ABSTRACT
Department stores have historically been major employers of women; since 1900, the job of saleswoman has ranked among the top ten women’s occupations. The proportion of women in the department store workforce seems to have stayed fairly stable at around two-thirds since the early twentieth century. This chapter focuses on some large continuities in the department store industry’s development, minimizing short-term changes and fluctuations in order to suggest an overall conceptual framework. Selling work in the turn-of-the-century department store had much in common with both sweated and machine-tending modes of manufacturing. Elements of the sweatshop in the department store included squalid surroundings, minimal sanitary facilities, unlimited hours, and mandatory unpaid overtime. Department store managers met the challenge of public relations and productivity with the full range of measures used by their counterparts in manufacturing, but with somewhat different results.
