DRESSMAKERS AND MILLINERS IN PARIS.
"If a revolution come again, I think well, madame, it will be the great
shops that will fall, and that it is workwomen who will bear the torch
and even consent to the name of terror, _pétroleuses_. For see a moment
what thing they do, madame. Everywhere, the girl who desires to learn as
_modiste_, and who, in the day when I had learned, became one of the
house that she served, and, if talent were there, could rise and in time
be mistress herself, with a name that had fame even,--that girl must now
attempt the great shop and bury her talent in always the same thing. No
more invention, no more grace, but a hundred robes always the same, and
with no mark of difference for her who wears it, or way to tell which
may be mistress and which the servant. It is not well for one or the
other, madame; it is ill for both. Then, too, many must stand aside who
would learn, since it is always the machine to sew that needs not many.
It is true there are still houses that care for a name, and where one
may be _artiste_, and have pride in an inspiration. But they are rare;
and now one sits all day, and this one stitches sleeves, perhaps, or
seams of waists or skirts, and knows not effects, or how to plan the
whole, or any joy of composition or result. It is bad, and all bad, and
I willingly would see the great shops go, and myself urge well their
destruction."
These words, and a flood of more in the same direction, came as hot
protest against any visit to the Magasins du Louvre, an enormous
establishment of the same order as the Bon Marché, but slightly higher
in price, where hundreds are employed as saleswomen, and where, side by
side with the most expensive productions of French skill, are to be
found the _occasions_,--the bargains in which the foreigner delights
even more than the native.
"Let them go there," pursued the little _modiste_, well on in middle
life, whose eager face and sad dark eyes lighted with indignation as
she spoke. "Let those go there who have money, always money, but no
taste, no perception, no feeling for a true combination. I know that if
one orders a robe that one comes to regard to say, 'Yes, so and so must
be for madame,' but how shall she know well when she is blunted and dead
with numbers? How shall she feel what is best? I, madame, when one comes
to me, I study. There are many things that make the suitability of a
confection; there is not only complexion and figure and age, but when I
have said all these, the thought that blends the whole and sees arising
what must be for the perfect robe. This was the method of Madame
Desmoulins, and I have learned of her. When it is an important case, a
trousseau perhaps, she has neither eaten nor slept till she has
conceived her list and sees each design clear. And then what joy! She
selects, she blends with tears of happiness; she cuts with solemnity
even. Is there such a spirit in your Bon Marché? Is there such a spirit
anywhere but here and there to one who remembers; who has an ideal and
who refuses to make it less by selling it in the shops? Again, madame, I
tell you it is a debasement so to do. I will none of it."
Madame, who had clasped her hands and half risen in her excited protest,
sank back in her chair and fixed her eyes on a robe just ready to send
home,--a creation so simply elegant and so charming that her brow
smoothed and she smiled, well pleased. But her words were simply the
echo of others of the same order, spoken by others who had watched the
course of women's occupations and who had actual love for the profession
they had chosen.
Questions brought out a state of things much the same for both Paris and
London, where the system of learning the business had few differences.
For both millinery and dressmaking, apprenticeship had been the rule,
the more important houses taking an entrance fee and lessening the
number of years required; the others demanding simply the full time of
the learner, from two to four years. In these latter cases food and
lodging were given, and after the first six months a small weekly wage,
barely sufficient to provide the Sunday food and lodging. If more was
paid, the learner lived outside entirely; and the first year or two was
a sharp struggle to make ends meet. But if any talent showed itself,
promotion was rapid, and with it the prospect of independence in the
end, the directress of a group of girls regarding such talent as
developed by the house and a part of its reputation. In some cases such
girls by the end of the third year received often five or six thousand
francs, and in five were their own mistresses absolutely, with an income
of ten or twelve thousand and often more.
This for the exception; for the majority was the most rigid
training,--with its result in what we know as French finish, which is
simply delicate painstaking with every item of the work,--and a wage of
from thirty to forty francs a week, often below but seldom above this
sum.
In the early stages of the apprenticeship there was simply an allowance
of from six to ten francs per month for incidental expenses, and even
when skill increased and services became valuable, five francs a week
was considered an ample return. In all these cases the week passed under
the roof of the employer, and Sunday alone became the actual change of
the worker. The excessive hours of the London apprentice had no
counterpart here or had not until the great houses were founded and
steam and electric power came with the sewing-machine. With this new
regime over-time was often claimed, and two sous an hour allowed, these
being given in special cases. But exhausting hours were left for the
lower forms of needle-work. The food provided was abundant and good, and
sharp overseer as madame might prove, she demanded some relaxation for
herself and allowed it to her employés. The different conditions of life
made over-work in Paris a far different thing from over-work in London.
For both milliners and _modistes_ was the keen ambition to develop a
talent, and the workroom, as has already been stated, felt personal
pride in any member of the force who showed special lightness of touch
or skill in combination.
"Work, madame!" exclaimed little Madame M., as she described a day's
work under the system which had trained her. "But yes, I could not so
work now, but then I saw always before me an end. I had the sentiment.
It was always that the colors arranged themselves, and so with my
sister, who is _modiste_ and whose compositions are a marvel. My back
has ached, my eyes have burned, I have seen sparks before them and have
felt that I could no more, when the days are long and the heat perhaps
is great, or even in winter crowded together and the air so heavy. But
we laughed and sang; we thought of a future; we watched for talent, and
if there was envy or jealousy, it was well smothered. I remember one
talented Italian who would learn and who hated one other who had great
gifts; hated her so, she has stabbed her suddenly with sharp scissors in
the arm. But such things are not often. We French care always for
genius, even if it be but to make a shoe most perfect, and we do not
hate--no, we love well, whoever shows it. But to-day all is different,
and once more I say, madame, that too much is made, and that thus talent
will die and gifts be no more needed."
There is something more in this feeling than the mere sense of rivalry
or money loss from the new system represented by the Bon Marché and
other great establishments of the same nature. But this is a question
in one sense apart from actual conditions, save as the concentration of
labor has had its effect on the general rate of wages. Five francs a day
is considered riches, and the ordinary worker or assistant in either
dressmaking or millinery department receives from two and a half to
three and a half francs, on which sum she must subsist as she can. With
a home where earnings go into a common fund, or if the worker has no one
dependent upon her, French thrift makes existence on this sum quite
possible; but when it becomes a question of children to be fed and
clothed, more than mere existence is impossible, and starvation stands
always in the background. For the younger workers the great
establishments, offer many advantages over the old system, and hours
have been shortened and attempts made in a few cases to improve general
conditions of those employed. But there is always a dull season, in
which wages lessen, or even cease for a time, the actual number of
working days averaging two hundred and eighty. Where work is private and
reputation is established, the year's earnings are a matter of
individual ability, but the mass of workers in these directions drift
naturally toward the great shops which may be found now in every
important street of Paris, and which have altered every feature of the
old system. Whether this alteration is a permanent one, is a question to
which no answer can yet be made. Wages have reached a point barely above
subsistence, and the outlook for the worker is a very shadowy one; but
the question as a whole has as yet small interest for any but the
political economists, while the women themselves have no thought of
organization or of any method of bettering general conditions, beyond
the little societies to which some of the ordinary workers belong, and
which are half religious, half educational, in their character. As a
rule, these are for the lower ranks of needlewomen, but necessity will
compel something more definite in form for the two classes we have been
considering, as well as for those below them, and the time approaches
when this will be plain to the workers themselves, and some positive
action take the place of the present dumb acceptance of whatever comes.