Women Workers in Seven Professions Part 27

There is every variety of price at the various technical training schools all over the country, from a guinea to 100. With regard to the training given in non-technical schools, the capable head of a well-equipped West End typing office writes:

"It is a pity the ordinary schools are taking it up. I know of at least one so-called secondary school which makes a speciality of 'Commercial Training.' The girls who take up the subject are quite the wrong kind, with absolutely no real education,... and are ready to accept anything in the way of salary. The really good schools where the girls remain till they are 18 or 19 give a better training, of course.... But I do not think the schools have any right to undertake a specialised vocational training; it must lower the standard.

Every other profession has its special training after a good general education has been acquired."

The best-known societies for protecting the interests of women clerks and secretaries are, the a.s.sociation of Women Clerks and Secretaries at 12 Buckingham Street, Strand, and the National Union of Clerks at 186-188 Bishopsgate Street. These are the only approved societies under the National Insurance Act.

The a.s.sociation of Women Clerks and Secretaries has been in existence for eight years, and during the last year has more than trebled its members, the clerks' att.i.tude towards combination having recently changed somewhat, in London at any rate. The a.s.sociation has a devoted secretary and does excellent work. Its aims are:

(1) To raise the status of women clerks and secretaries, and to encourage a higher standard of practical training.

(2) To secure a just remuneration for all grades.

(3) To render legal aid and give advice to members, and to benefit generally the clerical and secretarial profession for women.

(4) To maintain a registry for women clerks and secretaries, and to watch for openings for members of the a.s.sociation.

(5) To establish and maintain an Approved Society under the National Insurance Act, 1911, for the benefit of Women Clerks and Secretaries.

The a.s.sociation is not yet, however, strong enough to form a recognised union able to fix a minimum education qualification for members.h.i.+p. An important conference was held by this a.s.sociation in May last at the University of London. Every speaker emphasised the need for better and wider education before taking up the profession, and there was unanimity of opinion that no girl should be allowed to start the technical part until she was at least sixteen. A remark of Mrs W.L. Courtney, who was one of the speakers, is well worth quoting: "One of the cleverest women I ever knew, who was an amateur indexer, said to me one day, 'It does not matter in doing this work about being clever; what matters is to have lived.'" There is not much chance then for the school-girl of sixteen.[4]

The National Union of Clerks is conducted with energy and enlightenment. It has increased its members.h.i.+p by nearly 8,000 in the last twelve months, and one of the best reasons it offers women clerks for joining, is that it is the only National Society for Clerks that has always accepted women as members on equal terms as men. There are 1,000 women in a members.h.i.+p of 10,000. Notwithstanding the hard work these two societies are doing, there is nothing like the response there should be from women clerks. It is only the exceptional woman clerk who has yet developed anything like a corporate conscience. The reason is partly that she is often an isolated being. Where there is a large number of clerks together, as in the Civil Service, there is no lack of the right spirit.

Here are a few of the causes of the overstocking of the clerical market by women. Almost any one can be a clerk of a kind. The training is cheap and easily obtainable. Many parents want their children to bring in money early, and this seems an easy way. A large percentage of young girls (in 1907-1909, 87 per cent.) who fail to pa.s.s Civil Service examinations, try to become clerks. Some time ago there was an article in a daily newspaper ent.i.tled "The Pa.s.sing of the 15s.-a-week-Girl." She is with us in larger numbers than ever, however, and she has added to her numbers a 10s.-a-week-girl and even a cheaper girl, as we have seen. We meet her daily in Tube and 'bus, looking remarkably attractive, in spite of foolish shoes and a bad habit of eating four-penny lunches. The chief charge some of her fellow clerks have against her, apart from her inferior work, is that she only makes use of typing as a road to marriage. The other cla.s.s of offender is the daughter of well-to-do parents. Typing is regarded as a ladylike employment, and parents, who would never expect their daughters to be self-supporting, are glad for them to earn pocket money or just enough for dress.

According to Mr Elvin of the National Union of Clerks, even in prosperous times there are always 3 per cent. of unemployed clerks. In bad times the percentage must be greater. Whether the times are good or bad, young girls with the most elementary education are being turned out by hundreds from typing schools.

