American boys were at war in 1918, but women were not up to filling their tasks

It was September 1918, the U.S. was at war, hundreds of thousands of our men were in France, the workforce was depleted and Lord & Taylor was forced to make a difficult decision: a Mrs. Wolf was named to the post of display manager. “As an experiment that had not been attempted in this country on a large scale,” The Merchants Record & Show Window noted, “it was viewed with great interest.” Unfortunately, although Mrs. Wolf “had some clever ideas,” the great experiment failed. “The operation of the display manager's department, day in and day out, represents far more than (some clever ideas),” the magazine wrote. Evidently, it represents “a kind of hustle, origination and labor that is hardly suited to a woman.” Mrs. Wolf was retained by Lord & Taylor, “but has nothing to do with windows.” She was succeeded as display manager by John J. Hannagan, some years earlier the display manager for R.H. Macy & Co., “who has many friends that will be glad to see him once more connected with the trade.” Fortunately for retail, the war ended two months later, the boys returned and stores didn't have to shoehorn the fair sex into jobs requiring “a kind of hustle . . . and labor.”