Buffalo Courier from Buffalo, New York • 20

i Page Twelve COURIER MAGAZINE IQF TBE FLAPPER Buffalo Men and Women Believek that Here, at Least, the Daring Young Person Who Has Delighted in Shocking the Qlder Generation for the Last Five I Years, Is Now in the Class With the Great Auk, the Old Fashioned I Waltz, the; Free Lunch, and Other Famous Has-beens, No Flappers among better classes of girls now $ays Miss Anna B. Hickey, of Marriage License Bureau jOr, if itherei are, they aren't getting married Buffalo! employers think Flapper problem has largely A style piwuiuu-r vjuu wuihcu auu puiiticicai leaaers nan ''Court of Ridicule" as most deadly weapon against j. lappensm ana irs consequent evils. The experience of II. L.

Boynton, personnel superintendent of a large Main-street department store, coincides with the experience of Mr. Grabill. He believes also that the frowns of the employers have had a sobering effect on "the girls who work in stores and factories. 1 "The flapper has not had much encouragement from department stores. In our store, for example, we refused to employ bobbed-haired girls until about eighteeri months i ago.

We now forbid the use of cosmetics to excess. That if a girl comes to work looking un- naturally pink-cheeked and: red-lipped, she is advised in a kindly and courteous manner to bei more judicious in her application of cosmetics. "In most of our departments, the flapper type would not be useful to-us. Her personality is not suited to salesmanship. But, to tell the truth, I cannot say honestly that many of the girls who apply here for work can be called flappers.

Perhaps it is because we have discouraged them that they do not come. Most of those who do come are the 'Saturday but even among the Saturday girls, there are not many flappers." Notwithstanding the fact that the flapper appears to be staging a "fadeout," prominent club members, mothers of sons and daughters, feel that the problem is by no means solved. There is still, they feel, grave menace from the lawless tendencies developed in the younger generation. There is necessity for curbing those tendencies arid diverting them into more laudable channels. But how to do it? they ask themselves.

It is the same question which has troubled them since post-war; days when flapperism first; made its appearance upon the scene. And still the. answer is lost in quibbling They have preached, coaxed, moralized and threatened, i But without success. The flapper continued to "flap." Unperturbed, she jingled her earrings, carmined her lips, perched her toque upon' one ear, and flapped her way into pro- SUNDAY MARAGARET BENSTOCkI her dresses short and her stockings rolled, and if at times a bit bf bare knee showed to the world, lit was well protected by coating of rouge. Her cheeks were! as jink as her knees.

Her hat was cocked at an angle to mock thosd who criti cized her. Her earrings jangled at every rtapping step. ner relations with1 mfen were of the good-fellow variety. She never WAS OcaAfioMA Same say that grandma co with th-e best of th refused a drink, a dance, joy tide, a kiss, or a cigarette. Her relations with women were of the nature that women's relations with; women al ways have been and always will be.

Women who are good sports as far as men are concerned iare seldom good sports in their! treatment of other women. This, then, was the flapper, a flamboyant, noisy youhg thing somewhere under twentvi years of age. In external appe iranee at least, she deserves the ast tense. In the seminaries, high fnhools and colleges, you see no sign )f In the business and industr al world, she appears still, a inoulified and somewhat chastened flapper, ii is true, but still a flapper j. Employment manageri )f a number of Buffalo '8 industrial and business organizations, whic i employ large numbers of women and girls, are of the opinion that the flapper is disappearing also from the ranks of the young em ployed: girls.

Without one dissenting voice; they wave her aside as a solved problem. Hal E. Puffer, employment manager of the offices of a large factory, is "reluctant to a4mit that the flapper ever was a problem. The Seneca-street factory has in the department for whieh Sir. Puffer is employment manager aout 1,000 girls.

Mr. Puffer alone has had charge of meeting theni, questioning them, arid deciding fori or against them. lie should know: fsomethnig about changing styles in girls. And he knows more than something. He knows a great deal.

This is what he has to say concerning flappers: "If tliere were a flapper problem, it is The flapper problem, in my opinion, was a styh problem, and we can safely say thaj the style problem is passing. Everyone admits that girls are growing more conservative in their dresu. "Of course, a number still comeiin hre for employment with faces "too highly colored and cljthes cut for BUFFALO adornment rather than service, but they are on the decrease. And often, when we tell them that if they are to be employed they must tone down in their dress and manner, they succeed in following our: instructions satisfactorily. "If the flapper existed to any great extent, wouldn't we hc ia our offices, where there are so "jar girls, see some of the flask? you ir so much about? Wouldn't we us a mess of immorality? Wouldn't we be getting our heads low over the table with the Y.

W. C. A. autl cities and Billy Sunday to see hat could be done te correct these thi gs? So far as we know our girls dr. not drink.

Certainly, we never see; them smoking. We have no problem of immorality. "About five years ago, we taan to get a new type of girl oob-haired and, earringed you might call her the flapper type. So far as appearance gos, that girl is disappearing. As to her little flapper soul, I can't say.

