Buyers of goods know that their jobs are forfeit unless they can guess
what her taste in gowns and hats is going to be six months hence.

WOMEN'S DEMAND ON INDUSTRY Woman dominates the department store for the
plain reason that she supports it. Whoever earns the income, and that
point has been somewhat in question lately, there is no doubt at all as
to who spends it. She does. Hence, she is able to control the conditions
under which this business is conducted.

You can see for yourself that this is so. Walk through any large
department store and observe how much valuable space is devoted to
making women customers comfortable. There is always a drawing-room with
easy-chairs and couches; plenty of little desks with handsome stationery
where the customer may write notes; here, and in the retiring-room
adjoining, are uniformed maids to offer service. But these things are
not all that the women who support industry demand of the men in power.
They demand that industry be carried on under conditions favorable to
the health and comfort of the workers.

Not until the development of the department store were women able to
observe at close range the conduct of modern business. Not unnaturally
it was in the department store that they began one of the most ambitious
of their present-day activities,--that of humanizing industry.

It was just twenty years ago that New York City was treated to a huge
joke. It was such a joke that even the miserable ones with whom it was
concerned were obliged to smile. An obscure group of women, calling
themselves the Working Women's Society, came out with the announcement
that they proposed to form the women clerks of the city into a labor
union.