“When I catch my own fish from their native waters I use a small net, very little larger than the one used in the aquariums, and a minnow bucket. These are my only tools.
“I find a ready sale for all the aquariums I have time to make after filling my special orders. Of course there are seasons when the demand is more brisk than others. When those times come I always have a dozen aquariums on hand which I have stocked either for my own satisfaction or to try some new theory.”
The interview form may be combined with a character sketch and biographical material in order to give the reader a glimpse of the speaker’s personality as well as an account of his or her work. The selection from the New York Times given below is the first part of a long article which is in the form of an interview after this introduction:
Even when Mrs. Alice Stebbins Wells fishes about in her bag and produces her policeman’s star for verification one can hardly believe that she is the famous first “policewoman” of Los Angeles. Scarcely five feet in height, slender, with a mild, almost timorous voice and a pair of very round blue eyes, Mrs. Wells presents an appearance about as formidable as that of a kitten. Yet she has been permanently appointed as a regular member of the police force of a city of 400,000, subject to the same regulations, vested with the same authority, and under civil service, as any male member of Los Angeles’ bluecoat squad. She makes arrests and prefers charges in the same way and with as much success as any policeman, and is a very substantial vindication of the power of personality in an institution where brute force and a six-foot stature have formerly been thought to be indispensable prerequisites. Here is what she says of a phase of police work:
“And do I carry weapons? No, indeed. That is something which I do not feel called upon to do. I am very firmly convinced that under the right conditions a policeman would not have to carry a weapon at all. But before the policeman can give up his gun and his stick, weapons must not be sold indiscriminately to citizens. The only reason now that a policeman requires a weapon is because the other fellow may have one, and the law must enforce its demands against all objection. It is a very sad commentary on our civilization that guns and brass knuckles are displayed openly for sale, and that almost the only restriction in our most careful communities is a provision for a license, which is easily obtained.”
Mrs. Wells is the first woman to be appointed to a police force in any city of the United States. The woman detective, the police matron, the probation officer, the district nurse, are all places which have been filled by women, and were of course the forerunners of the policewoman. But while they were vested with partial police authority their power was greatly restricted along certain well-defined lines, and they did not work in recognized co-operation with the police department.
Before entering her work on the Los Angeles police force Mrs. Wells had been in active training as a social worker. The general attitude which she takes toward that stratum of[Pg 245] society with which she comes most in contact is hinted at in her adaptation of the philanthropist’s, the cheery social worker’s, vocabulary. Mrs. Wells never resorts to the threadbare term of “uplift,” but puts in its place that rather more welcome “upbuilding.”
Returning to California from social work in the East, Mrs. Wells entered upon a scientific study of crime. She became impressed with the importance of the police department in its capacity to prevent crime as well as to punish it, and was convinced of the need of women workers on the inside of the police department to strengthen the emphasis on the side of prevention. She set to work to obtain signatures to a petition for a woman police officer, which resulted very promptly in her appointment to the police force of Los Angeles, where she has been at work for the last three years.
In addition to her regular police duties, Mrs. Wells conducts a bureau of information to which clubs and civic organizations which are working to obtain women on the police force of their home cities may apply. She is now on a six months’ leave of absence, not only to investigate conditions throughout the country, but to carry on her “campaign” for women police. She is speaking before city clubs and organizations of every sort, and is visiting the mayor and chief of police in every city.
“I have spoken all the way across the continent and I shall speak all the way back. I realize that I am in a way doing propaganda work. When I applied for my appointment in Los Angeles I thought chiefly of the immediate work to be done right there by a woman. But when I was appointed, then came this—this terrifying publicity—and I realized what it meant.