after a certain hour, is able to release the weary saleswoman at six
o'clock. She is not able to release the equally weary girls who toil in
the bookkeeping and auditing departments.

That, in these days of adding and tabulating machines, accounting in
most stores is still done by cheap hand labor, is a statement which
strains credulity. Merely from the standpoint of business economy it
seems absurd. But it is a fact easily verified.

I tested it by obtaining employment in the auditing department of one of
the largest and most respectable stores in New York. In this store, and,
according to the best authorities, in most other stores, the accounting
force is made up of girls not long out of grammar school, ignorant and
incapable--but cheap. They work slowly, and as each day's sales are
posted and audited before the close of the day following, the business
force has to work until nine and ten o'clock several nights in the week.
In some cases they work every night.

Only the enlightening power of education of employers, education of
public opinion, can be expected to overcome this blight, and the
Consumers' League, realizing this, is preparing the way for education.

The Consumers' League began with a purely benevolent motive, and in
this early philanthropic stage it gained immediate popularity. City
after city, State after State, formed Consumers' Leagues, until, in
1899, a National League, with branches in twenty-two States, was
organized. The National League, far from being a philanthropic society,
has be come a scientific association for the study of industrial
economics.