Part 7

THE TRAINING OF MILLINERY WORKERS

ALICE P. BARROWS

Committee on Women’s Work, New York City

“We have no time for learners.”--“Learning is nothing but running errands.”--“It’s always experience, experience they want, and I didn’t have it, so what was the use?”--“Trade schools are no good. It is altogether different outside.” These were some of the remarks heard at the beginning of an investigation of workers in the millinery trade which led to an intensive study of the training of girls for that occupation. “Industrial education” is a large, general term. What it meant to the workers in one trade throws much light upon it, and suggests a method for dealing with a subject which is at present rather topheavy with theories.

Probably no trade in which girls are employed could illustrate better than millinery the present status of industrial education for girls in New York City. There are more women in this trade than in any other except the clothing trades. There are more classes in millinery than in any other women’s trade except dress making. It is one of the first industrial subjects introduced into the school curriculum. Yet an investigation of workers in millinery showed that these classes were being formed when there was little information upon the most important factors in the problem of trade training--that is, the girls, the schools where they had received their previous instruction, and the trade in which they worked.

It is not easy to describe the millinery trade clearly because the essence of the description is to show that it cannot be made clear. If the next few paragraphs leave the reader with an impression of chaos then the description has been successful. “The millinery trade is about twenty-five different trades,” said one employer. This statement does not give a true impression because it does not show that each branch overlaps and penetrates into every other in a most confusing manner. Millinery shops are of all types, in all parts of the city, with all kinds of work. Broadly speaking, the establishments can be divided into wholesale and retail, and in general it may be said that in wholesale shops “it’s speed we want,” and in retail, “careful, neat hand workers.” Actually, such definitions of the trade are not true to fact. Every variety of hat is made in all kinds of ways whether manufactured at wholesale or retail. There are “trimmed hats” and “untrimmed hats,” “ready-to-wear hats,” “artistic millinery,” “home-made hats,” and “tailor hats.” At first glance, it would seem that the trade is an excellent example of the subdivision of labor. The important point to the worker, however, is that sometimes it illustrates this subdivision of labor and sometimes it does not. Trimmed hats are found in the same establishments with untrimmed and ready-to-wear hats, or with only one or with neither. Artistic millinery is found in exclusive private shops and in sweatshops. Tailor hats are made in the same establishments with trimmed and untrimmed hats or in shops by themselves. Home-made hats are found to be contract work for great factories, or “neighborhood work for a few friends.”

Naturally, this lack of system and standard is reflected in the demands made upon workers. In general, it may be said that there are four stages in making a hat,--designing it, making the frame, covering the frame, and trimming it. And in general it may be stated that there are seven kinds of positions open to a girl looking for work in millinery. She may be a learner, an improver, a preparer, a milliner, a copyist, a trimmer, or a designer. But when a girl starts to look for work as preparer, for example, she may turn toward a Fifth avenue shop where she must be a “neat worker” who can make frames accurately by hand, and “have an eye for color and form”; here she may advance from preparer to designer; or she may find her way into a shop a few doors away where she does not need to make frames because they have two girls who make all the frames; or she may apply at a department store where in one department she will have an opportunity to do all the kinds of work found in the Fifth avenue shop, “only not so particular”; or she may go into the ready-to-wear department where “you never make a frame but cover with straw and stick on a rosette”; or she may join the throng of girls pouring into a Broadway wholesale house, and as she walks up the stairs she may stop at any one of the five floors and enter a “millinery establishment.” But in one she will be asked to do straw operating all day; in another to make dozens of wire frames a day; in another to trim hats by the dozen and never make frames; in another to work at nothing but millinery ornaments. In the autumn of 1908 she finds it difficult to get a position as preparer because “the machines are driving them out”; and in the spring of 1909 preparers are in great demand because “the styles have changed this season, and hand work has come back this month.” In any case, she thinks herself fortunate if she works more than six months a year at $5 a week in not more than three or four positions. No prophecy can be made about the kind of skill which will be demanded in any shop.

But if no two establishments are alike in methods of work, they all have one characteristic in common. The slack season descends upon employers and workers alike. Taking the employers’ statements, the millinery year is at best only seven or eight months long, divided into fall and spring seasons. The fall season, starting on Division street and lower Broadway in July, gains headway in August, rushes up Fifth avenue in September, and then gradually spreads out north and south, east and west, lingering for the longest time where the current is least swift. Third avenue and Fifth avenue, Grand street and Harlem cannot buy early and all at once. In any case, the season disappears before Christmas. The spring season begins in January, and gains speed until the Easter rush, after which workers are laid off in great numbers.

