prettily-illustrated booklets, and she has romantic ideas, gleaned from reading Sunday papers, about the matrimonial opportunities of the fair manicurist.
To such girls—and their mothers—I trust this chapter will be a warning. From such shops girls issue forth only half trained, utterly unfitted to do honest work and utterly unable to carve a future for themselves or to build up the one desirable line of custom—the house-to-house or visiting trade.
The house-to-house worker is not employed in a shop, but calls on customers at their homes or hotels, carrying her implements and supplies in a neat hand-bag, which is made especially for this purpose. Many of her customers prefer to use their own implements, and have their own shampoo mixtures and face lotions, for they are the better and more refined class of women who do not care to patronize the public shop. They pay the same fees that are charged in the shop, or more. The worker who gives satisfaction soon has an established trade among the most desirable people, and is in a position to accept or refuse new clients.
The house-to-house trade has many advantages, not the least of which is the outdoor exercise which the visiting worker secures while making her rounds. She is not subject to the petty politics and favoritism found in every
