The pay of a lady amanuensis at the start is seldom more than $8 a week. It is not to be supposed that she is fully competent when she starts at that rate; that is to say, she will not be able to write very rapidly, and she will be liable to make mistakes in transcribing her notes. The actual practical experience which she will get in her first situation will very soon serve to correct these faults. It might, at first thought, be supposed that few persons would desire to employ inferior help of this kind; but such is not the fact. Editors, lawyers, occasionally doctors, and some classes of business men who are obliged to make rough drafts of papers which go at once to the printer, are often glad of such help. Their short-hand writer can write fast enough to save some of their time, at a moderate charge, and it is immaterial as to the appearance of the "copy" sent to the printer, so long as it can be plainly read by him. But of course the lady will soar higher than a salary of $8 a week, and just so soon as she has become more expert, she will be able to obtain a position requiring greater speed in taking notes and more accuracy in writing them out. Her salary will then be $10 or $12 a week, and finally $15 a week. It is not likely she will earn more than $18 a week, though mention is made of some ladies who are making $20 or $25 a week, but the situations are exceptional, and, it may be added, the ladies are exceptional ladies. They have some peculiar business ability aside from being able to write short-hand. The employer of one, for instance, can merely indicate by two or three words the kind of letter he wants written to a certain correspondent, and the lady clerk, having simply received the idea, will write a satisfactory letter. If a woman could possess herself of a thorough knowledge of phonography, be able to work rapidly on the type-writer, and have a fair knowledge of bookkeeping, she could be certain of obtaining a good position at an extra large salary, say $1,500 a year; but there is no doubt that she would have to work hard for the money.
The hours of work in most all offices are from nine in the morning until five in the afternoon. The employment is not more arduous than any other sedentary occupation. In large offices an amanuensis will receive from thirty to sixty full-page letters in a day and transcribe them on the type-writer. She could not do so much work without the aid of that instrument.
It is sometimes the case that a woman can take dictation work for professional people who only occasionally need such assistance, and be paid for it by the "job." In such a case the rate of pay for taking and transcribing the notes will range from six to twenty cents per hundred words, depending partly on the class of work, but more particularly on the liberality of the employer.
TELEGRAPHY.
There is one thing favorable to young women who want to become telegraph operators: the qualifications required for success in this line of business are very simple. An ordinary common school education, with a special ability to spell well, and to write plainly and more or less rapidly, is all that is required in a pupil before commencing to learn this art. This may account for the large number of young ladies who, of late years, have sought employment in this field of labor. Another thing, it is office work, with just enough bustle and activity about it to keep it from being dull, with the occasional chance, in times of public excitement, of its being exceptionally interesting.
In the city of New York there are, at the present time, about two hundred ladies engaged in this occupation. They are nearly all employed by the Western Union Telegraph Company, three fourths of the number being employed at the main office of the company. Here and there a lady may be found employed in a broker's office, a position, by the way, which is considered exceptionally good, the pay being generous, with the sure chance of the employé receiving a present at the Christmas holiday-time. But the great majority of women are employed by the companies, in hotels, in the smaller stations situated throughout the city, and throughout the country in the offices located in various villages and towns.
Instruction in telegraphy has become a special feature in about forty colleges in different parts of the Union, and in several special schools, among which the New York Cooper Union School of Telegraphy is preëminent. Instruction in this last institution is free, and the Western Union Telegraph Company is so far interested in the success of the school, that when operators are needed, graduates of the Cooper Union are preferred over anybody else. The school is always crowded; it is difficult to gain admission, and situations are not provided by the company alluded to for all the graduates. Last year (1882) one hundred and sixty applied at the regular examination of the school and passed, but they could not be admitted to the class for want of room. The school admitted sixty pupils during the year. The number receiving certificates was twenty-eight. Some time since the Kansas State Agricultural College added telegraphy as a branch of industrial education, using Pope's "Hand-book of the Telegraph" as a text-book.
Women can learn to become telegraph operators at almost any age. Young girls of fifteen have successfully studied the art, and women as old as forty have also learned it. But the age which is recommended by good judges as being the best, is not younger than eighteen, nor older than twenty-five.
The time it takes to learn to become an operator depends, of course, on the aptness of the pupil, her general intelligence, and previous education. Some learn very readily, others after months of study never become sufficiently proficient to take positions.