Girls' World

LISTEN LITTLE GIRL BEFORE You COME To NEW YORK -- Mun.ro Leaf -- Stokes ($1.50).

Givers of gratuitous advice are usually not very popular. If they give it to young, ambitious girls, they encounter another difficulty: they seem either presumptuous, as if doubtful of the talents, charm and intelligence of the girls they are advising, or sentimental in assuming that modern girls do not know what it is all about. In Listen Little Girl Munro Leaf, 32-year-old author of Ferdinand (bestselling children's book), avoids these hazards by dismissing moral and emotional considerations at the outset, tells his girls what they can expect to find in Manhattan in the way of jobs, rent, food & lodging. A profound and sympathetic student of Manhattan womanhood, Author Leaf also discusses such feminine concerns as the price of stockings and the number of pairs a girl needs, without giving his book a housewifely air, although he occasionally seems slightly embarrassed by such topics. And although he paints no lurid pictures of big-city sin, he mentions a few tricks and warns girls away from a few professions in a casual and unexcited fashion.

Covering modeling, theatre, and nightclub jobs as possibilities for girls who are beautiful; publishing, advertising and department-store jobs for girls who are brainy; and social work, education, office work and odds & ends for others, Author Leaf finds these fields all overcrowded. Models get $5 or $10 for a sitting, but of 10,000 girls in New York who think they are models, only 200 qualify as professionals. A few make from $5,000 to $10,000 a year, but probably only 15 average $150 a week, and clothes, beauty treatments and agents' fees take a lot of that. As for the theatre, out of 8,400 actors in New York last season, 2,355 got parts, and of these 625 were women. There is more work in nightclubs, but during rehearsals chorus girls are not paid and are compelled to "live on roots and herbs."

A girl trying to break into the publishing business, says Author Leaf, runs into so many brothers, sons, cousins and in-laws of the boss that she soon decides that publishing is as inbred as the Jukes family. As for newspaper work, he calculates that some 2,000 girls in New York hope to land one of the 20-odd jobs now held by women reporters on the eight big dailies. Education and social work look like the best bets to him. Department-store selling he puts at the bottom of the list, because he has seen more usually calm women "knock their nervous systems to hell" in that than in any other job. Giving the little girls credit for being able to take care of themselves, and comparing their possible salaries with New York living costs, Author Leaf tries to show them what they will be up against, rather than warn them off. But since he writes warmly about New York life, and covers the field thoroughly, it is likely that more girls will get ideas from his book than will be frightened away by it.

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