen-year-old girls
in six months for a trade like millinery would have been abandoned
long ago. It is even possible that the advocates of trade education
would have been driven to realize that efficiency in industry, as
in everything else, depends not upon a desk knowledge of the three
R’s, but upon a sound, vital, general education which gives power of
adaptation. Even a slight acquaintance with women workers in industry
brings out the fact that they lack this power, which comes from
training of the mind. Why have girls been permitted to leave school
without receiving this training? If the first essential for fitness
to survive in modern life is the adaptability which comes from a
well-trained mind, and if the function of the schools is to develop
such fitness, are they giving the required training? If not, can the
curriculum be changed so that the general schooling shall be more
real, more connected with life? It is a matter of concern to school
authorities that so many children leave the grammar school before
graduation. Out of 201 millinery workers, 104 began work when they were
between fourteen and sixteen years of age; eight started before they
were fourteen; twenty left school before they were fourteen. Of these
201 girls, 152 attended school in New York City. Of these 152, eight
attended parochial schools, 144 public schools. Of the 144 who attended
public schools, only thirty-three were graduated. Such facts are used
as arguments for starting trade schools which shall prepare girls and
boys for their life work. To some of us they seem to be cogent reasons
for trying to discover how these grammar schools can be revitalized
so that the graduates will be prepared for life. It is said that the
pupils leave because they do not see that school is preparing them
to earn their own living. The one hundred millinery workers who had
studied in trade classes said that the instruction there did not help
them to earn their living.
Where does the fault lie? A study of one trade in which girls are
working suggests that reorganization of general education is the most
vital factor in industrial training. This suggestion may be mistaken;
for it is based upon knowledge of conditions in only three trades for
women--millinery, and two others investigated at the same time. It
is evident that the question can be conclusively answered only after
exhaustive study of girls, of schools and of trades. From the point
of view of manufacturers, workers and educators, such investigation
is of primary importance. To those who are eager for plans by which
individual girls may get training immediately, the comparatively
slow gathering of information does not appeal. Nevertheless, such
information will have to be obtained sometime. Such investigation
should be systematically made. It is not easy, but it is practicable,
if we reduce the problem to its simplest terms. We should divide up
each city into comparatively small units for investigation, the village
communities, as it were, that make up the city. By taking the schools
as the center of these communities and by studying the pupils--their
personal and family history, their education, and their experiences in
trade,--it would be possible to collect information which would give a
sound basis either for reconstruction of the general school education
or for the formation of a system of trade schools.
FOOTNOTES:
[32] This article is based upon a report not yet published on _women
at work in millinery shops in New York City_. It is the result of an
investigation carried on for the Alliance Employment Bureau of New
York from the autumn of 1907 until the spring of 1909. Two hundred
millinery girls were interviewed at home or in the office of the bureau
and questioned about their wages, hours, trade history, regularity of
employment and training for work. Their names were secured from girls’
clubs, trade classes, employment bureaus, and fellow-workers. More than
two hundred shops, including all in which the two hundred workers had
been employed since July, 1907, were visited and questions asked about
training of learners, wages, hours, seasons, demand and opportunities
for experts, and the employer’s opinion of trade-school training.
[33] _Tenth Annual Report of the City Superintendent of Schools_, New
York City, July, 1908.
TRAINING FOR SALESMANSHIP
ELIZABETH B. BUTLER
Bureau of Social Research, New York City
Since women began to be employed in mercantile houses, the public
has gradually become accustomed to inefficient service. Since their
employment has been extended from a few departments to most of the
departments, and since public school children and ambitious factory
girls alike have competed by thousands for department-store positions,
the public has gradually accepted this kind of inefficiency as
characteristic of retail employes. Yet at times customers grow restive.
At times the marginal increase in buying which can be stimulated by
intelligent service is abruptly checked by the absence of intelligence.
