Women Workers in Seven Professions / A Survey of Their Economic Conditions and Prospects

by Unknown

SECTION VI

WOMEN CLERKS AND SECRETARIES

The salary of the woman secretary of the best class, whether working privately or for a firm, seems to be £100 to £150 a year. Generally speaking, this is exactly what it was twenty years ago. It would seem that the highest salaries are those given by City men to confidential clerks (sometimes relatives), who are either good accountants or good linguists. The head of an influential typing office and registry in London informed me that the highly paid posts of translators to City firms are usually filled by German girls. The woman receiving £200 to £250 is a very rare person. I know only of one who receives £5 a week, and that is from an American firm in London. She does private secretarial work, but has no book-keeping and no foreign correspondence. Some years ago I knew of another woman, private secretary to the head of a large publishing firm, who had £200 a year. She was an efficient French correspondent, an able, all-round woman, and had been with the firm for twenty years. There are now two clerks in her place at much lower salaries. There seems to be a tendency to employ two cheap clerks in place of one expensive one.

People unacquainted with the facts, seldom realise how small is the remuneration of capable secretaries. I am acquainted with the work of a woman who has the following qualifications: verbatim shorthand, neat typing and sound knowledge of secretarial and business work, including book-keeping; she is methodical and conscientious in her work, has had some years' City Experience, three years in the shorthand and typing offices in the Houses of Parliament and with peers and members. She is asking 45s. a week, and would take 40s. "with prospects."

Well-paid posts seem to be exceptional. A woman with an intimate knowledge of City conditions, who was chief accountant to an important firm for sixteen years, informs me that £175 is the highest salary she has ever known a woman clerk to receive. The lowest on record seems to be 5s. a week. There is a woman running a typing office in the City who hires out shorthand typists at this figure to business firms. She employs a staff of from fifteen to twenty girls. Similarly, an industrial insurance company, nine months ago, opened a new department to deal with the work of the new Act. They engaged fifty girl clerks at 10s. with a superintendent, also a woman, at 30s. a week.

There is sometimes difficulty in getting accurate information with regard to payments. The heads of typing schools and colleges are apt to give too rosy a picture, and the individual clerk has usually a somewhat narrow experience and is inclined to be pessimistic. A man whom I interviewed (in place of the manager, who was engaged), at one of the biggest schools for training clerks, informed me that everything depended on the clerk. He said the girls who were getting 10s. a week were not worth more, and that there were "many" women clerks getting from £300 to £350. I said I was delighted to hear this as I had had difficulty in running to earth the woman clerk with £200, and had not before heard of the higher salaries. I took out my notebook and begged for particulars. He then said he knew of "one" of their diplomées working for a firm of florists, who had a salary of £300: she was able to correspond in English, French, German, and Spanish. I asked if he would kindly give me her name and address that I might interview her, but he said he could not possibly do that, as any woman clerk who allowed herself to be interviewed would be certain to lose her post.

The manager of a business in Manchester, who employs five shorthand typists, pays them from 15s. to 30s. He admits that it is impossible for the girls to live on their salaries unless they are at home with their parents, as is the case with all of them. But he says that it is unreasonable to expect him to give more than the market rates, and that for 30s. he gets excellent service. He suggests that the only way to raise wages is for the clerks to organise.

The principal of a high class typing office in the City, a woman of experience, who trains only a select number of educated girls, never allows a pupil from her school to begin at less than 25s. a week with a prospect of speedy increase. She pays her own translator £3, 5s. a week, and four members of her staff are paid at the rate of £160 a year.

Mr Elvin, Secretary of the Union of Clerks, tries to enforce a minimum wage of 35s. a week as the beginning salary for an expert shorthand typist, and this may be regarded as the present Trade Union rate. Mr Elvin's difficulty is chiefly with the girls themselves. They are so accustomed to the idea of women being paid less than men that it is not easy to get them to insist on equal pay. In one case he was asked to supply a woman secretary for a certain post. He agreed to find a suitable person if the firm would guarantee a commencing salary of 35s. a week. After some demur this was conceded, and he sent to a well-known school for three competent clerks that he might examine them and recommend the best of the three. After the test he asked them, in turn, what salary they expected. They were all over twenty-one years of age and all competent. One mentioned 25s., the second 23s., and the third £1 a week. On being asked, they said they knew they were worth more, but they thought that, as they were women, they would not get it.

