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Show - ... L- v - w J . UjL v v k They are taught how to live at the lowest low-est cost and make their wages Jfo as far as possible; what materials wear the best and look the neatest. They are given courses of reading and lectures lec-tures to cultivate their taste, to show them the proper use and combination of colors and other simple roles of art; to train the eye and the mind to artistic artis-tic methods. The trustees of the school hope to have a gymnasium and a roof garden before the warm days of summer, and a restaurant at which girls who do not live with their families may obtain meals at reasonable prices. What the Girl are Taught. When a new student enters she e-gins e-gins with plain, common work, to teach her how to handle materials without with-out soiling and mussing them, and to be accurate in measurements. Then, as she improves, she is promoted to better classes of work, and to handle finer materials. ma-terials. When a girl enters an ordinary dressmaker's shop she is kept making pockets and doing plain hemming until un-til there is a vacancy among those of greater experience. She is useful . to the dressmaker, but is not doing anything any-thing for herself. In the dressmaking department of the Manhattan school a pupil is advanced as fast as she is qualified, until she it able to do the finest embroidery and designing. If she does not show an aptitude for dressmaking dress-making after a few months, she is put on something elae the box-making department, de-partment, perhaps, which is one pi the most important and profitable. A beginner be-ginner ip that department makes ordinary ordi-nary paper boxes with a machine. Then as she improves she is advanced to the jewelry box department, and is trained to make the fancy boxes that are used by florists, confectioners, perfumers and stationers. There is a special trade for making novelties in decorations; lamp shades, book covers, calendars, toys, toilet bags, sponge bags, shopping bags and the thousand and one useful and useless use-less fancy articles that you see in the department stores. The department depart-ment of toilet accessories is a very large and profitable one and offers a field for the display of ingenuity, taste and skill in an infinite variety of articles, ar-ticles, which people are familiar with by teeing them in the shop windows and on the counters of department stores, and often wonder where they come from. What Girls Can Earn. An intelligent girl with a cultivated taste and deft fingers can earn from $60 to $100 a month making these knick-knacks, both by hand and by machinery, ma-chinery, and if she has the inventive faculty and is capable of designing new trifles or inventing new follies to tempt people to spend their money, she can earn still more. The department of table and house linen is also popular and profitable, and there girls are taught all kinds of embroidery, from a plain initial en a handkerchief or a towel to making bed spreads and pillow shams that are sold for thousands of dollars. They imitate drawn work from ' Bussia, Algeria, Al-geria, Turkey, China, Japan, Mexico, Malta and various other countries so closely that it cannot be told from the original. Thus far during the four years that the school has been in existence there have been a few more than 200 graduates, gradu-ates, every one of whom found immediate imme-diate employment at living wages before be-fore she left the school. Many others who did not complete the course were also able to command good wages, and some of them, realizing the value of the diplomas, are coming back to the night classes -to finish. The night classes are also available to girls who are already employed and want to fit themselves for better-paying positions. posi-tions. One of the most important functions of the school is to develop the character charac-ter of its students, to make good women out of the raw material that comes in from the tenement-houses and the public schools: to teach morals and manners, to instill pure principles into their minds and teach them honesty, purity and self-respect. It is not a religious re-ligious school, and the trustees are non-sectarian, non-sectarian, but no girl can attend its sessions without learning the same things that are taught in Sunday-schools Sunday-schools and churches in a direct and nractical wav. A few days ago George T. Sheets, Clef of Police, In an interview-with O representative of THE TELEGRAM emphasised the need in this city of an Institution where girla whose home environment en-vironment encourages them to wayward-. wayward-. ness may be cared for. His statement of conditions as they exist here attract-- attract-- ed the careful attention of all persons who give s thought to the well-being of , humanity. In connection with this subject sub-ject an article by William E. Curtis, describing de-scribing a New York girls' school, where the hand, the eye and the heart receive profitable instruction, is interesting. inter-esting. . ; While an institution on the same , broad lines is not necessary here, still there are many practical features in the methods employed by the New York i institution well worthy of emulation in Bait Lake City, when a girls' home is established, as one is sure to be in time. - Mr. Curtis' article, in part is as follows: fol-lows: - 'An admirable and a practical institution insti-tution which might be imitated in ev-,ry ev-,ry other city to the good of womankind, woman-kind, is the Manhattan Training School for - Girls, at 209 East Twentv-third street, of which Miss Virginia Potter is president and Mrs- Mary Schenck Woolman is superintendent. Its object . is to. qualify girls who have to earn their own living to earn living wages. It occupies a position between the ordinary ordi-nary 'manual training schools, which are supported by the Board of Education and do a great deal' of good, and the School of Design at Cooper Institute. It offerst intelligent young women an opportunity to learn some of the simpler sim-pler arts and industries whose products are found upon the notion counters of every department store, of every stationer's sta-tioner's and perfumer's and confectioner's, confection-er's, every jeweler's and dealer in . bric-a-brac. A Girl's Critical Period. The hardest and the most critical period pe-riod in the existence of a girl of the working class is between the ages -of 14 and 17. At 14, the maximum of compulsory com-pulsory education, - she usually leaves the public schools and looks for em-." em-." fment in the shops and stores and i stories, where tens of. thousands of ,-fJs of that age go every year and are paid wages of from $3 to $5 a week, whieh - is not sufficient to clothe and feed them. It is not necessary to continue con-tinue the story. ' Everybody who has . anything to do with the wage-earning class of young girls in large cities knows the temptations they are subject sub-ject to, the sufferings they have to endure en-dure and the treatment they usually experience. Few of them rise in the , scale, usually because they cannot earn any more than the wages that are paid them. They don't know how, and they have no chance to learn. The Manhattan Training School for Girls was founded four years ago on . Fourteenth street, where it could accommodate ac-commodate 100 girls from . 14 to 20 f, years old and teach, them useful trades ' and arts, so that they can command 12, $15 and even $20 a week in wages. a And as soon as the manufacturers of novelties and knickknaeks learned about the school they did everything ' to encourage it, because there is an un-supplied un-supplied demand for skilled fingers and ' cultivated taste, and that demand is increasing very rapidly. It is almost impossible for such manufacturers to find competent working girls, and many of those who have been trained at the Manhattan school are now acting as forewomen and teaching others what they learned at the school. ' school Grew Eapidly. ' The interest in the institution made it necessary for the managers to move to larger quarters, and they bow have room for 500 girls, with ninety different machines, run by two electric motors, and have the privilege of calling in. . temporary instructors from several of the largest and most progressive manufactories man-ufactories in New York. One teacher can look after twenty eiris as easily as she can look after five, and, as a consequence, the average cost of educating edu-cating a girl io a trade has been re- J 'h'M in the new quarters from $168 S f90 year. ' The pupils work five ur a day, and spend three hours; in tbe study of books, in listening to lectures, lec-tures, and in acquiring knowledge whieh will enable them to make the best use of their' wages, their strength and their talent. They are taught do- " mestic economy, for example how to carry on light housekeeping, so as to qualify them to board themselves economically eco-nomically and to be competent wives and mothers. They are trained in physical physi-cal exercise how to breathe, how to walk, how to develop their muscles, how to sleep and how best to apply their strength. They are trained in hygiene; hy-giene; what to eat, how to cook it, what to avoid in eating, what is the most nourishing and economical food, the advantages of bathing and cleanliness, cleanli-ness, first remedies in ease of. illness, how to cure toothache and a bad cold, how to dress a bruise or a cut or any other wounds, to which working girls . are subject in handling machinery. |