This is a serious matter to competing concerns. The volume of sales is
influenced not only by the quality of goods and the appearance of the
store, but by fractional differences in courtesy and understanding.
How to acquire employes with such qualities, or how to develop such
qualities in employes, has become a managerial issue.
The acuteness of this issue is illustrated in the everyday experience
of the department-store customer. You go into a store with the intent,
we will say, of buying a linen collar. Having discovered the counter
where such articles are for sale, you make toward it and glance with an
unkindly eye over the stock displayed. Such collars as hang suspended
from the steel display form have eyelet decorations too obviously
machine made, whereas your desire is for something less pretentious
and more genuine. You attract the eye of a young person and make known
your wants. “I don’t wait on collars,” she replies; “the saleslady at
the end of the counter will attend to you.” Thereupon you pursue “the
saleslady at the end of the counter,” who has been conversing with her
friend who “waits on neckwear.” You ask her if she can wait on you,
and somewhat reluctantly she returns. Signifying your taste as to
collars, you casually observe the expression of disapproval with which
she pulls out a box and sets it before you. She waits in silence while
you look over the contents of the box. If you ask her the price, she
tells you but vouchsafes no further information. Then with a desire to
solve the situation rapidly, you seize the first collar that appears
to you at all suitable, order half a dozen like it, look at your watch
and discover that over twenty minutes have passed since you entered the
store, receive your change and depart.
You have your collars, and your unreasoned feeling is that you have
secured them as against the enemy. You have a sense of having been
actively combating a negative opposition to something, an indifference
not fundamentally hostile perhaps, but translated into hostility
because of your too definite intention to purchase a specific article.
You reflect that had you removed two of the much-eyeletted collars from
the steel display form and handed them to the lady with the remark that
you would take them, she might have viewed your interruption of her
conversation with more complacency. But you required her to lift down
a box. Your choice was not to her taste. Your order might perhaps have
been called conservative. The result was a perceptible variation in the
density of the atmospheric waves between the saleslady and yourself.
Yet on further reflection you realize that after all your saleslady
cannot be held accountable for duties which she does not understand.
You have wanted attention, advice, understanding service. After some
difficulty you have secured a collar. The saleslady thought that you
were quite capable of knowing what you wanted and choosing it for
yourself. In the concrete both the saleslady and yourself have meant
the same thing. Where you have differed was in your interpretation of
ways of reaching the concrete. You have wanted an expert; you have met
a “counterserver.”
And what but “counterservice” can we expect of the thousands of young
girls drafted yearly into this occupation? Neither training nor
experience is required of them. They may be and are both casual and
unskilled. Saleswomen longer with the house show the newcomer where
stock is kept, and if kindly disposed, give her suggestions as to the
personal peculiarities of the buyer. Some one tells her the custom
of the house as regards saleschecks and other records, and with this
preliminary information she sallies forth to represent her employer
to his clientele. Her time is occupied by her duties so far as she
understands them. She stays in the department to which she is assigned,
keeps her stock dusted and in order, tries to remember what new stock
comes in, and when customers are around does not converse more than
necessary with her co-workers; if a customer asks for something that is
in stock, she produces it and awaits decision; if a customer asks for
something that is not in stock, she states the fact.
She may not be notably careless and inattentive. Floor-walkers and
department managers seek constantly to eradicate careless employes,
to arouse in their force a feeling of loyalty, a desire to give
conscientious service. It is more difficult to set forth a notion of
adequate service. When a girl is doing her best, it is not always clear
how to suggest to her that her “best” might be higher in standard,
that instead of merely producing an article asked for, she might be
of real service to the customer in suggestions and in information
about the stock, that in other words she might be an expert instead
of a mere counter attendant. To quote from a recent book:[34] “For a
salesperson to know what gives the article its price value, whether it
is style, novelty, utility, bulk, rarity of material, to know under
what circumstances it can best be used as a staple, for beauty, for
use, for occasional service, for steady wear--and many points other
than these--and to adapt this knowledge to each customer--is to become
a specialist and to be sought after for advice as the man or woman in
the private office is, not to be approached as a mere lackey to pass
goods back and forth over the counter.”