Where there is no one to safeguard the interests of the clerk, an employer, on the look-out for cheap labour, finds it easily enough. The head of a big firm offered a French girl, an expert shorthand writer in three languages, 15s. a week, with a possible rise after three months. She finally accepted a post at 30s. a week as she could get nothing better through registries or by advertisement.

Unless a girl has a claim on a school where she has trained, or has influential friends, it is very difficult for her to get a post suited to her needs in London. The whole profession seems to be in a chaotic condition, and the chances through advertisement are haphazard and unsatisfactory. Employment bureaux maintain that there are more good posts than there are qualified women to fill them, but individual secretaries are timid about giving up unsatisfactory posts as they do not know how to get better.

Take the case of a private secretary to a Member of Parliament. He loses his seat, retires to the country, and gives up his London secretary. He gives her a number of introductions. These lead to nothing, and she is forced into the competition of the City. Her particular training is of no use in a commercial office, and her value falls to 30s. a week.

A woman with an intimate knowledge of women clerks and secretaries in the City for the past twenty years, says that it is difficult to overestimate the poverty of a vast number of girls. Many of them are the chief breadwinners of the family. She knows of half a dozen cases of men of forty and a little older who are living on the earnings of their daughters; there may be two girls in the family, one getting 12s. and the other 25s. a week.

The private secretary who lives in, has usually excellent food and pleasant surroundings, but in some cases the life is a solitary one. Unless there is a governess or other educated employeé in the household, she has no companionship. The salary varies from £30 to £120 and sometimes more. There is apparently no fixed rate. One lady writes:

"For two years I lived in the house of Sir——, the most hopelessly isolated and uninteresting existence, within the four walls of his study. A secretary should certainly stick out for a free week-end once a month when living in. Isolation is horribly bad for one."

The secretary living in with congenial literary or medical people, where she is made one of the family circle, has a happier time, but the payment is not high.

Apart from salary, the conditions in which the woman clerk works are by no means ideal.

Twenty years ago, in a far northern city, there was a flourishing new school where over thirty girls of from fifteen to twenty were being taught shorthand, typewriting, book-keeping, and all that goes to the making of a fully-equipped clerk. This school was the first experiment of the kind in an enterprising community. As the pupils qualified, with Pitman certificates of varying degrees of speed, at the end of six months or longer, the way in which old-fashioned lawyers accepted the innovation of attractive young women on their clerical staff, seemed almost magical. Decorum relegated the young women to separate rooms from the rest of the employeés, and the formality in the bearing of heads of departments towards these pioneer females must have been gratifying to Mrs Grundy. So superior to human exigencies seemed these dignified men, that the subject of lavatory accommodation for young women, mewed up from 9 to 1 and from 2 to 5.30, was not mentioned. Woman's modesty, if it were to reach the high standard made for her by man, had to come before her health or comfort. Although typists of all grades have multiplied by thousands[1] during the past twenty years—in London alone there are over 25,000 women clerks and secretaries—there is still need for adequate inspection of sanitary accommodation for women workers of this class. Apart altogether from sanitary accommodation, common sense would seem to suggest that, in the case of any one who has to turn out decent typing, a regular supply of hot water is a necessity for washing hands that may have to change a ribbon or do the many little messy jobs that typing involves.

In a lecture before the Fabian Women's Group in February 1912, Miss
Florence, of the Association of Women Clerks and Secretaries, said:

"With regard to the sanitary conditions—these as a rule are bad, especially where there is only one woman. The difficulty has been shirked by the women themselves in a great many cases…. I do not see how these can be altered except by improving the status and position of women, so that they may become strong enough to say they will not have it if it is too bad."

Who is to dictate what is "too bad"? Surely the only remedy is to have a proper standard of decency enforced by law. Women as a rule are fools on this subject, and will endure almost any discomfort, rather than complain.

In giving evidence before the Royal Commission, in May last year, concerning the conditions of employment and their effect on the health of Civil Service female typists and shorthand writers, Miss Charlesworth, Honorary Secretary of the Civil Service Typists' Association, said:

"The statistics as regards sickness relating to our class are almost too small to be of very much use…. I may say from experience that they are greatly influenced by the conditions under which the work is done. In my own department (Local Government Board) our average absence from sickness in the old office, where we were much overcrowded, varied between ten and fourteen days a year, while in our new office the average has steadily gone down from twelve to a fraction over six last year…. It is very striking that there has been that reduction in the average number of days' absence per year from sickness, from twelve to six in four years while we have been working under better conditions … that means a less number of typing machines in one room, more light to work by and more air—better rooms to work in."

