The Employments of Women: A Cyclopædia of Woman's WorkPenny, Virginia
General
The Employments of Women: A Cyclopædia of Woman's Work
Penny, Virginia
Women -- Employment
She and her daughter go and look at
any articles for sale; and if they think the person honest and the price
suits, they will buy; so that, if any one should come and claim the
clothes as being stolen, they could immediately take a policeman to the
place where they got them. If articles are bought, they examine and put
a price on them, and get the address of the individual. If they find
they are not stolen, they then purchase. The poorest season for the
business is midwinter. They keep their store open till ten o'clock at
night. I was told at another store they sell most clothes in the evening
to laborers' wives. In a store in New York, the lady says she buys her
clothes of Jews that go about exchanging china for old clothes. It is
very necessary that a good locality be fixed on, near a river or bay, on
a thoroughfare, or in a neighborhood where many poor people live. One
woman told me she employs two girls and three men to make over and do up
worn clothes for her store. She pays her girls, each, thirty-one cents a
day, and they work twelve hours. She sells most in the evening. At one
place I was told that Mondays and Saturdays are their busiest days for
selling. They sell most to the French, Irish, and negroes. Germans do
not like to buy second-hand clothes. She regretted that in her present
store she had not glass cases to keep the dust off her clothes. Her
purchasing is mostly done among the rich, she says, and so it brings her
a good class of customers. The keeper of a second-hand furniture store
told me that she goes to auction herself and purchases. It is two or
three years before the business pays. She will go to a dwelling and look
at furniture before purchasing. It requires a man to do the lifting. She
has old furniture repaired, chairs reseated, &c., before she attempts to
sell them.
=120. Variety Shops.= Variety shops, for the sale of coal, wood,
kindling, candles, matches, and water, are frequently seen in the poor
districts of cities. They are a great convenience to those whose means
will not admit of their buying in large quantities. It costs them more
to buy it in that way, yet the keeping of shops affords a subsistence to
those who do.
EMPLOYMENTS PERTAINING TO GRAIN, BIRDS, FLOWERS, FRUITS, AND VEGETABLES.
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