At one time the business of post-offices became served almost entirely by women. This was due not to any Governmental delusions upon the score of their merits, but was owing entirely to a cheeseparing economy which employed inferior wits at a lower wage than would have been acceptable to men. Even such extremely busy offices as those of Ludgate Circus and Lombard Street were filled with women, who elbowed men from their stools, and became so ‘flurried’ in the press of business that they frequently gave either too much change or too little over the counter, or committed such vagaries as giving ten shillings’ worth of stamps for half-a-crown; or were incapable of weighing letters and parcels properly, so that the Post-office revenues were increased by packages being more than sufficiently stamped, or else were augmented by the fines levied upon addressees in cases where their inherent inability to juggle with figures had caused inadequate prepayment. Indeed, the woman who can reason from cause to effect, or can employ the multiplication-table accurately (except under circumstances in which time is no object) is as much a ‘sport’—as Professor Huxley might say—as a white raven or a cat born with six legs.
The storm of indignation was so great over these unbusinesslike doings, that even that elephantine creature—the Postmaster-General—was moved,[4] and the chiefest of the City post-offices are served now by men.
But the pert miss of the suburban post-office, and the establishments just beyond the City, is still very much in evidence. It is she who, with a crass stupidity almost beyond belief, misreads the telegrams handed in, and despatches the most extraordinary and extravagant messages that bear no sort of resemblance to their original draughts, and it is her sister at the other end of the wire who cannot interpret the dot and dash of the Morse system aright, and so further complicates affairs. The marvels and conveniency of telegraphy have been praised, and not beyond their due, but the other side of the medal has to be shown in the extraordinary and disquieting ‘blunders,’ perpetrated chiefly by female telegraphists, which spread dismay and consternation through such vital substitutions as ‘father is dead,’ for the original message of ‘father is bad’; ‘all going well: a little fire at 7 o’clock this morning,’ in which ‘fire’ is transmitted instead of ‘girl’; and the appalling error ‘Come at once: mother much diseased,’ in which the word ‘diseased’ usurps the place of ‘distressed.’
The absurd way in which people have been summoned by telegraph to meet friends at places that not only did those friends not contemplate, but which either do not exist at all, or, at least, not in the situations some of these erring telegrams assign them, is within the experience of almost every one who is in the way of frequently receiving these pink missives at the post-office. ‘Meet me 5 o’clock Saint Mary Abbots Church, Kensington,’ has been rendered, ‘Meet me 5 o’clock Saint Mark Abchurch, Kennington.’ The substitution of ‘Piccadilly’ for ‘Pevensey’; the omission of the second word in the address of ‘Manchester Square,’ and similar vagaries are common.
Of course this is not to say that they are only the women telegraph clerks who fall into these errors, but the greater percentage originates with them. The woman-clerk who receives a message through the wire cannot follow the telegraphic instrument with the attention that makes all the difference between accuracy and some dreadful blunder. Thus it is that in the domain of the electric telegraph the ineradicable tendency of her sex to argue from false premises, and her capacity for jumping to erroneous conclusions are admirably well shown; and the system by which telegrams are sent lends itself in the most complete and remarkable way to her errors of anticipation. The telegraphic alphabet now universally in use—known as the Morse system—consists of a series of dots and dashes; and a message is spelled out by a laborious ticking of the magnetic needle at the office in receipt of the telegram. The message is read, tick by tick, from the needle’s rapid oscillations:—‘Your sister di——’ ‘Oh,’ says the female telegraphist to herself, disregarding the next few movements of the needle, ‘died, of course,’ and so finishes the word. The needle continues ticking and the next words are spelled out, ‘with us last night, undertake——’ The telegraphist adds an ‘r’ to that word to make it fit her first guess, and reads off the remainder of the message, ‘to bring her up to-morrow,’ and so despatches an alarming telegram, which should have read harmlessly enough, ‘Your sister dined with us last night. Undertake to bring her up to-morrow.’
These things are sufficiently dreadful, and leave little room for exaggeration; but one must scan more than doubtfully that tale of a telegram which when handed in read, ‘I tea with Mr. Smith in Dover Street. Stay for me,’ but which was changed into ‘I flee with Mrs. Smith to Dover straight. Pray for me.’
As for journalism, women have invaded the newspaper offices to some purpose, and it is owing to them that the modern newspaper is usually an undistinguished farrago of wild and whirling words, ungrammatical at best, and at its worst a jumble of more or less malicious gossip, without sequence or thread of reason. The ‘lady journalist’ is no respecter of persons or institutions, and an easy impudence is natural to her contributions, whether her subject be peer or peasant. Proportion is in no sense her gift or acquirement: the death of a member of the ‘submerged tenth’ in a court off Fleet Street is more thrilling to her senses than the fall of a statesman from office; the cut of a dress or the shade of a ribbon wears an importance in her eyes that the rise and progress of trades can never win; and the babble of Social Science Congresses, or the lecturing of University Extensionists transcends the Parliamentary debater in her mind. ‘Actuality’ is her shibboleth and gush her output; and the heart actuates her pen rather than the head.
The journalist of years bygone was a very different being. His—for the old-time journalist was always masculine—his knowledge of frocks and flounces was nil; his habitat was generally a pothouse, and his speech was as often as not thick and husky with potations; but however confused his talk, and however objectionable his personality, his utterances in the press were apt and luminous and he took no bribes. In this last respect the name and trade of a ‘lady journalist’ are somewhat stale and blown upon of late, and she has been revealed as the debaucher of newspaper morality, who, in league with the advertisement department, praises the shoddy goods of the advertising tradesman, while he who relies not upon réclame but on excellence of workmanship is dismissed with faint praise, or mentioned not at all. Worse than this unscrupulous fending for her employer—editor or advertising manager—she stoops to gifts in coin and kind from eager shopkeepers, panting to gain the ear and open the purse of the public, and when she has a fancy for any ‘particular’ article, she begs it with an assurance born of the knowledge that her wishes will not be refused by the tradesman who has that article in his gift. He dare not do so, for his puff would be missing from the ‘organ’ that would otherwise have proclaimed the excellence of his wares to a gulled and gullible world.
Certainly, in all the man’s employments she has invaded, in no other is woman so powerful for ill as in journalism.