THE PART GIRL: NEW BUSINESS ADJUNCT

Greymouth Evening Star, 8 December 1928, Page 9

THE PART GIRL: NEW BUSINESS ADJUNCT

Entertainment ©f Prospective Buyers is New Phase in Big Commercial Enterprises .. <> Many Transactions Completed Over a Pleasant Dinner" Table.. .■

ORK and more business wBRWjlp firms are beginning V-lifrMlK 10 capitalise feminine mferailOTaa* appeal for. their own MflbnWfflW ends,” says Edwin Balmer, Amer ic an author. ‘‘To-day, with competition so keen, it is only natural that salesmen will’try all kinds of strategy to win a customer. And many are finding that they can capitalise the feminine appeal to great advantage. “As a result we have a new class of ‘saleswomen,’ called party girls, who play a big part in the landing of orders. A ‘party girl’ is the designation for a girl who will make up a party upon request for the entertainment of buyers. How many of them there are in the big cities must be a matter of guesswork. The census does not yet classify them by that designation. But there are many thousands; and business has discovered them, if it has not, indeed, created them. “Contrary to what most people (hink all big business is not done' in offices between 9 and 5. It is often done after business hours—on the golf links, at the dinner table, or, as is more frequently the case, at a private party. And’ lhe person who takes the trouble to arrange a party will usually be able to land the business. This is where the party girls come in. They may be stenographers or bill clerks or mannequins, models or chorus girls. Some have no other employment than as 'party girls,’ informally but effectively in the enpploy of a business house as entertainers.” Mr. Balmer became interested in these tactics which the big business iiouses are employing through an experience of a friend of his. “Some years ago,” he said, “a friend of mine married a young man who was sales manager for a certain line of goods which sold in big lots to a few important buyers. This chap started out as a fair and energetic salesman, trying to sell his goods at their worth; hut he found out that his goods were just about the same as his competitors’. The prices were the same, too. There really was no reason, in. the goods themselves, for a buyer to purchase from him rather than from anyone else. The buyers knew this. So did the competitors.

“Therefore, the sellers were all playing the personal angle as strongly as they could, and trying to make themselves popular with the buyers. Some of these wanted feminine companionship when, they came to the city. So my friend's husband felt himself •forced’ to provide these buyers with partners for the evening. This eih

terprise paid him and he developed it He had three girls in his pay, and on call to go out on parties at any time. “He told his wife about it. She didn’t like it at first. But he explained that the parties and the party girls meant nothing to him. They were a business necessity. He said he merely went along on the parties. But the parties finally got him and his wife had to . divorce him.” As Mr. Balmer saw and heard more and more of the extensions and ramifications of this sort of business going on in the large cities and began to foresee the dangers that such methods would involve, it seemed to him worthy of serious treatment in novel form. The result was “Dangerous Business,” in which he depicts the craze of entertaining for business advantages and shows how the ability to entertain and to bestow favours is becoming more and more important in this race for prosperity. It is even’ more important than the possession of old-fashioned business ability. , “We must! consider, too,” said Mr. Balmer, “that a good many young girls are naturally attracted to such positions. The work is easy, pleasant and profitable compared to pounding a typewriter. “It is not always dangerous at the outset. But as a girl gets into the work complications are, bound to arise.. “Sometimes even a private secretary, who has no intentions of becoming a party girl, will be drawn into a party to please her employer. A buyer likes her and asks her out with him, and she goes so as not to offend him. It. is impossible to show indifference to the man without, arousing his antagonism. No man is flattered by indifference. “And the private secretary,s problem is not much different from the wife’s problem in these days of the strenuous struggle to sell. For as the fight for business has gone out of the office to the night club, and the private party, so also has it gone into the salesman’s home. The wife is drawn into tho life-or-death battle to land the order. If the wife is attractive, she is an asset, especially if she has social position. “Not all the big buyers want to be taken out on ‘parties’ with party girls. Far from it. Many a big buyer wants a better social standing for himself, and for his wife and family, and he will give the order to the man whose friendship will mean most to him socially. “i could tell you of many instances in which buyers absolutely tyrannise the sellers. And the spirit of this

tyranny is spreading over our nation as we become more and more a nation of buyers and sellers. I have tried to follow" some of the consequences of this power in contemporary business, particularly as it affects women in business. ' , “There is still another change that has come about —one that has affected women. It is that her close association with the business and professional men of the world has been instrumental in raising her matrimonial requirements. A young girl who would previously have been willing to marry a young boy of her age and struggle along with him in his effort to advance himself now views the young man indifferently. Constant association with older and more experienced men —men who have achieved high positions because of their unusual mental abilities ’has spoiled her. She is satisfied with nothing less than a man of equal calibre for a husband. “The young man bores her. Neither has he anything to offer her in the way of material things. She doesn t care to consider a man who earns scarcely more than she does. She wants someone who can provide her with the same luxuries and comforts that her ‘boss’ gives his wife, and, if necessary, she is willing to consider an older man—even her own employer. “You will find that there are any number of marriages, particularly second marriages, in which a man has married the young woman who has worked with him in the office. Discussing mutual problems and troubles gives her the advantage over any other woman; and the man finds that from being only a part of the office machinery, his -secretary has become an important factor in his life. If he is a married man he is likely to feel closer association with the woman who knows more about him and his business than his "wife. “And so every woman can well view her husband’s secretary as a potential rival. When a secretary begins to know and understand her employer, it is only natural that she will soon find herself admiring him for his way of getting and doing things. And admiring a person is the first step toward loving hiin.”