But how is this expert knowledge to be obtained? How is the salesperson
to learn to recognize types of personality, to grasp what selling
points make the strongest appeal to each type--to whom she should
emphasize utility, to whom beauty, to whom durability--and by what
personal qualities she may gain the attention of each type, focus
attention till it becomes interest and finally clinch the decision
to buy? How is she to be taught the use of her own personality as a
business asset?
Nothing in the past experience of most saleswomen can give them a
clue as to the “how.” Few have bought extensively, and few have an
environment which would make them judges of quality. Even inborn taste
must suffer through inexperience. The saleswoman cannot rely on her
own judgment for the ability to give expert advice, and who is there
to teach her? Her co-workers are not competent, the floor managers are
not competent, the department buyers are too busy. As to understanding
her customers, she is still more hopelessly without a source of
instruction. She continues to do her best, and her best is ineffective.
Her work is routine, monotonous. She regards it and herself
mechanically. As an unskilled laborer, she can command no more than the
wages of unskilled labor. She finds herself confronted with the need of
dressing and appearing “like a lady,” when her pay, which represents
the worth of her service to her employer, cannot be regarded as more
than a supplementary wage. Advancement is slow, and the limit to
advancement appears to the majority inexorable. Low wages in themselves
tend to chill and depress ambition. The girl’s mechanical attitude
toward her work is intensified. Lack of training, low wages, lack of
opportunity for training: these characteristics of the situation form a
circle within which the saleswoman stands bound.
And not only saleswomen, but customers and merchants suffer from this
state of things. Constantly annoyed by the inadequacy of their force,
some merchants have already made a beginning toward stemming the tide
of unsatisfactory service. Many a store now has classes to instruct
newcomers for an hour or so each morning in making out saleschecks, and
to inform them as to the policy of the store. In some cases regular
morning talks for a half hour every day must be attended by new and old
hands as well, with the idea that matters of common interest may be
freely discussed and that ideas of loyalty may thereby be instilled.
Yet while these classes tend to produce right feeling toward the work
and hence are fundamentally useful, they represent only the germ of
vocational training.
For that is what saleswomen need--training for their particular
occupation, instruction in the definite principles of applied
psychology upon which their day’s work is based. What form such
instruction will ultimately take is still matter for conjecture. No one
will assert that experiments now in the making are final, but simply
that by their initial success they point the way to more conclusive
organization. It may be of interest if a statement is made here about
the training for saleswomen now offered in Boston and New York.
The Boston experiment was begun in 1905 under the auspices of the
Women’s Educational and Industrial Union. A class was started with
eight young girls who were given lectures and some practise selling
in the food salesroom and handwork shop of the Union, but after their
three months’ course those who found store positions had to go in
as stock or cash girls. In January, 1906, when the second class was
started, the coöperation of one store was secured. The Union class
was allowed to sell in the store on Mondays for the experience and a
small compensation, and the firm expressed a willingness to consider
promising candidates for positions in their store. Yet as the school
had nothing definite to offer its pupils, it failed to attract the type
of girl most wanted by the stores.
It was felt that more coöperation with the stores was necessary. The
plans of the course were explained to several of the merchants and the
coöperation of six leading stores was obtained to the extent that the
superintendents formed an advisory committee, meeting once a month
with the president of the Union and the director of the class for
conference. The policy, as planned with the advisory committee, was
that candidates should be sent to the Union class from the stores, and
admitted to the school if approved by the director. After one month
in the class, candidates were promised store experience in the store
which had accepted them, on Mondays, and the stores paid for this
service $1 per day. They were also guaranteed permanent positions in
these stores at the close of the course, if their work was satisfactory
after one month’s probation.[35] On this basis, a class with sixteen
pupils opened in October, 1906. It was found, however, that more store
experience was necessary for the best results, and the time schedule
was accordingly changed so that every day from 8.30 to 11. and from
4.30 to 5.30 the pupils were in school and the rest of the day in the
stores. This half-time work was paid for by the stores at the rate of
three dollars a week.