I never believed that the little flapper in her soul was any different or more daring than in the days when grandmother was pink cheeked and and grandfather tried yes, and succeeded, too in a little 'petting' on his own account." -R. F. Bliss, manager of a chain department store, 1 has several theories in regard to Madamoiselle Buffalo Flapper. Orie that she is not to any great extent. Bliss came to Buffalo from New York or Pittsburgh he has managed stores of the same company in both cities and he declares that the flapper in her heydey was far morejjflap-perish and also was represented in greater numbers in those places than in Buffalo.

"They, apply for work here the over-dressed, bighlypainted little girls, but they are not so extreme as those who applied under similar copditions in Pittsburgh or ''New York. The Buffalo girl seems to be a home girl, classified according to type. Not all of them, of course. But there are enough "of them to make the characteristic noticeable. "Fpw flappers come here fori employment, and we don't empoly tpose who do.

A girl of that type won't attend to business. She'll have the young, fellows hanging around in working hoursj and that is absolutely against our rules." Another of Mr. Bliss's flapper theories has to do with her passing. "I believe that the flapper as a type is disappearing with jazz music. From year to year, music is growing sweeter and more rythmical.

From year to year, the girls are toning down. Their clothes are growing more harmonious in color and more graceful in cut. I believe that there is a connection between the two facts that the flapper is passing; with the jazz age or the jazz! age is passing with the flapper. Take your choice." Roy K. Grabill, also manager of a chain department store, believes that the flapper in industry is being forced to mend her ways by the corrective attitude of employers.

He, too, used the sentence used by others who were interviewed: "We refuse to employ them." i "Girls at last are coming to their senses and admitting ithat there is no chance for advancement, or "even employment, in industry as long as they persist in flapperism in its extreme form. i i "They have discovered that employment managers are not dazzled by their gaudy clothes and giddy make-ups, but instead are' prejudiced against the wearers, This is the main reason, in my opinion, for! the disappearance of the iflapper type among working girls, i They are not all gone yet but they are going-r-going 5 By BETH STEWART AND IF you are weary of the flapper and her flapping little ways, sit in at the marriage license bureau, any day of the week. For ithough you don't escape her in the streets of Buffalo, you'll find that she is not often' among those who fill in the blanks of the" License to blanks at the city hall. Anna li. Hickey, clerk of the marriage license has better opportunity to study girls than anyone else in the city.

The statement is sweeping, but 'soberly so; Iler clientele is confined not to one or two classes, but to all classes. Her wares, however hard: the moralists may shake their solemn heads, find an increasing market from year to year. A statistic in proof 500 more marriage licenses issued in Buffalo in 1923 than in 1922, arid 1924, well over January, 1923. 1 i So when Miss Hickey; says slowly and thoughtfully: And then again: Flappers?" i 'i I And when she shakes her heid emphatically and says: "Few of them come in here," a sign of the times has been indicated. Deductions from Miss Hickey 's further observations point to the -conclusion that the flapper is, staging a vanishing act in three scenes.

In scenes one and twd she vanished, more or less unostentatiously for flapperj from the ranks of the so- called upper and middle classes. At; present, scene three seems to be in progress, with the flapper still on the stage against a backdrop depicting "a humble cottage in one of the poorer of the town." But alrtfady the flush on "her cheeks is beginning to fade from the once popular, orange shade to the subtler rose, and her earrings have a faint unsubstantial tinkle. "There is nq sign of flapperism among the girls of the better Miss Ilickev declares tosi- tively. "They are quiet in their dress and modest in their manner. The few flappers who call for licenses are obviously girls of the lower class." i i Every girl, however modern her creed may be, is willing to take a chance On one of these passports of uncertain destination.

It may lead to happiness, or. to sorrbw, or to plain boredom, but with a pxeseat-able man for: a companiorv, is Worth trying out. That is a eeoret which every woman knows and few women admit. Flappers never came in large numbers to the pubUcly.scoffed, privately-reverenced sanctum of the marriage license clerk. Now they are even less frequently represented.

Can it be that; the flapper unpopular even with the youth of her ii v. i own vau it uc wiav that great uncharted psychological area, the; flapper; mind, has awakened to this realization? Can it be: that the; flapper, acting on this realiza-: tion, ha decided to accept, with as good a grace as possible, the fate 'of the pterodactyl, the great auk, and the dodo bird, all of which van-! ished with the Vanishing of an un-! couth age? I i The; flapperj: as a flapper, came into existence shortly after the t--r 1 1 txt I. 1 A 1 chiefly a lack of good taste in XL 11. V0J M41U lUUlk JU her manner. She wore her goloshes unbuckled and from their la ping noise derived her name.

She wote OH HOT" In '21 she was "some, bdby' but today the flapper is passe; miscuous petting parties and booze orgies, without a single; serious thought ruffling the curly Slocks of her bobbed head. And now comes the great revolution which mothers hope will eventually eradicate the last vestige of "flapperdom." It is "the cafl to arms of -those members of the younger generation who have not yielded the lure bf the?" ultra" and the thrill of "flapping." They have boldly taken the matter into their own hands and already have succeeded within a few short months in bettering a condition which1 ha alarmed the mothers or. years, i (Continued on Next.