This particular saleswoman was trained to textile salesmanship. Consequently, although the first half of her book, which treats of the store's methods and policies, is common to those that are being prepared by her fellows in all the other selling departments, the second half is the result of the special training that was given her in the department of training along the lines of her own merchandise. Not only did she spend long hours of the firm's time in its classroom upon the third floor of the store and surrounded by cabinets in which were displayed textile materials of every sort and in every stage of development, but she was given a printed booklet which told her much about her merchandise, its history, its production fields and the details of its manufacture.
From it she evolved her own history of textiles, setting down with accuracy the four fundamental cloths--cotton, linen, silk and wool--and not alone tracing their development and manufacture, but by means of carefully hand-made diagrams, pointing out the difference between the different textures and weavings. "Warp" and "weft" and "twill" have come to be more than mere words to her. They are a part of her business capital, which she can--and does--turn to the good account of the store. So she is to her compeer of twenty-five years ago--selling dress-goods in the old Macy store down on Fourteenth Street--as the electric light of today is to the old-fashioned lamps of that day and generation.
Back of this little black-bound notebook there is system--organization if you would read it that way. Education, of a truth, has become the handmaiden of merchandising. And the store's school has become one of its ranking functions.
As teachers in this school there is a specially trained corps of men and women who do nothing but instruct and then follow up their pupils to see that they put into practice the things that they have learned. The educational work consists of individual instruction, informal classes and practical demonstrations. And the result of it all is not merely to make the employee valuable to the house, but to lend interest to merchandising, itself, and to lift the salesperson out of the mere mechanical process of taking orders for goods.