A wise girl will thus greatly increase her usefulness in the world. She will be able to take part in the affairs of life with pleasure to herself and without being a trouble and hindrance to her neighbours.
Another advantage may be pointed out. There are always people trying to get the better of those who know nothing, and their victims more often than not are ladies. It is easy to fall a prey to rogues and sharpers if one is ignorant of business, especially when nature has made women kind-hearted and experience has not rendered them suspicious. As a protection, there is nothing like being a business woman.
Perhaps someone may say that "business woman" has a hard sound, and stands for a character precise, selfish, and uninteresting. That is not what we intend by it at all. Is a girl to be less loveable, less gentle, less charming, whenever we cease to say of her, That girl, in regard to all the ways of business, is a perfect simpleton? On the contrary, business is a fine training-school for many virtues; and of all good women, a good business woman may be reckoned the very best.
Our articles are intended to be of use to two classes of girls. The first consists of those who either have or are likely to have a little money of their own, and need to know how to manage it and how to regulate those affairs which money always brings in its train. By ignorance of business many a useful life of this class as been marred.
The second is made up of girls who have to earn their own living and make their own way in the world. These have a special need to know something about business. People as a rule are valuable in proportion to their knowledge—those who know nothing being simply worth nothing.
One great reason for the work of girls and women being poorly paid, is that few know anything about either the principles or the practice of the most ordinary business affairs. We shall try in these articles to put girls in future on a better footing, and to make them in business equal, at any rate, to any average men. In this way there is a good chance of doubling their usefulness and value, and of more than doubling their independence.
Nothing is done all at once, and in business, as in everything else, if you mean to build high you must begin low. A girl who wishes to be a business woman must start with accumulating the same sort of knowledge as an office-boy. We shall therefore try to deal with the subject simply and from the very beginning. You may sometimes be tempted to say, "Oh, we knew that before," but another girl may not have been so fortunate, and her ignorance must be taken as our reason for pointing out what appears to be familiar facts.
We begin with the subject of business letters, and the first thing we shall say about them is—Be very particular about their appearance. There is a proverb, to be sure, warning us that appearances are deceitful, but that proverb is only true occasionally; in general we may safely draw an inference as to the writer from the look of her letter. An ill-folded, clumsy, up-and-down-hill, blotted, greasy-looking letter almost certainly comes from an untidy house and a stupid girl, whereas a neat, carefully-written epistle suggests just as surely the opposite.
In friendly letters our correspondents know something about us beforehand, but in business we may be writing to perfect strangers, who can only judge of us by the figure we cut on a sheet of note-paper. To secure prompt attention and a polite reply, no plan works so well as putting good taste into the appearance of letters. They are really a part of ourselves, and a girl should as soon think of sending them marked with carelessness to either a friend or a stranger as of going to make a call in a patched frock, a faded hat, and gloves with holes.
An indispensable point in a business letter is to have the meaning quite clear. It must say exactly what the writer intends, leaving nothing to be guessed at.