UNKNOWN

Otago Witness, Issue 2734, 8 August 1906, Page 70

UNKNOWN

— A Stenographer's Story of Disappointed

Hopes. — (Written by One of Them.)

From 7 until 9 in the morning you may see them, in the streets, on the burface cars, the elevated, the subway, everywhere in fact, these stenographers of New York. They crowd out of the down town elevated and subway stations in »;ieat throngs, and, hastening feverishry aling through the narrow, crowded streets, are finally sucked in by me yawning c'oors of the enormous buildings that lower at each other across the dirt and tumult - r the street.

.From 5 to 7 at night they are again seen, pouring out of the great doors, crowding into the stations, hanging to straps in the trains and cars; until at last the business traffic subsides and they disappear, only to turn up again on the following morning at the accustomed place and time. They are of all types and nationalities, young and old, pretty and pain, stylish and shabby, gay and scn'bre. There is the tall, stylishlydreased, attractive girl, and again the weary, faded, middle-aged woman who has lost her youth in the service.

— Many Women Attracted to New York.—

A great number of these women are, of course, native New Yorkers; but there is a large and constantly growing percentage of women from the West and the ?"Utn, rr.ost of them stenographers, who leave their homes, if they have any, and come here to Now York, attracted by the rumours of big salaries and great opportunities that are to be found here. Are there such, I wonder, and if so, bow are they obtained ? A girl comes here, say, from one of tbe Western towns, to look for work as stenographer. First of all she hat to get a> room and arrange for board. She discovers that the vary lowest rate for which she can get board and room is 7doi a week, and if she take* a room without board it \i ill cost her not less than 3dol a week, if it i« fit to Hve in. Perhaps if her reseiv« stock of money ie very small she decides that she can not pay 3dol, and instead takes a room of the siie of a. large packing case opening on an airshaft, or lighted only by a alrrTight. There wil! not be loom in this box (or anythjaa

more than a couch bed, a dresser, aDd lit . trunk, and they are a tight fit. This new and unexpected envirounioii* somewhat depresses her at first, but she feels quite certain that it will be on.y temporary. Having unpacked her trunk ani disposed of her belongings as well as possible in this limited space, s-be starts out to look for some of the "gr?sit oppo* • tunities."

— Tricks of Agencies. —

On reading 'over the advertising co'.urmj of the papers she finds there are. wliolc columns of "stenographers wanted.' ami also whole columns if stenographers wlio want work. She thinks this rather strange, but does not allow her mind to dwell too much on the stenographers who want work, and turns her whole attention to th<* people who want stenographers. ' Most of these advertisers require an answer by letter. She writes a carefullypenned and worded reply to "a promising advertisement that reads somewhat lifr« t niS: — "Splendid position for educated, refined youne woman stenographer — liberal salary to Tight person." Inreply, she receives a postal card asking her to call at So-and-So's agency, whither she at onoe betakes herself, hoping that this may pnve to be something good. Arrived there, she finds that the agent has only a 6dol place vacant, but ia expecting a splendid opening to occur shortly with a well-knowr firm. If she will pay Idol as a registration fee the agent will consider himself under a personal obligation to find her just such a place as sRe desires, and she must come 'n again to-morrow sure. When she has. gone the agent sets to work to concoct another advertisement, this time intended for ihw "Situations Wanted" columns. Tiiis new advertisement will read somewhat after this fashion:

A refined, educated, and tfjordughly experienced stenographer, law. literary, medical, brokerage experience, wants position with, first-class firm. Moderate snlnry to start.

