The Girl Who Earns Her Own Living

Front matter

The Girl Who Earns Her Own Living

By Anna Steese Richardson

New York B. W. Dodge & Company 1909

Preface

According to the report issued by the Census Bureau in 1907, entitled "Women at Work," the census enumerators of 1900 found that nearly five million women and girls of the United States were engaged in what are known as gainful occupations, and were therefore either partly or wholly self-supporting. Three-fifths of these workers were found in six occupations, domestic service leading, with farm labor a close second because of the large number of colored women employed on Southern plantations; dressmaking, laundry work, teaching and actual farming followed in the order named. Seventh in point of numbers employed were the textile mill operatives. Saleswomen came tenth in numerical order, and office workers still further down the list.

At the time this census was taken, there were 23,485,559 women in the United States, of whom 20.6 per cent. were engaged in gainful occupations. Students of economics and sociology, who have gathered statistics regarding women wage-earners since that census was taken, an- nounce that on January 1, 1909, the number of women employed on wages or any form of regular pay in the United States had leaped to six millions. At the present rate of increase, when the next census is taken, the number of women workers will have increased out of all proportion to the increase in population.

In other words, the feminine conquest of the industrial world in America is practically complete, and woman's financial independence is practically assured. She has invaded and now occupies firmly all but nine of the 303 fields of wage-earning listed by the United States Census Bureau. Furthermore, her education and interests all tend toward the evacuation of domestic service and farm labor in favor of the various trades and professions, or a distinctly mercantile or commercial career.

Question girls graduating from district village or city schools, and you cannot fail to mark this tendency. Department editors of women's magazines are deluged with letters from country girls all over the United States, begging for information as to gainful operations in manufacturing or business centers.

In a mid-West city, I studied the bent heads of girls in an upper grade grammar class, taking their final examinations.

"How many of these girls will enter the high school?" I asked.

"Ten per cent.," answered the principal. "Fifty per cent. will go into stores as cash-girls and wrappers, or take up the study of stenography. The remaining 40 per cent. will find employment in factories or in dressmaking or millinery shops as apprentices.

The country over, only one girl out of every hundred entering the elementary schools completes the high school course. This means that 99 out of every 100 leave school at the expiration of their last year in the grammar schools, or even sooner.

What becomes of the ninety and nine? For a time, at least, the vast majority pursue some gainful occupation and then marry. During the period of wage-earning, the ninety and nine want to secure the highest possible pay.

In the last sentence lies the excuse for this book. It has been written to meet the needs of the American girls graduating from grammar or high school and facing the problem of self-support. It has been written to answer the question: "How shall I earn my living?" a question which is hurled at every school-teacher, every writer for women, every editor of a magazine or newspaper in the United States to-day.

For the past five years I have been answering that question in personal letters written to more than ten thousand girls. These answers, and the result of five years of investigation, I am giving in this book. The chapters are not arranged in the order of occupation named by the United States Census, but according to the number of questions received concerning the gainful occupations which ambitious girls desire to enter.

Each chapter has been written with the hope that it may make clear to would-be workers the personal qualifications needed to succeed in a trade, profession or commercial career, the time and the money required for preparation, the best method of securing a position when that preparation is completed, the salaries paid, and the chances for advancement.

If this book shows one girl the folly of entering upon a career for which she is unsuited, and if it helps another girl to find the work for which she is best qualified by temperament and training, it will have accomplished its object.

In conclusion, I desire to express to the editors of the Woman's Home Companion and the Philadelphia Press, my appreciation for permission to use material published in their columns, where an unusual amount of space is allotted to the problems of the self-supporting woman.

Stenography

"When in doubt, study stenography," has been the motto of the would-be business girl for the past ten years, with the result that thousands of young women, never intended by education, training or natural ability to become stenographers, have reduced office wages and overcrowded business marts, while hundreds of their sisters, who might develop into admirable office workers, have drawn back, alarmed by the ever-increasing army of incompetents.

There is room in the business world for the competent, earnest stenographer, and opportunities for advancement were never better nor more numerous than to-day. There is no reason at all for the existence of the incompetent worker. She will find thousands there before her.

Please bear in mind that stenography is a trade, and you must work at it months, and even years, before you become an expert and draw the same salary an expert milliner or fitter does. There is no royal road to success in stenography simply because your parents can afford to pay for your lessons. By earnest study and practice you can advance yourself more rapidly than can any teacher or school in America.