The only remedy is that the output of clerks should be restricted; no one should be allowed to become a clerk who has not reached a certain standard of efficiency. The parents are the chief offenders. Many of them do not seem to have the necessary energy or intelligence to find out for what their daughters are best fitted. Advisory Committees are wanted in connection with all elementary and secondary schools. Of the girl typists and shorthand writers who resigned from the Civil Service from 1894 to 1906 for various causes, 17 per cent. left to take up other work. The lady superintendent in one of the Civil Service typing rooms pointed out a girl and said: "That girl would have made an excellent milliner or a kindergarten teacher, but she is not at all suited for this work."

The chief grievance of the really efficient woman clerk and secretary is that she has not enough scope. One woman writes:

"If the various firms and professions who employ girls as typists were to give them an insight into the business, whatever it might be, it would add enormously to the enthusiasm of the worker. In America they do this very often. The wonderful Miss Alice Duckin, the lady skysc.r.a.per builder, was once a typist. When she entered the firm they allowed her full scope to develop, and she mastered the building trade and is now the chief partner of Messrs Duckin and La.s.s. There is one firm of lawyers in London who allow their typists to attend the Law Courts, and give them work to do which is usually reserved for men.

Only under such conditions can the profession expand."

There is often a chance for a secretary in a newspaper office to develop into a journalist. But there are instances when the private secretary, who begins writing for the paper on which she is employed, is told that she was engaged not as a contributor but as an efficient secretary.

One girl who had been for ten years private secretary to a literary man in London, horrified her relatives, and gave her employer a shock, by suddenly throwing up her much-envied post and entering herself at a hospital for a particularly strenuous kind of nursing. Her salary as secretary was 35s. a week; she had a comfortable room of her own to work in, a good annual holiday, and other blessings. Her chief said "good morning" and "good evening" to her, but she saw no one else, and frequently she had technical German translations in the evenings, for which she got nothing extra. Her chief did not know German, and thought she did the translations as easily as she wrote shorthand. Her whole work was moderately interesting, but the dullness of her life became insupportable. Another private secretary at the end of fifteen years in an excellent post, opened a tea-shop.

An Edinburgh woman sends the following interesting statement:--

"Secretarial work seems to me one of the most congenial for educated women. In Edinburgh the prospects are excellent. The headmasters and mistresses of all the large schools, medical men, dentists, university professors, managing editors of our great printing and publis.h.i.+ng houses, several of whom are editing encylopaedias, need a fair number of women secretaries. And there is not a sufficient supply for the law offices of which Edinburgh has such a large number.

"The conditions are in need of some kind of organised supervision, particularly where everything depends on an individual employer. In my first post with a medical specialist, for instance, my time was never my own; my work began at 9 and often did not end at midnight. Sunday work was quite common; there were no Sat.u.r.day afternoons off, but I had free hours here and there which it was impossible to utilise.

"Another post I had was ideal. I worked for two men, for one of whom I spent the morning in a pathological laboratory. Here I did nothing but research work and writing. In the afternoon I did general correspondence and a.s.sistant editing of one of the medical journals. I had free evenings and Sat.u.r.day afternoons. It is an excellent plan to work for two men, as it gives variety and may often be more remunerative, although for myself I never had more than 100 a year.

There is lack of organisation in this profession, and posts are difficult to get by registry or advertis.e.m.e.nt. I have never found a Women's Employment Bureau of any use whatever. I have got everything by personal recommendation."

A common grievance seems to be the amount of overtime imposed on many clerks, sometimes paid for, but often obligatory whether paid for or not. There is a naive arrangement in the Civil Service Typing Department. It seems that the typists are allowed 9d. or 10d. an hour for overtime up to a limit of fifteen hours a month, but any overtime beyond that is not paid for. In the Minutes of Evidence before the Royal Commission we read:--

"_Commissioner_. Is any other time beyond that (15 hours a month) ever exacted?

"_Superintendent_. Yes.

"_Commissioner_. Are they ever required to work longer than that?

"_Superintendent_. Yes.

"_Commissioner_. And are they not paid for it?

"_Superintendent_. No.

"_Commissioner_. What is the reason for that?

"_Superintendent_. The Treasury laid it down in their minute.

"_Commissioner_. Have you questioned it?

