Morgan and Grenfells: “We employ women on ledger work. But we find they lack the esprit de corps of men. And they don’t like to work after hours.”
Barclay’s Bank: “We cannot speak too highly of our women clerks. They have shown great zeal to acquire a knowledge of the necessary details.”
London and Southwestern Bank: “Women employés are even more faithful and steady than men. But when there is a sudden rush of work, as say at the end of the year, they go into hysterics. We find that we cannot let them see the work piled up. It must be given out to them gradually. This, I think, is due to inexperience. When women have had the same length of experience and the same training as men, we see no reason why they should not be equally as capable.”
Now that’s about the way the evidence runs. You would probably get it about like that anywhere in Europe. There is some criticism. Isn’t it surprising that there is not more when you remember that it is mostly raw recruits chosen by chance whose services are being compared with the picked men whom they have replaced? In England in 1915 the Home Office moved to provide educational facilities for women for their new commercial responsibilities. There was appointed its Clerical and Business Occupations Committee which opened in London, and requested the mayors of all other cities similarly to open, emergency training classes for giving a ground work in commercial knowledge and office routine. These government training courses cover a period of from three to ten weeks. It is rather sudden, isn’t it, three weeks’ preparation for a job in preparation for which the previous incumbent had years?
And there are thousands of the women who have gone into the offices without even that three weeks’ training. The cousin of the wife of the head of the firm knew of some woman of “very good family” whose supporting man was now enlisted and who must therefore earn her own living. Or some other woman was specially recommended as needing work. And there was another method of selection: “She had such nice manners and she was such a pretty little thing I liked her at once, don’t you know.”
WHAT EVERY WOMAN KNOWS
’Um, yes, I do know. Somewhere in America once there was an editorial chief who said to me, his assistant, “Now I need a secretary. There’ll be some here to-day to answer my advertisement. Won’t you see them and let me know about their qualifications.” There were, as I remember, some fourteen of them, grey haired and experienced ones, technically expert and highly recommended ones, college trained ones, and one was a dimpled little thing with pink cheeks and eyes of baby blue. My detailed report was quite superfluous. Through the open door, as I entered his office, the chief had one glance: “That one,” he said eagerly, “that little peach at the end of the row. She’s the one I want.”
Like that, little peaches are getting picked in all languages. And after them are the others fresh from the gardens where the rose trees grow. And among these ornamental companions of her employer’s selection, the really useful employé who gets in, finds herself at a disadvantage. The little peach “bears” the whole woman’s wage market. She has hysterics: all the wise commercial world shakes its head about the staying power of woman in business. And the whole female of the species gets listed on the pay roll at two-thirds man’s pay.
The Orient Steamship Company, I believe, is giving equal pay for equal work. To an official of another steamship company complaining of the inefficiency of women employés, Sir Kenneth Anderson, President of the Orient Line, put the query, “How much do you pay them?” “Twenty-five shillings a week,” was the answer. “Then you don’t deserve to have efficient women,” was the prompt retort. “We pay those who prove competent up to three pounds a week. And they’re such a success we’ve decided we can’t let them go after the war.” But Sir Kenneth Anderson is the son of one of England’s pioneer feminists, Dr. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, and the nephew of another, Mrs. Millicent Garrett Fawcett, president of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. And I suppose there isn’t another business house in London that has the Orient Steamship Company’s vision. Women clerks in London business circles generally are getting twenty shillings to thirty shillings a week. The city of Manchester, advertising for women clerks for the public health offices, offered salaries respectively of ten shillings, eighteen shillings and twenty shillings a week, “candidates to sit for examination.”