Perhaps you have decided that you are what might be termed a "born stenographer." Then you possess the following characteristics:

You are accurate. Stenography is built on accuracy.

You have great power of concentration. Without that you will never master the mechanical side of stenography or develop the fundamental principles of shorthand.

You are neat. No employer of any standing will send out letters daubed with blots and blurs from erasing and rewriting.

You are a good speller and grammarian, and have a fair knowledge of English. If you cannot spell correctly writing longhand, how much more confused will you become when you have to transcribe stenographic notes? Neither is there time in a busy office for you to consult a dictionary.

You are close-mouthed. The stenographer of even a small and unimportant firm is often en- trusted with secrets that hold success or failure for her employer. If you are the sort of girl who simply must tell some one everything you know, don't try to be a stenographer.

You have quickness of mind and movement. Without these you will find it difficult to take erratic and sometimes almost inaudible dictation without annoying your employer by questions.

You have good eyesight; or if you have any visual defect, it can be minimized by learning what is known as the touch system on the machine, and using glasses while at work. A stenographer or office assistant of any sort uses her eyes practically eight hours a day.

And of course your hearing is perfect.

Does this list of natural qualifications sound formidable? Then do not take up stenography, for as sure as you think any one of them unimportant, so surely will you drift into the rank of incompetents.

Perhaps you possess these qualities, or are willing to acquire them by study and practice. Then how shall you begin?

If you are attending the public schools of your city, and planning to take stenography a year or two from now, do not wait. If your school offers stenography as an elective branch, take it by day. If not, enter an evening class two or three nights in the week, and study stenography slowly and conscientiously, during your last year or two in day school. If it is not taught free in any of your city schools, then see what the Young Women's Christian Association or some working-girl's organization offers you in the way of a night class at reasonable rates. It will take from seven months to one year for you to learn thoroughly a good method of shorthand in this way, but in the end, working slowly but earnestly, you will have absorbed the fundamental principles of what is nothing more nor less than a new language. In fact, Dickens is said to have called shorthand "harder than ten new languages." At Cooper Institute, in New York City, where a generous endowment has established a free course, no pupil is permitted to complete the lessons in less than a year, which would indicate that "get-your-diploma-quick" methods in stenography do not pay.

If you live in a small town, and have not the money to pay your way through a city business college, then learn stenography through some reliable correspondence school. When you feel well-grounded in the rudiments, take a few special lessons for speed. The only assistance you will need for home study consists of a hired machine, and some member of the family to dictate to you.

If you have funds to attend a business col- lege, select a small one where you will receive individual instruction, and a school where only stenography, typewriting, spelling and English are taught. The average employer gives preference to the girl grounded in stenography over one who has a smattering of bookkeeping, stenography and general office work. Beware of the school that offers a diploma at the end of three months.

Be sure you read your notes, even single words, as you are learning.

This is the secret of quick, clean transcription. Of what avail is it to write a hundred words a minute and then take thirty minutes trying to decipher those same hundred words? Nothing is more detrimental to your interests than slow transcription.

Do not neglect your typewriting. Select one of the standard machines, and practice on it until you become rapid and accurate, and know every trick of the machine. When you are ready for a position, the knowledge of the machine will be of enormous value to you. Nearly all agencies of typewriter builders maintain an employment bureau, and the girl who is an expert on their machine is always recommended first. After taking an examination you can enroll at these employment agencies without charge.

Most excellent positions are secured through advertisements. If an employer asks for a personal interview, be on hand at the first hour named, not the last, and be prepared to take any test which may await you. If he asks for an application by mail, make this as brief as possible and to the point. State your qualifications, including speed in taking dictation, the machine you use, and your references.

A very good time for an out-of-town girl to apply for work in a large city, like New York, Boston or Chicago, is July ist, when regular stenographers begin to take vacations. Agencies then enroll "substitutes." A girl who is quick and adaptable will be kept busy all summer as substitute; then in the fall a regular position is sure to crop up in one of the offices where she substituted to the satisfaction of all concerned.

The small-town girl coming to the city will find that most of the advertisers offer six or eight dollars a week. If she is in dire need of a position, she must start at this salary and then watch for something better. If she really is an expert, she can find something better by waiting, provided she enrolls with the right agency and makes a favorable impression.

