The first few days, sometimes even the first few weeks, are often a little difficult for the girl who has found a position and goes to work for the first time. But she can take with her a few simple resolutions which will make most of her difficulties disappear and which may even change them into helps rather than hindrances. She can remember that all the responsible people she knows have had these same difficulties and have overcome them.
This thought will encourage her to believe that what others have done she can do also. There is much that she may gain from this new position. It is like an open door whereby she may enter a new world.
The girl who is in her first position will find that she must adjust herself to conditions very different from those of home and school life.
At home all her personal concerns have been of supreme importance, and she has been the object of unceasing love and care. At school her best interests have still been consulted, and she has been taught how both to work and play. She now begins to give back value for the care which has been taken of her at home and the teaching which she has received at school. After she is able to work for herself, it is really no one else"s duty to support her. She cannot expect that busy people in the office or workroom will stop to listen to her. If she is feeling dull or discouraged, or if something has gone wrong in her private affairs, these things have nothing to do with her fellow-workers. They also have their private affairs. Therefore she must learn to be cheerful, not to talk about her own troubles, and to be, in brief, a grown-up, sensible, considerate person.
Two ill.u.s.trations may help the girl to understand this difference between life in paid employment and school days or life at home. A girl once was offered a position in a large establishment by the man who was the head of the business. She had certain training and gifts which made him believe that she could do good work in his business. After her appointment she found that she was under the direction of the manager"s chief of staff, who, as she soon discovered, had wanted someone else. She began to think out the position in which she found herself. "It is quite plain," she said to herself, "that the chief is a more important person than I am. He is not going to lose his position because he does not like me. It would not be just or right or good business if he did. The truth is that if I do not get on with him and convince him that I can do good work I am going to be a failure. It is part of my business to get on with the chief of staff."
She had made the important discovery that it is wise to put oneself in the background and to work harmoniously with one"s a.s.sociates. After a year"s hard work she had the satisfaction of being told by her chief, that, notwithstanding his early dissatisfaction with her appointment, she had won his approval, for she had convinced him of her efficiency.
The other ill.u.s.tration can be given in a few words, but it teaches a truth about paid employment which many girls need to learn. One day a woman called to see an important public man on a matter of business. When she came he was dictating a letter. He saw his caller as soon as he had finished. Before the conversation had well begun, his secretary came to the door and asked him to what address he wished the letter sent. When the secretary had gone out again, the man looked at his visitor and said laughing, yet with an expression of annoyance, "I cannot teach my secretary that it is her work to look up addresses. She is here to save me trouble.
I am not here to save her trouble. But I cannot get her to understand that." The girl in question was behaving in her work as if she had been a spoiled child at home. It is to be hoped that she would have been ashamed to ask her mother, for instance, to tell her an address which she could look up for herself. Yet this girl was being paid to find addresses as part of her work.
The girl who is beginning paid employment will have to learn largely from others how her work ought to be done, but she must learn to depend on her own observation. Questions must be asked occasionally, but it is unwise to ask too many. Ask information only from those who are willing to answer.
Everyone in the world of work is busy as a rule, and comparatively few people will stop their work to explain to someone else how a task ought to be done. There are two cla.s.ses of workers--those who require direction always, and those who are able and willing to take responsibility. The girl at first begins under direction but, as soon as she is familiar with what she has to do and understands a good deal of the purpose of her work, she should try, if possible, to develop responsibility. It is a good plan to study how other people do their work. There is sure to be someone among one"s fellow-employees who is a specially good worker. Study the methods and character of this worker and learn from your observation how to do your own work. The girl in a new position should resolutely avoid a.s.sociation with lazy, indifferent, and idle fellow-employees. One of the first lessons for her to learn, and sometimes one of the hardest, is that her time is not her own. It belongs to her employer, who is paying for her work. Therefore her own social engagements have no claim on her working hours.
It is apparent that certain qualifications and characteristics ensure success in paid work--good temper, self-control, common sense, kindness, and a sense of what is fair are of inestimable value to the girl worker.
Moreover, she must be in earnest in her determination to find work and keep it. She should have some secondary employment at which she can work if her regular employment is slack. And through all the changes and difficulties of her working life, a girl should know how to keep well, for health is a great a.s.set.
She should add to these essentials a feeling of responsibility and a desire to understand the problems of management in the business in which she is employed. In addition, let her have that sense of honour which will keep her from a betrayal of confidential information. The loyal worker is always valued and respected.
