GIRLS' EMPLOYMENT.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 811, 7 May 1910, Page 12

GIRLS' EMPLOYMENT.

DRESSMAKING. Except for tho foverishness of it, dressmaking is probably a very good trade for a girl. It is certainly one of those that men describe as "purely feminine," and going through the workrooms in the large shops on the Quay one i 6 inclined to think it must be very pleasant to deal with, those dainty delicate materials, tho silks and exquisite laces, the fine _ nets 6tudded with silver sequins, or the richly embroidered trimmings in most beautiful harmonious colourings. Hero a girl will be at work finishing off the hem of a silken 1 skirt with French knots, there another is draping the lace on a bodice ■ which a black, armless, headless model wears complacently, while a third nurses an anatomical specimen in the 6hape of a model arm. It looks rather gruesome,

this dressing of a detached limb in a short fluffy ovening sleeve, but the method has its advantages. The girls work at different tables, bodice-hands at one, skirt-lmnds at another—each table has a girl in charge. Tho beginners at this trade receive ss. a week, and advance by 3s. each year, till they come to a point where for years they may make no headway. It is not easy to find out what are the ordinary wages of a dressmaker, but seemingly when she has learnt her trade sho may make anything from 225. 6d. to ,£2 10s. or more, until she reaches the wages of a head dressmaker in a first-class house, when her salary h only to be men-

tioned in a whisper. ' ' There is constant complaint of the lack of girls. One hears so much about the girls who are needed, and who never come, that it becomes hard to imagine how Wellington contrives to be still' so well dressed, and then also one hears now and again of fully qualified dressmakers who have gone to one eager establishment after another before they secure employment. -It is diffiouli to understand these v stories. Tho dressmakers like to train their own girls from the beginning, for each is. apt to have her own methods. The girls come from sohool quite ignorant and untrained in the art of sewing, and it is tisual to have to teach them from the beginning, even how bo sew on a hook. In the businesses where the sewing must be very fine and neat? they are never willing to take young dressmakers who have only had to do careloss, untidy work. But a well-trained, efficient girl Is, they say, always sure to got work at a good wage. . . . They specialise here, as .in other trades, and they havo skirt-hands, bodico-hands, and sleeve-hands, who by preference give their whole time to the one 6ort of work. One occasionally hears of the dressmaker who is an improver, and fancies that this means an artist who rectifies the I mistakes made by others, but tho improver is ono who is improving herself, a dressmaker in the second year of her training. i There are slack times m tne dressmaking trade, and thero are occasions when 60 many members of a staff are told that they may have a holiday, for a fortnight, a month, as the case may bo. They take the holiday and enjoy it as well as they can, remembering that it is a holiday out of their own pockets, and when they got word that the rush is beginning again they go back again to work. That is o'ne disadvantage of the trade; there are others, and it is not the business that pays quickly or best. But it does pay, and in the long run, u one has push, initiative, tact, and .an artistic 6enso, together with a few other qualifies that are always of groat valuom tho business world, it pays well. There are highly salaried positions for tho most efficient, and for all there is in this country a competency, and an assured independence.