Fifteen dollars a week is the average salary of a competent girl in New York. The exceptional girl works her way up as high as twenty-five or thirty dollars a week. In many small cities a girl is compelled to start at five dollars a week, no matter what her ability; but even here there are opportunities for advancement, which depend entirely upon the girl.

In a few offices the phonograph has replaced stenographers, but it has not yet come into general use, nor does it promise to do so. The girl who transcribes phonograph records does not need to know stenography. Her employer, at his leisure, dictates his letter to a sensitized phonograph record. The phonograph machine is then set beside the operator's typewriter. She starts and stops the dictation or alters the speed at her will by means of a pedal. Both ears are covered by receivers such as telephone operators use. They are exactly like those employed in the penny arcades when you listen to phonograph music.

The operator, concentrating on what comes to her over the wire, transcribes this directly on the typewriter. This work requires perfect hearing, remarkable powers of concentration, and quick wit to separate sentences and to punctuate, in case the man dictating does not furnish paragraphs and punctuation. In this work men have been more successful than women, who generally find phonograph dictation nerve-racking. The salary paid is about the same as that for general stenographic work, $15 a week.

The girl who wishes to use stenography as the first step in a business career is the girl who is business-like from the very beginning.

First, she makes sure of her trade, stenography, before she applies for a position. Then she selects her position with judgment. She does not accept the first offer of work unthinkingly, unquestioningly.

If she desires to advance rapidly she seeks a position with a small concern, where she will not lose her individuality, and where she will come in direct contact with her employers. The employer is always looking for good people to advance; but often where there are chiefs and various assistants between stenographer and employer, the latter does not know that good timber is going to waste in his forest of office clerks.

If she is interested in a certain line of business or a certain profession, she seeks her position where the work will be congenial. If she has the commercial instinct, she will advance more rapidly with a wholesale cloth, shoe or lace house than with a publishing house. If she thinks she would make a good saleswoman, let her enter a real-estate office and study land values, rental problems, commissions, etc., while she handles the firm's correspondence. The stenographer has the very best opportunities for grasping the firm's method and details of the business, because she can study the situation from both sides of the correspondence.

If she means to be a lawyer, then by all means she should seek a position with a law firm, and, if possible, with some bright, ambitious lawyer who has not yet acquired an influential partner or a corporation position and a staff of clerical help. If she shows a natural grasp of legal problems, her employer will be the first to find this out.

Many girls start wrong. They want a position so badly that they do not stop to investigate the conditions under which they are to work. Do not make this mistake. Go into details with your prospective employer. Have a very clear understanding with him as to hours, half holidays and vacations, your hour for lunch, and extra pay allowed for overtime, especially in the evening. Your employer will not resent this demand for a perfect understanding. Rather he will respect you the more for asking it in advance, instead of accepting the position blindly and then complaining afterward about the hours, etc.

After having been informed as to hours and having accepted them as satisfactory, keep them. If you live at a distance and know that you cannot get to the office as early as the man asks, tell him so and decline the position. Do not take the place and then invent fresh excuses daily.

Directly you begin your work, study the technical phrases peculiar to the trade or profession or line of goods of which you must write day after day. Every trade or profession has these phrases. It is yards and bolts in dry-goods, pounds and barrels in groceries. You will have certain regular correspondents, too. Be accurate in the use of firm-names and addresses, so that when your chief tells you to write the "Browns" to hurry up that order of wire nails you will know that it is James Hayden Brown & Son without asking him which Brown or having to hunt through the files. And if your new employer says Brown Bros., and no more, it is your business to find out somewhere, somehow, in the main office, who Brown Bros. are, and where to direct their letter. If you are looking for advancement do not turn the question-mark on your employer. He hires you to save him trouble and annoyance. If you cannot imagine what he means, make a guess, until you can reach the other room to ask the other clerks.

If sometimes you have to play the rôle of office boy and meet callers, learn to do this properly. Don't go to your employer's private office and say: "There's a man wants to see you."

The girl who does not know enough to find out who the man is and what right or object he has to interrupt her employer will never be paid several thousand dollars a year to stand between the public and that employer if some day he becomes great enough to need a confidential secretary to shield him.

If you come in direct contact with patrons of the firm, learn their names and never forget them. A regular patron considers a girl clever who always remembers his name and receives him courteously.