CHAPTER VI
WHAT EVERY GIRL NEEDS TO KNOW
The world the girl has to live in is the everyday world we know. Some people say that the world is commonplace, and so it is if we look at it from one point of view. But the truth is that the commonplace and the wonderful are so closely joined together that it is impossible to separate them. The girl needs commonplace gifts to live in the world, or she will not prosper. She needs also to be able to see and understand the wonderful side of life. To appreciate both the commonplace and the wonderful should be part of her endeavour. A great deal depends on her training. What shall we choose for her? She may work at home or in paid employment, but she needs certain training, because she is a girl, just as a soldier needs training, because he is a soldier.
First, the girl ought to know how to keep well. Good health is a precious possession, and we may have a great deal to do with whether we are strong and healthy or weak and half-ill most of the time. If the girl is to be a home-maker, she needs good health. What a sad place a home is if the home-maker is a constant sufferer! If the girl is in a shop, a factory, an office, a telephone exchange, a school, or a hospital, unless she is a reasonably healthy girl her success in her work is greatly lessened, if indeed it is possible for her to succeed at all. If she is an actress or an artist, she undergoes a constant strain on her nervous energy. Artists and actresses need good health, possibly more so even than the average woman in paid employment. So, no matter what the girl is to do, she should be healthy.
But she requires certain definite kinds of knowledge, so that she may know how to keep well. The first is knowing what to eat. There is scarcely anything that interferes more with the health and success of the girl worker than ignorance of what is nutritious food. A woman who is very fond of girls who work and who knows hundreds of them, said once that she would like to give every girl she knew this knowledge about food. There is no way of acquiring it except by learning. Our ideal girl will learn food values and how food should be prepared. Every girl in the world, no matter who she is, is better off for this knowledge. It is part of the foundation of good health. The girl in business requires a special warning to be sure that her luncheon gives her sufficient nourishment for her work.
In order to be healthy, girls must know, also, how to dress. This should include some knowledge of the making of clothing, how to cut out, and how to sew, and also some skill in mending and re-modelling. Looking into the future for the well-being of our ideal girl, we see that her appearance as well as her health depends not a little on her skill as a wise buyer and maker of clothing. Her early income as a worker is not likely to be large.
It may be very small. It will need all her skill to make the best use of this income.
In order to acquire skill in the management of food and clothing and so ensure her health, a girl must understand the management of money. Some day she will have the spending of an income. Either she will earn the income in paid employment, or it will be part of her work as a home-maker to manage the spending of the house money. Now, money cannot be spent wisely except by planning. The girl should learn how to divide her income, to allot so much for food, so much for clothing, so much for shelter, so much for improvement, recreation, and holidays, so much for the dentist and the doctor, so much to be saved, so much for religious obligations and benevolence, and for safety a margin over, because there are always unforeseen calls on one"s income. This planning for the proper division of her income may sound at first a little bewildering. But after all, what is it but learning what we can afford to spend? We begin by buying a little carefully, and as we go on we acquire knowledge and skill. Few things which the twentieth century girl can learn will stand her in better stead in everyday life, or help her more constantly, than knowing how to spend her income wisely, honestly, and helpfully.
We have spoken at some length about food and clothing as they affect health. Quite as important to health are rest and recreation. A girl needs not only plenty of refreshing sleep, but play also and what most people call "good times." It is a mistake to suppose that we can be healthy without play. Often when we are out of sorts, sad, depressed, and gloomy, and our friends are sorry for us and think something dreadful must have happened to make us so unhappy, all that we need in reality is sleep, fresh air, exercise, and play. It is not being a heroine to be sad.
Most real heroines are happy people. There is nothing heroic in making other people depressed by our gloomy faces. The ideal girl is healthy and happy, she sleeps eight hours or more at night, and plays a reasonable part of her time. To play all the time is very dull, even more dull than to work all the time. But each day, if possible, one should have some happy play time.
Then, too, the ideal girl will try to see that she helps others to be as healthy and happy as she is herself. Part of the value of knowing how to keep well is that it teaches us how to keep other people well. We should know how others should be fed and clothed and cared for. The girl of the twentieth century needs some knowledge of nursing. It is not necessary for her to be a trained nurse, but she should have some of the knowledge and skill of the trained nurse.
Among the things that every girl needs to know is something of the importance of friendship. The best gifts in the world are love, kindness, faithfulness, sincerity, and purity. It is through our relations with other human beings and our love for them that we begin to understand the love of G.o.d.