“It is terrifically hard work while it lasts,” said one employer. If it is terrifically hard work for the employer with some capital, credit and business shrewdness, it is obvious that to the girl with no capital, no credit and no knowledge of trade conditions except as represented by her place, “laid off--slack” means an even more serious loss. According to census figures, 64% of the women employed in retail establishments are out of work in January. In August 65% are unemployed. In September, the busy wholesale month in the autumn, there is no room for 11% of the number needed in the spring. In June 45% are out of work. Of 639 positions in millinery held by the group of workers investigated, 447, or more than two-thirds, lasted less than six months. Although they sometimes found work in other trades when laid off from millinery, 60% of those who could estimate the time lost were unemployed more than three months in the year. “Millinery gets on my nerves,” said one girl, “because there is always the worry about the seasons.”

The following is a calendar of a girl who had worked in millinery for a year. She was particularly fortunate in getting subsidiary work.

August--Worked 3 weeks at millinery on Third avenue. Worked 1 week on Broadway. Laid off--slack.

September--Looked for work.

October--Worked at millinery on Sixth avenue 4 weeks.

November--Worked at millinery on Sixth avenue 3 weeks. Laid off--slack. Sold candy one week. Left to return to millinery.

December--Worked 3 weeks at millinery on Sixth avenue until the day before Christmas. Laid off--slack. Sold candy one week.

January--Sold candy one month.

February--Returned to millinery.

March--Worked at millinery.

April--Worked at millinery.

May--Worked at millinery. Laid off--slack.

June--Looked for work.

July--Looked for work.

The season also has its effect upon workroom conditions. “It’s rush, rush all the time and then nothing to do.” In 62% of the shops investigated the girls worked nine to nine and a half hours daily. A large majority had a working week of fifty to fifty-five hours. In only eight was the week less than fifty hours. In 86% of the shops the day’s work lasted regularly until six o’clock or later--an important fact when the question of evening school work is to be considered. 71% of the girls worked overtime in the busy season. During the overtime season the total hours varied from less than ten up to fifteen a day.

The wages which workers in millinery receive are not such as to compensate them for short seasons and long hours. The average wage is between seven and eight dollars. Considered from the point of view of yearly income, the weekly average of seven or eight dollars is reduced 25 or even 50% by the slack season. A liberal estimate of the average wage, allowing for loss of time, would be five dollars. But the keynote of the wage question in millinery is lack of standard. The workers have no trade union large enough to sign contracts with employers. The only bargain is the individual bargain. If the method of payment is by the piece, “you never know what you are going to get.” As one girl expressed it: “Piece work is bad because you are always fussing about the price. At that French place, they said they’d pay you seventeen cents a hat but at the end of the week you would find they had made it fourteen cents. It was awful. You had the same fight every season over the prices. Instead of giving you what you ought to get they’d say to themselves, ‘We’ll make it $2.50 a dozen, and if they will work for that, all right; if not we can make it $3.’”

A tabulation of wages received in 738 positions held by 201 workers shows what a variation in wages there is in positions called by the same name. The variations are as follows:

Learners: 0 to $5. Improvers: less than $2 to $8. Preparers: $2 to $15. Milliners: $4 to $12 or $15. Makers: $4 to $9. Copyists: $4 to $15 or more. Trimmers: $6 to $25 or more.

Facts such as these have been used in other countries as an argument for the establishment of minimum wage boards in millinery. Public opinion in this country does not yet demand such action.

If these facts about conditions in the millinery trade prove anything they prove that “learning to make hats” is a very different thing from “learning the millinery trade.” The experiences of millinery workers would seem to suggest that in modern times, perhaps even more than in the days when industrial conditions were less complex, apprenticeship must include learning the trade as well as one process in it, if the workers are to be efficient. A milliner who does not know that millinery means machine work and hand work, speed work and careful work, that the seasons are irregular, that the wages are unstandardized, and that conditions are constantly changing, is in no position to become efficient. Such knowledge is part of her job, and it is as necessary that she should understand her various relations to the trade in which she is working as that she should master the technique of the machine that she is operating. Power to adapt to different types of establishments, to varied kinds of work, and to fluctuating seasons, rather than specialization in a particular process, is a practical necessity for the girl who would earn her own living. According to the testimony of both workers and employers she does not get this power in the trade itself; employers have no time for learners, and the girl finds that “learning is nothing but running errands.” According to the same testimony, the schools do not know the trade and do not prepare their pupils to do any one thing well. In order to test the truth of these criticisms, millinery classes were investigated in the course of this study, and their graduates were interviewed.