Dress to suit your position. If you work in a dirty office, such as a printing concern, wholesale grocery or a hardware shop, wear skirts that clear the ground by at least three inches; but if you are employed in the private office which has been well furnished and nicely carpeted, wear longer skirts, not trains, but cut to escape the ground. Your employer will want you, like furniture and pictures, to dress in harmony with the furnishings of his office. Avoid garish colors. Be dignified in your dress as well as your manner. Do not consider that money spent on office clothes is wasted. It will bring you better returns than money spent on party frocks or feather-trimmed hats.

Be immaculately neat about your person, especially your hair and your hands. Radiate health and faith in yourself. Do not talk of your domestic troubles nor your ailments. The girl who is always ill, however slightly, who details her aches and her quarrels with her dressmaker, arid neighborhood gossip to her fellow-clerks, or even to her chief, if he allows her to talk on such subjects, is not in line for promotion. Men promote girls who have the health to do more work' not those who complain of being tired from what they are doing already.

Business colleges and commercial schools, however thorough, generally neglect one branch in preparing girls for office work. Perhaps the word "branch" is misleading. Properly speaking, they fail to train or develop the bump of discretion. They preach accuracy, but they forget to inculcate the golden gift of silence. Many a graduate, wise in stenographic pot-hooks and rapid on the typewriter, has lost her first position, and more, because she did not realize that there is a time to talk and a time to keep silent.

There are times when to tell what you know is almost criminal. Your employer must trust you more or less if you are his stenographer or secretary. Even small matters, appealing to you as unimportant, may be vital to him. You are not the judge. In silence lies safety.

A lawyer, who was just making a name for himself, was blessed, or cursed, with a jealous wife. His private stenographer knew this and used rare discretion in replying to telephone calls, to which his wife was particularly given.

The day came when this girl was taken ill. Her substitute, selected from the main office, was a woman of thirty, the talkative kind. The third day after her promotion, the wife called the lawyer up by telephone during the noon hour. The substitute stenographer answered-as follows:

"No, Mr. J. is not in. He has gone out to lunch. No, I don't know where. Oh, is this Mrs. J.? Well, of course, I can teil you. He has gone out with Mrs. Bull, the woman who owns those big mines in Nevada, whose case your husband has just taken."

The old stenographer would have answered briefly that Mr. I had gone out to lunch and would not be back until two. The absolutely unasked and unnecessary information furnished by the new girl caused a domestic cyclone. The husband's privilege of showing courtesy to an important client was questioned, and when he resented interference on his wife's part, she actually went to the client's hotel and made a scene. The lawyer lost his client, the Western woman lost the services of a capable attorney, and the wife lost her husband's respect—all because a silly, talkative woman of thirty did not appreciate the fact that silence is a golden gift.

Another girl lost an excellent position through just such futile chatter. Her employer had gone out, and a most personable young man called. She was quite alone, her notes had all been transcribed, and she had forgotten to bring down a new novel.

Informed that her employer was not in, the young man turned to leave, but, seizing the first conversational straw that blew her way, she exclaimed: "Oh, you are not Mr. Beveridge, then?"

The young man shook his head, but paused with his hand on the door-knob.

"I just thought you might be, because Mr. Blank has been expecting Mr. Beveridge for several days, and I know he would want him to wait."

The young man leaned against the door and remarked that she had a very pleasant office. His desire to hurry seemed to have fallen from him. When he went away he had a pretty good idea why his chief competitor, Beveridge, was mixing in with Blank. And the girl lost her position, because in her frantic effort to make conversation she had dropped just enough clues to her employer's affairs to make him trouble.

As a rule, the woman who advances most rapidly in her trade or business is the one who talks the least while on duty. This does not mean being stupid when addressed, but simply in knowing just when to stop talking, how to talk intelligently on topics connected with the business, and how to ayoid personalities which are dangerous and banal.

Trust no confidant with the affairs of your employer.

"Let out that girl with the green dress and the red hair—right over there—at the second desk," said the senior partner of a large concern one day as he came in from lunch. The man addressed followed his employer into the latter's private office and closed the door behind him. "I beg your pardon, Mr. M. for questioning your orders, but Miss Brown is one of our most rapid workers2"

"And a dangerous girl to have in our office. My boy came in here to-day and bothered me just when I was working at some important papers. He wanted some clothes or something or the sort for a college jamboree, and I told him, with strong trimmings, to get out. I want domestic and family questions settled where they belong, in our home, and not at my office during business hours. That was all there was to our row.

