Page:The Girl Who Earns Her Own Living (1909).djvu/84

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make frequent trips to publishing centers. Or if she is a worker along the more practical lines, she turns out such original designs in arts and crafts wares, china painting, stenciling, etc., that proprietors of exclusive shops are forced to notice her work, even though she may not be able to confer with them in person. But the thousandth girl is not the average girl, and that is why managers of art stationery stores, women's exchanges, and art shops, and private individuals whose names appear in public print are literally deluged with impossible handwork from trained and untrained art-workers in smaller cities and villages. Their output includes crude hand-painted china, satin cushiontops, pincushions, menus, favors, place cards and postals, not original, but copied from lithographs which sell for a mere song.

These workers cannot find a market in a distant city. They must seek patrons and work up trade in their own towns or adjacent cities, where they can ascertain what women with money wish to purchase. The crude oil painting of a basket of peaches which won first prize at the county fair may sell to one of the judges, but the city art dealer handles only work by a man or woman with reputation. The pretty trinkets made of birchbark or the postals with scenes of the local pleasure resorts or monuments will sell to tourists visiting the artist's