THE GIRL CLERK.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 478, 10 April 1909, Page 10

THE GIRL CLERK.

HER PLACE IN THE CIVIL SERVICE. > > a A shrill, excited little feminine scream in j a corridor onco startled the sober secretary s of a Civil Service Department, which cm- c ploys about a dozen girls. It was quito a \ novel sound in the gra%'o old building, and j to the ears of authority almost as unsuited \ as if somebody should laugh in tho King's , Court. The secretary say that, a revolution s was threatened in the discipline and busi- j ness of the Department buildings, if silvery . shrieks and laughter were to peal at inter- , vals from a score of girls in corridors. But , how to reprimand the offender. wbilo retain- , ing his own dignity? Tho secretary acted , like a man of tact. Ringing for the senior , girl clerk in tho Department, he said to her '. very gravely: "You had better speak to tho j girl who made that noiso. ' Tell her that j girls in the.Civil Service must be dignified, and that conduct of that kind is not digni- , fled." The sonior girl bowed assent, the j secretary heard no more about the incident, and from that day tho girls of his Department —and of all the Civil Service DepaTt- . ments, for that matter—havo been decorum itself. _ | The girl clerk is a modern development of tho service. Ten or twelve years ago, when ! tho pioneers of her quiet invasion crept as unobtrusively as possible to tho desk, men . officers wero by no means suro that they . would liko tho innovation. A good deal of ; restraint was imposed by the now companion- ■ ship. Smith know that when tho girl cadet; : came, ho would miss Brown's jokes, that ; wiled away t'hs hour from nine to ten very pleasantly for him, but would drive the girl cadet home to Auckland or the Bluff, if sho overheard the least of them. It was a public office, he wondered how lie would restrain some members of tho public, who had learned to vie with Brown in merry stories. Ho wondered also how ho would osprcss his proper mind henceforth to tho blundering office boy, for which he had a torso capacity that pleased him. When the girl cadet arrived, the whole staff of the Department wero as dcspe:ately anxious to get a glanco at her and. form an impression as if their fates depended on it, and they generally admired her craft when they discovered that she had arrived at the office, five minutes before any of them, and was seated with her back to the door. It was two weeks before the girl cadet arrived with the rest, and by that timo she was no longer an object of curiosity. At tho present time, there is a fair sprinkling of women in tho Service, and it is possible, that they have had a very good influence. Civil Service officials, as a class,, are about tho most polite, and courteous, and obliging officials that one meets, and it is reasonable to suppose that tho girl cadet may deserve some of the credit for this. It is suggested that' somo women servants of tho State may Iks losing their positions soon' under tho retrenchment scheme; that some of them may go before men, as having no ono but themselves to support. It would seem, however, that tho women in most Departments, though they are women, have known how to "make their own wicket good." If it devolves on heads of Departments to say what officers they can do without, most of them will bo very unwilling to sacrifice their girls, for the simple reason that they know their value. Thoy aro not deficient in ability, aud they have advantages of character over men —at all events, over young men. "Tho girl of 17 or 18," said a Departmental "head," who has passed Service examination, has a mind far more mature, generally speak- ' ing, than a boy of tho same ago, and is [ capable for some time of doing a better class ' of work. Moreover, the girls do not want 1 to go outsido.to smoke a cigarette and talk 1 football. They stick closer to their work " than boys. Wo find that as clerks the girls aro admirable; we have not had ono that was ' not admirable. And this Department has • employed girls for ten or twelve years. ' Tho advantages and disadvantages of girl clerks wero well summed up by this authority, : as the result of his experience. A disadvantage was that they could not do all the things that a boy could do. Again, thero was in many Departments a certain amovmt of overtime to be worked, of which girls could not take their share. Also, a proportion of the girls were doing work which -might bo done by married' men. For ono reason and another, no girl had stayed very long in this Department; the_ longest term was seven years, iu a single instance. The first arrival, who was particularly clever, had left to pursue a university courso and becomo a toachcr in a high school. Another girl had married and left tho Department, and another had left on account of ill-health. But boys had also left to Ixicomo teachers and for health reasons. Several girls had obtained transfers in order to bo nearer to their homes, and ho thought that this desiro was stronger in girls than in boys, and was, officially, a disadvantage. It was probably a great help to tho girls, and to thoir families, to have positions in the Service. He had known ono case in which a girl's whole family wero dependent on her earnings. Probably their occupations made tho girls less likely to get married. They wero not able to think so much about marriago when thoir minds worp occupied with work, and they did not havo tho samo opportunities of going out and about, and being attractive to young mon. They wero also, of courso, nioro independent. Two or three of the Departmental offices in Wellington havo about a dozon girls on their staff, and in tho Post Office thero aro - moro. Thero is a " shorthand writer and typistc" in most offices. The post office girls bcliovo that thoir positions aro fairly safe, because thero is always plenty of work i for thorn to do. Tho postal authorities ado mit that girls aro quito a useful factor in thoir largo organisation. _ Girl cadets and clerks got tho samo salaries as mon, under tho Act, and the remuneration of tho stenox graphers and typistes seems to avorago about •i £120, and runs as high as £185 in rare cases.