LibGuides: Shop Girls to Show Girls: Retail Workers

"Shop Girls" Historical / Primary Sources

“Women employees are greatly handicapped by their careless disregard of personal hygiene, as nearly one-third of their absences are due to ill health. The extra work and annoyance caused by their irregularity prevents sympathy with their weakness. A woman with a record showing much irregularity because of illness cannot hope for promotion to a responsible position.” p. 39

Quote from: Training for Store Service: the Vocational Experiences And Training of Juvenile Employees of Retail Department, Dry Goods And Clothing Stores Boston: R. G. Badger, 1920.

The Hathi Trust Digital Library
Many public domain sources relevant to the history and popular culture of retail work and the early employment of women in retail can be found at the Hathi Trust database.

Titles from the Hathi Trust

Training for Store Service: the Vocational Experiences And Training of Juvenile Employees of Retail Department, Dry Goods And Clothing Stores In Boston, 1920
A report on the work of the work of Simmons college, a training school for women store workers
Leake, Albert H. The Vocational Education of Girls And Women. New York: Macmillan, 1918.
An early 20th Century case for the recognizing that women need vocational training.

"Shop Girls" and Sales Women in Early 20th Century Pop Culture

Novels and Poetry

The Ladies' Paradise by Émile Zola
Publication Date: 1882
Roast Beef Medium: the Business Adventures of Emma McChesney. by Edna Ferber
Publication Date: 1913

Braley, Berton, b. 1882. Sonnets of a Suffragette: Including Also Love Sonnets of a Manicure, Love Lyrics of a Shop Girl, Love Lyrics of a Chauffeur. Chicago: Browne & Howell Co., 1913.
Love Lyrics of a Shop Girl parodies working class values and virtues

Movies

“It” (aka She’s got “it”) 1927
Shopgirl Betty Lou (played by Clara Bow) has designs on Cyrus Waltham, the handsome owner of the department store where she works. Waltham, though, doesn't even know Betty Lou is around.
The Devil and Miss Jones (1941)
Plot involves union agitation and working conditions in department stores and the romance between a tycoon and an older female retail worker.