"_Superintendent_. Yes, we have many times asked the Treasury to allow the department to pay for more, but so far as I know, in no case has it been allowed, and at this present time (May 1912), in the London Telephone Service all shorthand-typists and typists and superintendents are doing a great deal of overtime, but only 15 hours in a month of 4 weeks is paid for. Superintendents are not paid at all for overtime. The only reason, apparently, for the limitation is that the salaries are so close that if shorthand-typists were paid for more overtime than 15 hours they would be earning more than the superintendents."

It seems impossible to tell as yet how the working of the National Insurance Act will affect women clerks. The secretary of the Information Bureau of the Woman's Inst.i.tute says that, as far as she knows, good offices continue to pay their clerks their salaries in cases of illness, only making a deduction of the 7s. 6d. paid as insurance money.

To sum up, there is urgent need for better organisation among clerks and secretaries. They should be graded in some way, so that the efficient who are out of work may easily be brought in touch with employers. The societies reach only a small proportion of the workers, many of whom do not even know of their existence. It must be remembered that a difficulty in the way of men and women clerks combining, is that women of good education, sometimes in possession of degrees, find themselves in compet.i.tion with men of an inferior social cla.s.s. A large proportion of the best secretaries are the daughters of professional men. The average woman clerk is invariably a person of better education and manners than the male clerk at the same salary.

In the next place, better sanitation and better working conditions must be secured. Only last year, a firm employing hundreds of men and a dozen women, had no separate lavatory for the women. It is to the interest of the employer of women clerks to look after their health and to provide rest rooms. Anti-feminists are positive as to women's "inferior physique," but their practice as employers is too often inconsistent with their opinions.

Most important of all, women clerks and secretaries want more scope.

After ten years of clerking and secretarying they find that they are up against a dead wall. There is no prospect of advancement, and no call on their initiative. In private secretarial work this is not always the fault of the employer; it is often inherent in the nature of the work. Unless the secretary has, say, literary or journalistic ability and develops in that way, she is worth little more to her chief, if he is a literary man, after fifteen years than she was at the end of ten. There may be progress from a less desirable to a more desirable post, but there can be no advancement in the work itself.

As a training, however, a private post is incomparable. With the woman who works for a commercial firm, it is a different matter. Women of the best type who do this work, have a right to complain when they are without chance of promotion. They feel that they should be given the same opportunity of rising in the business, whatever it may be, as is open to any intelligent office boy. The reply of the employer is, that while the office boy, if promoted and given increasing pay, may be expected to stay with the firm for a lifetime, there is not the same certainty of continuity of service from women clerks, who may at any time leave to get married. There are cases, however, where women have stayed on after marriage when it has been made worth their while.

One woman who entered a firm as a young girl, continued with the firm after marriage, and is now, as a widow, working for the same employers. There is no reason why such cases should be exceptional.

The calling, the conditions of which we have been considering, suffers from its accessibility to the half trained and undisciplined of various social grades. When, however, the righteous complaint of the employer against the incompetent and scatter-brained has been heard, the fact remains that among women clerks and secretaries there is an exceptionally large proportion who give, for a moderate return and limited prospects of advancement, conscientious, loyal, and skilful service.

[Footnote 1: See Appendix II., p. 317.]

[Footnote 2: Satisfactory secretarial training may be obtained in London from reliable teachers for a fee of 25 guineas for a year's course. It is, however, necessary to make searching enquiries before arranging to enter any school, as some of these neither give a sound training, nor obtain posts for their pupils as their advertis.e.m.e.nts promise. [EDITOR.]]

[Footnote 3: First rate secretarial preparation includes more than merely technical instruction. It gives a sound business training as well, and, in addition, insists on one or more foreign languages. A girl who hopes to become something more than a shorthand-typist ought not to scamp her professional training: this should, of course, follow her school-course--_i.e._, not begin until she is seventeen or eighteen. Graduates, who have specialised in foreign languages, may also advantageously prepare for the better secretarial posts.

[EDITOR.]]

[Footnote 4: Apart from monetary prospects altogether, no girl should be allowed to enter the profession until she is old enough and wise enough to protect herself, should need arise, from the undesirable employer, who may insult her with unwelcome attentions. The possibility of such annoyance is an additional reason for all clerks to join a Trade Union, which helps individuals to insist on proper conditions of work. [EDITOR.]]

SECTION VII

ACTING AS A PROFESSION FOR WOMEN