of private trade schools which assures the student that she will be saved all apprenticeship and be able to take a place as trimmer on leaving the school. These irresponsible managers of rapid-instruction schools are to blame for the tremendous influx of half-trained girls into the trade fields. Their "graduates" must compete with girls who have worked their way up by hard experience. Unwilling to start afresh and acquire a practical knowledge of the trade, they hang on the fringe of the millinery world, working for a mere pittance and never rising to that position of independence which a real knowledge of the trade insures.
"But I know a woman who is head of the millinery department of a store and she cannot trim a hat!" exclaims one reader.
Quite possibly this is true, for I know just such a woman. She cannot trim a hat—but she knows how it ought to be trimmed, and she knows a great many other important points in the business or she would not be head of the department. And she served a hard apprenticeship.
The successful woman to whom I refer started fifteen years ago as errand girl in the millinery department of a then young store. When the saleswomen in the department wanted some one to hold hats for them while serving a customer, or a girl to run upstairs and get a hat
