GOOD-BYE LADY CLERK.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLII, Issue 99, 28 April 1908, Page 6

GOOD-BYE LADY CLERK.

" For lady clerks there seems less demand than formerly." This extract from the report of the Employment Department of the London Chamber of •Commerce reads oddly at a time like this when the papers are full of the demands of the Suffragettes, and the claims of women to full equality with man.

Women in America avow that there are only nine occupations left which they have not invaded. They have women as engine drivers, blacksmiths, dynamite manufacturers, well-drillers, and even here, in steady-going Britain, the law, the Army, and the Navy are about the only professions still sacred to the mere man.

And yet-—cruel and ungallant as the statement may seem—the employment of women in competition with men has passed its zenith, and is now distinctly on the decline.

This is specially noticeable in the continental countries. In France a report has been presented to the Government proposing the elimination of women from the service of the French Post Office. It was in 1893 that women were first employed iri this capacity, and the experiment has been carefully watched. The result arrived at is that, although their work is individually cheaper, yet there is no real saving, as it takes three women to do the work of two men. Also the lady employees require very much more leave than the men. In one year the working feminine staff, numbering 5,470, received 161,013 days leave, or an average of about thirty days each.

The Director-General of Italian Telegraphs has, after mature consideration, came to a similar conclusion. Out of 100 lady clerks employed m his department twenty-three were, during the year, absent as many as 200 times, sixteen more than 150, seven more than 100, and four between 30 and 100 times. He declares that woman's work is useless to the fetaoo, and that the employment of women m all State departments should be abolished.

Turn to Germany, and we have much the same state of things. Up

to a couple of years ago the traveller on the Prussian railway lines usually purchased his ticket from a lady booking clerk. Towards the end of 1906 the Minister of Railways issued an edict that the lady clerks should be superseded by men. The change has been ascribed to the frequent quarrels between the women and the men employees., and the consequent tears and hysterics on the part of the lady clerks. There were also many complaints from the public as to rudeness from the ladies in charge of the booking offices. Ticket purchasers in a hurry were apt to get on the nerves of the women clerks.

The Parisian lady cab" drivers, about whom there has been so much talk in the daily papers, are already decreasing in numbers, and it is believed that in a couple of years from now there will be none left. The pretty ones get married, and others find the life too hard.

In many industries which were at one time almost a monopoly of women, men are slowly displacing the other sex. Take the lace trade,, for instance. Within the past fifty years the number of women employed has fallen from's2,ooo to 24,000, while the number of men has increased quite 50 per cent. . On the whole, men show a strong tendency to leave badly paid trades for those in which the pay is better; but among women there is no such tendency. The average woman takes the work nearest to hand and makes no attempt to find the industry or Erofession which she personally is best tted for.

The manager of a large London business house, who has lately got rid of women clerks and gone back to men, declares that his lady employees wished to be paid like men, but treated as women. They did routine work well enough, but had no initiative, and were apt to turn sulky if taken to task for mistakes or deficiencies. Of course, there were a few brilliant exceptions; but, so far as averages went, he believed his remarks to be accurate. .

Another objection which he entertained to the employment of women was that just as a girl was becoming useful she generally got married and left. He had all the trouble of training her, and got nothing in return for his trouble.1

It is another small but significant fact that the travelling scholarship offered by,the Salters' Company every year, which has hitherto been competed for on an equal footing by both sexes, has recently been limited to male students only. This scholarship is given for proficiency in modern languages, and has frequently been won by women.

. Taking all these facts into consideration, it seems quite plain that the feminine invasion has reached and passed its climax, and that women will in course of time return to their proper sphere as recommended by the German Kaiser, namely their children, their kitchens, their religion, and their clothes. '