After the nurse has received a certain amount of training, she is deemed competent to go out to private service. She receives no extra pay for this, her salary being paid into the institution, which, in that way, is enabled partly to maintain itself.
When she goes to a private house, she carries with her a certificate of recommendation signed by the lady superintendent of the school. When she returns to the school, she brings with her a report of her conduct and efficiency, either from one of the family or the medical attendant. While engaged in this service, the people employing her must allow her reasonable time for rest in every twenty-four hours, and when her services are needed for several consecutive nights, she is to have at least six hours in the day out of the sick-room. Except in cases of extreme illness, she is to be allowed opportunity to attend church once every Sunday.
Appended to the rules of the Bellevue Hospital Training School, in regard to this subject, are the following remarks:
"It is expected that nurses will bear in mind the importance of the situation they have undertaken, and will evince, at all times, the self-denial, forbearance, gentleness, and good temper so essential in their attendance on the sick, and also to their character as Christian nurses. They are to take the whole charge of the sick-room, doing everything that is requisite in it, when called upon to do so. When nursing in families where there are no servants, if their attention be not of necessity wholly devoted to their patient, they are expected to make themselves generally useful. They are to be careful not to increase the expense of the family in any way. They are also most earnestly charged to hold sacred the knowledge which, to a certain extent, they must obtain of the private affairs of such households or individuals as they may attend."
The field of employment which has just been described, offers great opportunities for the proper kind of women to make an independent livelihood. The work is hard and confining, but the pay, as women are paid, is very good. A trained nurse never receives less than $20 a week, her board being, of course, included, and more often she will get $25, or even $30, a week; in fact, she can command her own price, and that price will depend upon the wealth and liberality of her patrons, and the ability which she brings to bear on the case in hand. Good nursing is very often more important than good doctoring, and thousands of people are willing to pay liberally for such exceptional help. The demand for trained nurses far exceeds the supply, and, provided a woman has made herself fully competent in this peculiarly appropriate branch of women's work, the extent of her employment will only be limited by her physical strength to render the services required.
PROOF-READERS, COMPOSITORS, AND BOOKBINDERS.
Men who employ women in trades and businesses where they have to work for some length of time before they become skilled laborers have one very strong objection against female help. "No sooner," they say, "do we really begin to get some benefit from the woman's work, after having borne long and patiently with her sins of omission and commission, than along comes a good-looking young fellow and marries her."
For this reason women sometimes find it difficult to obtain entrance into the most desirable establishments where trades can be learned. And yet these same employers are not hostile to female labor; on the contrary, they are strongly in favor of it, but they say that they are not willing to encourage it to the extent of sacrificing the necessary time and trouble in making a woman perfect in a trade, and then seeing her leave them to enter upon the presumably more congenial duties of matrimony.
The woman, therefore, who desires to learn a trade may find this difficulty meeting her at the threshold. All employers, however, are not alike, and some establishment can generally be found where a woman can learn the first principles of the occupation she wishes to follow; as soon as she has attained a reasonable degree of proficiency in it, she can get a position in a larger and better establishment, where the pay will probably be higher and the surroundings more agreeable.