This evidence is interesting, as the worst conditions that could possibly exist in the lofty rooms of a Government office, where everything is on a big scale and there is a certain standard of comfort, must be superior to the majority of commercial offices, especially in London, where space is so expensive. Think of four girls taking shorthand notes by telephone in a room with thirty typewriting machines working at once!

There are no figures available with regard to the health of women clerks generally. The common ailments are neuritis, anaemia, and nervous breakdown. Typing is also a strain on the eyesight and hearing. Miss Charlesworth says that in her experience it is the girls who are not suited for the work who suffer most from ill-health.

One typing office and school, of high repute for excellence of work, had rooms so dark that electric light was always used in one or other of them during part of the day. No sun ever entered the work-rooms. The salaries were good, but overtime was paid at only 6d. an hour. There was a sort of compulsion, too, to work overtime; some of the best typists, occasionally even stayed all night during excessive rushes of work. No holidays were paid for, and it was regarded as disloyalty on the part of a clerk to stay away for sickness. There was an instance of a girl being dismissed because she stayed away a fortnight owing to influenza. This particular firm recently moved into bigger, brighter rooms, not out of humanity to its staff, but because the lease had run out.

Where competition is as keen as in the typing business, it is often the case that the comfort of employeés is considered as little as is compatible with running the place at a profit. There seems to be no inspection, and there is no law to say how many typists may be worked together, or what limit of noise shall be endured by them. Everything is ruled by the individual standard of decency of the employer. Many well-educated girls enter typing offices for the excellent practical training to be had, and for the short time they remain they are willing to put up with severe discipline and some personal discomfort. There are, of course, typing offices with as high a level of comfort and decency as the most exacting law would prescribe. Many of the big engineering firms and City houses have most comfortable and even luxurious quarters for their women clerks.

In old days in the above-mentioned northern school, it was possible to get complete teaching as a clerk—excellent teaching, too—for a guinea a term. There were some shorthand typists whose training cost them only that initial guinea and the fees of the supplementary course of evening classes, 5s. and 10s. according to the number of subjects. In London at that time a year's course in the same subjects cost as much as 60 guineas at some of the chief typing schools. The fee nowadays, at one of the foremost London schools for a secretarial course for six months only, is 60 guineas; a year's course is £100.[2] This includes book-keeping and shorthand correspondence in one foreign language, besides shorthand and typing, etc.

The best testimony shows that a year is altogether too long for an intelligent well-educated girl of eighteen or more to spend on technical training.[3] Mr James Oliphant, writing in The School World for July 1913 on the subject of secretarial training for girls, says:

"…. It is to be noted that the curriculum in girls' schools is of a much more reasonable character than that which is commonly provided for boys, and that the more completely it is fitted to supply a good general education, the better it would be adapted to the special needs of those who wish to become clerks or secretaries. It would seem eminently desirable that such aspirants should continue at the secondary school between the ages of sixteen and eighteen, being provided with a specialised course of study … but whenever it is possible it would be well to insist that no subject should be included which is not generally educative in the widest sense. The acquisition of such mechanical arts as stenography and typewriting should be relegated to technical colleges where, according to general testimony, proficiency can be gained by well-educated girls in a period varying from six to nine months. 'Commercial correspondence' is an abomination; a sufficient knowledge of the ordinary forms of letter-writing should be imparted in every course of English composition … while the special jargon of each business or office can be readily acquired by any intelligent girl when it becomes necessary."

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 Association 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 Association 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' attitude towards combination having recently changed somewhat, in London at any rate. The Association 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 Association.

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

The Association is not yet, however, strong enough to form a recognised union able to fix a minimum education qualification for membership. An important conference was held by this Association 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 membership 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 membership 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 pass Civil Service examinations, try to become clerks. Some time ago there was an article in a daily newspaper entitled "The Passing 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 class 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 skyscraper 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 Lass. 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 publishing 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 Saturday 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 assistant editing of one of the medical journals. I had free evenings and Saturday 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 advertisement. 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 Institute 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 competition with men of an inferior social class. 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 advertisements 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.]