Business Hours and Working Hours.
As the custom of our co-operative housekeeping establishment, by our constitution, is limited to members, it would be no object to keep the sales-room open from morning until night for the convenience of every chance buyer that came along. Women, like cats, love their ease and their own comfortable and peculiar belongings; and to many, as I confess to myself, the greatest objection to co-operative housekeeping would be that, in case one held an office in the clothing-house or kitchen, one would be obliged to leave home at a stated minute, and for a stated time every day.
If co-operation could begin, as it eventually will, with the young girls just leaving school, it would not be so great a hardship in after life, as the habit of going out daily at a particular time is already formed. But to many of us, with our unsystematic habits and our national disinclination to facing the weather, the loss of our present freedom of choice as to what we shall do from hour to hour would be irksome in the extreme. Of course, however, in an organization, this must be done; and the only way to manage it is to limit our hours of business strictly to three,—say from nine to twelve, or from ten to one in the morning,—which is just about the time every woman now expects to devote to her household duties. All orders then would be received, sales made, business transacted, and garments fitted within those hours, after which the rooms on the first floor should be closed, and the officers at liberty to return to their families. I should further recommend that every officer be allowed to have an assistant, in case she desired it, chosen and paid by herself (but subject to the approval of the board of directresses), who could take her place in absence or illness, and also fill it temporarily in case of her resignation; and, for the rest, we must only hope that the excitement and interest of working together, and the solid satisfaction, now so often missed, of having something to show for every day, would compensate the
