In the fall and winter the traffic is very light.

Six months in the year the operators at this exchange work only half the day, yet the company keeps them on full salary the year round.
"We cannot afford to do anything else," explains the traffic manager.
"We cannot afford operators who would be content with half wages." [Illustration: MISS ELIZABETH MALONEY] The old-time dry-goods merchant sincerely believed that his business would suffer if he provided seats for his saleswomen.

He believed that he would go into bankruptcy if he allowed his women clerks human working conditions.

Then came the Consumers' League and mercantile laws, and a new pressure of public opinion, and the dry-goods merchant found out that a clerk in good physical condition sells more goods than one that is exhausted and uncomfortable.
The fact is that welfare work, carefully shorn of its name, has proved itself to be such good business policy that in future all intelligent employers will advocate it; public opinion will demand it; laws will provide for it.
It used to be the invariable custom in stores--it is so still in a few--to lay off many clerks during the dull seasons.

Now the best stores find that they can better afford to give all their employees vacations with pay.