capable home woman, the woman who can administer her household economically, make her own simple clothes, and trim her own hats. The trade schools which promise to turn out competent trade workers or self-supporting graduates offer a two or three-year course, and the girl who elects this course serves as gradual and thorough an apprenticeship as she would in a shop.
Retailers and wholesalers who employ many girls tell me that occasionally a girl who has taken a short course in millinery makes a phenomenal record in the workroom, but she would do the same thing had she entered the room as an apprentice without training, because she is a born milliner and business woman combined. Again, girls who have been trained in a trade school must practically acquire the trade anew, or drop it entirely when they enter a workshop, because they did slovenly work in school and will not do conscientious, thorough work in the shop.
This chapter should not be misconstrued as an attack on the trade school. The girl who elects the technical high-school course and then enters a millinery workroom certainly has the advantage over the girl who never went to a trade school and whose fingers are awkward and unused to handwork of any sort. But I certainly do wish to warn girls against the type
