209886 
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                        PREFACE 
  Among the trades for women, no other trade presents such 
great complexity as does millinery. As an art it demands high 
and peculiar ability, called by the trade, millinery sense; as a 
handicraft, it requires great skill; as a trade it introduces sub- 
division of labor and supports a department in which the proc- 
esses are mechanical and do not necessarily induct the worker into 
the more skilled and artistic divisions. As millinery supplies a 
necessity of life, it is universal and offers occupation in every 
community. As it deals with attractive materials and produces 
beautiful effects, it appeals to young women and induces large 
numbers to enter it. As it includes artistic processes, it pays 
high nominal wages to one group of workers, and as its mechan- 
ical processes are skilled it pays good nominal wages to another 
group. In its origin millinery was a home trade and is usually 
still so conducted. In smaller communities it is carried on in 
dwellings; in the larger cities, many shops are located in the 
upper stories of business blocks or in apartments. By far the 
greater number of shops are small, many having less than five 
workers ' and the relation between employer and employee is dis- 
tinctly personal. 
  As a fashion trade millinery is seasonal and as a trade with two 
busy and two dull seasons it imposes upon the worker un- 
certainty and irregularity of employment and requires its less 
well paid and even its highly paid workers to eke out a living 
by overtime work or by subsidiary or secondary occupations. 
It does not yield readily to state regulation. Its hours of labor 
are oftentimes not limited; overtime is not restricted; sanitation, 
light, and ventilation are not insisted upon; the worker is not 
guaranteed comfort in the workroom as to seats, tables, and clean- 
liness; regularity of pay, permanence of contract, and due noti- 
  2 In Massachusetts the law does not take cognizance of a shop in which

  less than five workers are employed.