When the next class opened in February, there were nearly one hundred
applicants, from which the school selected twenty-one, the limit of the
class room. Many applicants gave up positions which they had already
secured, for the sake of the training, and others for whom there was
then no room, filled a waiting list. Since then, the school has been
busy making history. The following statements by Mrs. Prince, director
of the school, explain the most recent changes: “At first, the stores
paid the girls $3 a week for half time, but since last September
(1908), the girls have been given full-time wages and allowed the three
hours each morning for three months of training. The stores found the
graduates so efficient that they cordially made this concession, and at
the same time asked if I would choose candidates from the stores. This
I do now, going to the superintendents’ offices and interviewing the
girls there.
“The girls chosen are usually from the bargain counter, or those who
are to be promoted from cash and bundle work or those who have shown
good spirit, but who have gone to work at fourteen years and lack
training and right standards. Sometimes girls who have just entered the
store are chosen. Wages of candidates range from $5 to $8, but at the
end of the course a graduate is guaranteed $6 as a minimum wage, and
her advance depends upon her own ability.
“The girls are in the school every day from 8.30 to 11.30; then after
an hour for luncheon, they go to the stores for the rest of the day,
that is, from 12.30 to 5.30. My plan with the class is to take one big
subject every day: all lectures are reviewed orally and the girls write
all significant points in note books.”
The subject matter of the class, planned with the view of making
efficient, successful saleswomen, has emphasized five main lines of
study: 1. The development of a wholesome, attractive personality.
Hygiene, especially personal hygiene. This includes study of daily
menus for saleswomen, ventilation, bathing, sleep, exercise,
recreation. 2. The general system of stores: sales-slip practice, store
directory, business arithmetic, business forms and cash accounts,
lectures. 3. Qualities of stock: color, design, textiles. 4. Selling as
a science: discussion of store experiences, talks on salesmanship, such
as attitude to firm, customer, and fellow-employe, demonstration of
selling in class, salesmanship lectures. 5. The right attitude toward
the work.
The following schedule gives the present arrangement of lectures and
talks in the Boston school:
-----+----------+----------+-------------+----------+---------+--------
| | | | | |
| Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday |Saturday
| | | | | |
-----+----------+----------+-------------+----------+---------+--------
| | | | | |
8:30 |Store |Hygiene |Sales slip |Arithmetic|Sales |Business
|discussion| | | | slip | forms &
| | | | | | cash
| | | | | | acct.
| | | | | |
9:15 |Salesman- |Outline in|Demonstration|Color |Outlines |Textiles
| ship talk| note-book| of sales- | |and notes|
| | | manship by | | |
10:00|Notes |Lecture | selling in |Color |Lecture |Textiles
| | | class | | |
| | | | | |
11:00|Spelling |Notes |Notes on |Spelling |Review of|Notes
|English | | sales |English | Lectures|
| | | observed | | |
| | | | | |
-----+----------+----------+-------------+----------+---------+--------
The New York experiment is of more recent date, and has shaped itself
differently. Its beginnings in the fall of 1908 are due chiefly to the
efforts of Mrs. Anna Garlin Spencer, who persuaded the officers of the
board of education to introduce a class in salesmanship in the public
night schools, and to Miss Diana Hirschler, formerly welfare secretary
in Wm. Filene’s Sons Co. of Boston, who conducted the class. The class
was intended primarily for saleswomen already at work who wished to
equip themselves more thoroughly. The first night there was not a
single enrolment, but as news of the course spread, the attendance
reached an average of twenty-five. This in itself--this attendance
night after night of girls already tired by their work during the
day--is evidence of the strong appeal made by the class.