Edna Ferber: Fanny Herself

13. CHAPTER THIRTEEN (continued)

"It seems to me there's room for improvement in our, card index file system. It's thorough, but unwieldy. It isn't a system any more. It's a ceremony. Can't you get a corps of system sharks to simplify things there?"

She went into detail and passed on to the next suggestion.

"If the North American Cloak & Suit Company can sell mail order dresses that are actually smart and in good taste, I don't see why we have to go on carrying only the most hideous crudities in our women's dress department. I know that the majority of our women customers wouldn't wear a plain, good looking little blue serge dress with a white collar, and some tailored buttons. They want cerise satin revers on a plum-colored foulard, and that's what we've been giving them. But there are plenty of other women living miles from anywhere who know what's being worn on Fifth avenue. I don't know how they know it, but they do. And they want it. Why can't we reach those women, as well as their shoddier sisters? The North American people do it. I'd wear one of their dresses myself. I wouldn't be found dead in one of ours. Here's a suggestion:

"Why can't we get Camille to design half a dozen models a season for us? Now don't roar at that. And don't think that the women on western ranches haven't heard of Camille. They have. They may know nothing of Mrs. Pankhurst, and Lillian Russell may be a myth to them, but I'll swear that every one of them knows that Camille is a dressmaker who makes super-dresses. She is as much a household word among them as Roosevelt used to be to their men folks. And if we can promise them a Camille-designed dress for $7.85 (which we could) then why don't we?"

At the very end, to her stenographer's mystification, she added this irrevelant line.

"Seven dollars a week is not a living wage."