— The Average Luck. —

This .probably catches the eye of somebody in search of a stenographer ; then the agent tries to bring the two. together. If he succeeds in getting them to come to an> agreement, the result is that the girl takes a place at a much smaller salary than she had been willing to work for, and has to pay the proceeds of her first week's work to the agent who has been of suck service to her. If he does not succeed, the girl gets no work and tries again, probably paying idol to another agent or to several other agents. Occasionally, of course, a girl who comes a stranger to the city is lucky enough to drop into a well-paying place, but sue'» success is rare. The usual experience is one of long hunting, answering advertisements, and calling on agencies; working in crowded, noisy offices for 6dol or 7dol a week, not being able to get somethinig better, and either staying on there and degenerating into a mere typewriting dr.vtg*, or constantly changing about in the v».n hope each 1 time that the change may bo iir the better.

— Unrest Among stenographers. —

People outside of the city hear about tha constant demand for stenograpl exs i<3 New York ; if they could catch "a glimpse of th« hundreds of unemployed women who throng the office of one typewriter company every morning they might change their minds about this. Perhaps on© cause of the prevalent opinion that stenographers are very much in demand >here is the hict that there is constant unrest in the stenogtaphic world. The workers are continually leaving their places and seeking elsewhere, only to repeat the performance when the new placs has, in its turn, become unbearable. It might be interesting to know why this is

A fact to be noted first of all in regard t> this phenomenon is that it is not the careless, incompetent, an^ uneducated iienographers who are i;i>r.ti.nu-i*J» ed^"'*T" o about in this unsetolx* but '1m vjperior class of workwi, tij* «itti«U*t, conscientious, intelligent, • houshtHl w> men, who make it a point U- tjow thct: business and arv t'aem to p^ncri*. \. Thi<

is the class of women who do not keep their places. This. too. is tiie class of women wlio after a time become anxioias to get out of stenography and the business world altogether, an<i get into some other line ot work that will take them as far away from it as possible. The main reasons for tbi. are as follows :

— Low Pay; Careless Employers. —

First of all, as I have said, it is extremely difficult to get a place that pays any sort of respectable salary. The little 18-year-old New York girl who lives with her parents finds it about all she can do to dress and buy lunches and car fare on the salary that is paid her. What, then, is *be girl to do who is entirely dependent upon herself, and has to pay for board and lodging at New York rates? The superior woman stenographer hears that there is a great call for educated and conscientious workers in New York, and she hastens here, only to find that her class is entirely swamped by the overwhelming numbers "of illiterate and often careless am' empty-headed young girls, most of them having homes in the city, who are glad to work for 6dol, 7dol, or Bdol a week.

She finds, moreover, that the average New York business man is not penetrating enough to distinguish between her and the members of this latter class ; and that even if he did he would rot be inclined to givo her any preference, as he himself is usually most sadly lacking in education ; and since he does not know enough to u?e good Knglish himself, or write a properlyounstructed letter, he can scarcely be expected to know whether his stenographer does so or not.

What he requires is rapidity, the ability in fact to do two persons' work, and if the applicant is very rapid, both in her stenography and her typewriting, she may perhaps get a business position that is fairly remunerative. Unfortunately, many such business positions are accompanied by grave disadvantages. — Lower Pay — Better Surroundings. —

The office is probably noisy and dirty, and constantly invaded by men who smoke vile tobacco, wear their hats, trpnsgress every rule of grammar, and plentifully sprinkle their conversation with slang and profanity. If they have occasion to address her they do so in an off-hand, impersonal way. as though she were a machine put there for general use, or in a personal way that is infinitely more offensive.

On the other hand, if our stenographer finds that she cannot stand this atmosphere, and takes a place in the editorial department of some publishing house, or as private secretary to some man engaged in educational or literary work or something of that description, while she finds the surroundings more congenial and less trying to her nerves and sensibilities, she also finds that the salary diminishes in proportion as the surroundings improve. In addition "to this, she knows that no matter what sort of place she takes or how long she stays in it she can never rise to be anything but a stenographer. She may be a very intelligent and capable woman, but no matter how much she gets to know about the business she will still have to sit and take letters from the dictation of some cigar-smoking assistant manager who perhaps knows a good deal less about it than she does.

