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Show li MARY ll SUCCEEDS i J! ON ; 1 1 MAIN STREET ; 5 ; A 3! By LAURA MILLER J 3 J , ! ; ; ! ; ; ; ; .' ly4, by Laura Miller INDUSTRIAL HISTORY IN THE MAKING Fort Smith, Ark., guarding the river ford in Indian days, has looked down on dramatic events. Today it is at a crossroads in Industrial development as it was once at a crossroads in pioneering. pio-neering. It is reached by a west-of-the-Mississippi that never carries a "diner" yet is it a metropolis, an industrial in-dustrial center. And like all Industrial centers nowadays, it wants women in Its industries. Two wholesale clothing houses, a paper-box plant, a button factory, two "pants and overall" factories, and I know not what in the line of farm supply sup-ply houses now surround the old gray pile of the fort, and furnish a spirit of bustle and success that runs up and down the streets. Country-bred girls are sucked in to Join local women in store and office and factory, as they are sucked Into the industrial whirlpool whirl-pool of New York and San Francisco and Chlcago but with a difference. What woman holds the most Interesting Inter-esting job in Fort Smith? That's hard to say. It's hard to discover even when you're right on the spot. Certainly Cer-tainly one of the interesting ones is the job of presiding over what an Imaginable person might call the intake in-take pipe to the suction pump of Fort Smith industries. She is the little woman in black suit and crisp white blouse and oh, a most understanding smile 1 who wears a Travelers' Aid button and presides over the station waiting room. (I warned you that Fort Smith Is citified. It's also very up-and-coming about having all the new wrinkles In town management, and the Travelers' Aid desk is only a sample.) There Is enough time and space and general spirit of being interested in your neighbor to make Fort Smith still keep the best of Its small-town habits. So Miss Jennie Stevens, the aid lady, Isn't expected to catalogue the women that she meets. She doesn't send out a hasty postcard to some person or other, "This will Introduce Fanny Smith. She needs a small room till she gets her first pay envelope" ; and then never know whether Fanny gets it or not. Instead, when Fanny Smith, on her first venture from Blanksburg, drifts In minus a Job, minus friends, minus even a place to sleep, the aid lady becomes be-comes Fanny's first friend. She knows personally most of the people she calls up before she sends Fanny out to meet them, and six months from now she'll probably know just how Fanny is getting get-ting on in Work, and love affairs, too. To my mind, the aid lady has the best job. But there's a sort of human interest quality about most of those Fort Smith Jobs that the Chicago ones lack! |