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.]
SECTION VII
ACTING AS A PROFESSION FOR WOMEN
I do not know that the first actress who ever faced the public told her friends that the profession was not all paint and glitter, because being a pioneer, and so treading on the corns of custom, she was held as an unwomanly creature, and had unpleasant things thrown at her, as well as words. So her impressions are not recorded. But when women had settled down into the work, and were allowed to represent themselves in the theatre (a privilege not as yet accorded to them elsewhere), they announced practically and forcibly that all that glittered was not gold, and that a successful, much-loved heroine did not invariably tread the rosy path without finding the proverbial thorns.
The word "hardship" often repeated by successful artists, is accepted by the public as a truism, which affects their attitude towards the stage as a career about as much as the statement that the world is round, when in their eyes it appears disappointingly flat. Yet the word "hardship" has a meaning which most hurts those who have most capacity for pain, and who are specially sensitive to humiliations, disappointments, and discomforts—artists.