— Poorly-trained Stenographers. —

One bears constant complaints on the part of business men of the carelessness and unreliability of stenographers ; and although there are in New York thousands upon thousands of conscientious, kaxdworking, capable girls, who earn a great deal more than they get, yet it is undoubtedly a fact that there are also thousands upon thousands of stenographers who are jiot worth their salt. There is no telling what they might be if they were properly educated and prepared for their work, and then sufficiently paid for their services and treated in a businesslike manner.

The trouble just at present seems to be that a girl is forced out into the world before she has any weapons wherewith to fight it, or even defend herself from it. She no sooner gets through the public school, which, goodness knows, teaches her little enough, than she is sent to a business college for three or six months, and is then considered fully equipped to earn her living. Thereupon a business man, who wants to get his work done for next to nothing, engages her as a stenographer, and when he finds that the work is done badly he feels himself immensely injured and bitterly voices his complaint from the housetop. This sort of thing might be pardonable if it existed only among families that really could not afford to give their daughters better advantages ; but such is not the case. I know of one man who is a college professor drawing a good income, whose daughter, aged 17, is a stenographer in a down-town office getting 7dol a week. — Daughters of the Well-to-do Who Work.— Such cases are not at all rare — the rank;, of stenographers are not by any means recruited exclusively from poor families. It seems to be the accepted thing just now among all classes, except the very rich, that as soon as the daughters are equipped, be it ever so poorly, to earn a livelihood they are sent out to do so, and the fathers who brought them into the world consider themselves thenceforth freed from all responsibility. Girls, too, are impatient to get out and "earn their own living," for of course the father and brothers are earning much less than they would be doing if there were no women in the business world, and hence the girl feels that it is as much her duty as it is her brother's to start out and support herself. A person who does not go about among business offices can have no idea of the immense numbers of women that are employed in them. I know of one publishing house on Twenty-third street that does a fairly large publishine business. In the com-

bined departments of this place, with the exception of the shipping department, there are three males employed, the publisher himself, the 'business manager, and the office boy. The rest of the work is done by about forty women, who work there day after day for sdol, 6doL 7Sol, Bdol, perhaps as high as I2dol a week, and the two women who oversee them get 15dol each.

— Woman's Bush Into Business. —

J do not intend to enlarge here upon the great social problem that this condition of affairs entails, nor on the sort of preparation, physical, mental, and moral, tlxat it is giving to the women who are to be the wives of the men of this generation and the mothers of the next. What I have aimed to do in this article is merely to enumerate the facts and let each person who reads it draw his own conclusions.

A few years ago when women first started going into business life in great numbers there was plenty of very fine talk floating about regarding the independence, the self-reliance, th<. nobility of this class of woman, and the endless vistas of possibilities that were thus opened up to them. To-day, too, one hears a great deal of such talk uttered by theorising men, ministers in the pulpit for instance, and women who have never done a stroke of real work in their lives.

How do the real facts of the case bear it out? Watch the New York stenographers who crowd into the trains every morning and night, ask them how they like their work and how much interest they take in the business, and what .prospects of advancement they have.

—Is the Tide Turning?-

It sounds all very well when you theorise eloquently on this subject ; but here in the city streets and offices the hard facts will keep thrusting themselves under one's nose and distracting the attention from lofty sentiments. She will not always acknowledge it, but I believe that the ruling ambition of every self-re-specting girl who works in an office is to get married as soon as possible and thus get out of it.

Unfortunately, however, the very fact of her being there is the great obstacle that closes the passage of her way out ; for now that the business world is thronged with women men cannot earn large enough salaries to marry on. There is nothing for her to do then but to remain an old maid and keep on grinding out typewritten letters ad infinitum.

The tide, I am glad to say,%is turning, the pendulum is beginning' to swing the other way. Women made a mad rush to get into business ; now they are preparing to make an equally mad rush to get out of it.

I hope they will succeed in doing so. I hope the time is not far away when there will not be a single business woman to be seen on Wall street or Broad street or Xassau street. The business world will be well rid of them, and they of it.