"That girl had lunch with a man at my restaurant to-day, and I was just a few feet from her, screened by some palms. I heard her tell that man about a sensational quarrel between me and my boy over a chorus girl. The boy is singing in the chorus of his class show. That was all she caught of our high words 'chorus' and she goes out of here to talk scandal. If she will enlarge on what she catches of my private affairs, she will do the same with our business affairs, on which she is well posted. Let her out—she is dangerous.

That is the general verdict on the girl who carries tales—she is dangerous.

I hear girls say: "But the men drew us out." So they do, and laugh at you for being so easily misled. Many a girl has lost a good position because she has allowed some man to draw her out and to use the information thus gained for his own advancement.

Salesmanship

In every city of any size the public schools are sending forth, at the end of each school year, hundreds of girls who must earn their living, or part of it, immediately, and yet who have absolutely no training for a business or professional career. Some of these girls graduate from the high schools, others go no further than the highest elementary or grammar grade. And none of them has either the time or money to take a special course or to serve a longdrawn, unpaid apprenticeship.

These girls have good health, a reasonable amount of common sense, ordinary intelligence, a knowledge of elementary English branches, willingness, and the desire to learn.

Where will this human raw material find a market?

In retail establishments, selling goods.

I hear a murmur of disapproval rising, from girls who already stand behind the counter, but despite their murmurings I propose to continue this practical talk on salesmanship for ambitious, inexperienced girls.

When I told an acquaintance that I intended to advise the untrained, unequipped girl in need of a position to seek one behind the counter, she gave me a glance which held both pity for my ignorance and scorn for apparent indifference to the fate of the girls who will read this article.

"Well, if you knew the work as I do you would never advise any girl to go into a store. I've been in this store seven years. I'm getting ten dollars a week, and I'll never get any more. It's just drudgery, cross customers, spiteful floor-walkers, and no appreciation or thanks from any one."

Now it just happens that I have stood behind the counter and know just what I am advising girls to do. Ninety saleswomen out of every hundred will echo the sentiments expressed by the girl quoted above. The other ten have either secured promotion or see it looming up joyously in the near future.

Any sort of wage-earning may degenerate into drudgery. We make our lives, in shop or store or office, drudgery or pleasure by the way we tackle the work. The secret of finding either drudgery or pleasure in work lies in ourselves.

Given average intelligence, good health and a brave spirit, and yoai can transform the drudgery of life behind the counter into success. But of course if, like the girl already quoted, you intend to lean back against the shelving and say: "Well, I have gone as far as I can go, so what's the use of trying?" you will not progress.

It is for the girl who must work that I am writing this article, not for the girl who wants to earn a little pin money; for the girl who must secure some sort of a salary from the very start of her business life, not the girl whose parents can afford to send her through an art school, a business college or a course in domestic science. This talk is with the girl who is face to face with the problem of clothing and food and a roof over her head.

We will start by assuming that you have a neat appearance, good manners, and a clear handwriting and are quick at figures. These are valuable assets.

If you live in or near a good-sized city, first make the round of the stores there. Study the appearance of the girls already employed, and the conditions under which they work. You will soon learn whether seats are provided behind counters, whether the counters and shelving are so arranged that the girls between them have room to work comfortably, whether the light and air are as good as one can expect to find in the modern store. In your inexperience these may seem like trifles, but once you get on the other side of the counter you will find that these very trifles have much to do with making your daily life livable. Many of the better stores have yielded to public opinion, or rather the pressure of their customers, and have installed stools or upturned boxes for the use of the saleswomen. Others still maintain the barbarous custom of expecting clerks to remain standing from morning until night.

It is very easy to learn whether the girls are well or ill-treated in a store. When shopping, start a chat with one of the clerks, and you will soon learn the character of the store's management.

This preliminary line of inquiry is important. No girl should rush blindly into a position. Managers are interested in the applicant who seems to know something about the store.

If you are a high school graduate, and have a mature appearance, you can apply at once for the position of salesgirl. If you are not over sixteen, fresh from the grammar school or even a lower grade, you must start as a cash-girl, a wrapper, or a bundle inspector. In all the modern, well-managed stores young girls are started in this way, and are trained for the work, and in a large auditorium theoretical instructions and lectures are given. The beginner generally receives three dollars a week, and is promoted as fast as she displays ability.