CHAPTER VII
THE HOUSE WORKER--DOMESTIC SCIENCE
A young woman who is now the author of two successful novels earned the money she needed to attend a teachers" training school by working as a domestic servant. It was the quickest and most convenient way for her to earn a certain sum of money. Her decision and independence of character kept her from hesitating for a moment to make use of this employment. One young woman who is a capable real estate agent takes a position as an experienced general servant when her usual business is slack. A woman at the head of a large business, which she originated and developed herself, earned her living as a domestic until she was twenty-five years old. There is no reason why any of us should be kept from doing good domestic work if it is the most suitable and convenient employment for us.
The disadvantages of domestic work, as it is generally arranged at present, are that the house worker is required to live away from home; her own special sleeping and living accommodation is sometimes not of the best; she has comparatively little time that is absolutely her own; she feels that she is placed at a social disadvantage as compared with other girls who are her friends and who are earning a living in other paid work, and she may be lonely, as a consequence of being often the only paid worker in the household. These are facts to be considered. But it is possible that a re-arrangement of household work, undertaken by modern employers and clever modern girls, who have a gift for household management, as well as character and initiative, may provide a solution for these disadvantages.
The advantages of domestic work include good wages, and more comfortable living conditions than the average paid worker can secure for herself. The house worker has also variety in work, freedom to move about at her work, and freedom from the rigid rules necessary in big business establishments.
She is afforded an opportunity to become a highly skilled worker, and she can find a permanent position if she is competent and wishes to remain in one place. Above all, the house worker is getting the best training for home-making.
The wages of the house worker include board, lodging, and washing, and often some part at least of her working clothes. She has two weeks"
holidays with wages. She may save in a year a quarter or a third as much money as the entire earnings of her girl friends. At twelve dollars a week, working forty-two weeks in the year, the girl in a factory can earn five hundred and four dollars, out of which she has of course to pay all her expenses. The house worker who is earning twenty-five, thirty or thirty-five dollars a month can easily save two hundred dollars in a year, and a number of them do so. Girls in other paid employments, who pay board and lodging, washing, and carfare out of ten or twelve dollars a week, are practically unable to save anything.
A competent house worker is beyond the fear of unemployment, while the possibility of unemployment or of being laid off for a number of weeks is an anxiety to many other paid women workers. When she marries and has a home of her own to take care of, the house worker is at a great advantage.
She can take up the work of a home easily, and her management is a success from the beginning.
The accomplishment most frequently required from the domestic worker is ability to cook. The girl who has a natural gift in this direction should take pains to develop it. She may have to begin to earn her living when she is quite young. In this case she should apply for a position as second maid in a household where a cook is kept, and she should be careful to learn from the cook all that she needs to know in order to become a professional expert in cooking. Or she should look for a position as house worker with an employer who is herself a good housekeeper and who is willing to train her.
The improvement of housework conditions is largely in the hands of household employees. If a young woman is an excellent cook and a competent household manager, she can make practically her own conditions with women employers. If she prefers to live at home or in a room of her own outside the house where she is employed, she can explain to her employer the hours that she is willing to be on duty and how the work of the house can be arranged so that she can accomplish the greater part of it during these hours. She will be certain to find some intelligent woman employer who will agree to her conditions. Only the first-cla.s.s worker, who can plan and carry out her plans successfully, will be able to do this; and every woman employer may not see the benefit of such an arrangement. There are a number of households where the woman in charge will be glad to accept service during half the day, but here also the house worker must be first cla.s.s. The trained domestic worker of high qualifications, able to do her work to perfection, and to consider intelligently how the work of the household can be organized, will add greatly to the standing of this employment.
The house worker should have a fairly good general education. The better her general education, the more successful she is likely to be. She should be intelligent, obliging, and adaptable. She should have a strong sense of honour, for she is largely on her own responsibility, and the welfare of the home is often trusted in her hands. The ideal household employee should have some of the qualities of the artist. The work of a fine cook is artistic, and the perfect care of a house requires both the eye and the hand of an artist. No woman can be a success as a paid house worker who is not kind. She often has some part of the care of children, and it is wrong to have an ill-tempered or unkind person in charge of, or in company with, children. Besides this, the care of a house, the cooking of food, cleanliness, and the work of adapting oneself to the wants of others cannot be carried out well and cheerfully unless the worker responsible for this work is kind.
Wages are unusually good in domestic work as compared with other employments for women. Some girls, however, are underpaid. A girl may receive, for instance, twelve dollars a month. No girl with initiative or knowledge of housework needs to remain in such a position. Wages vary from twenty, twenty-two, to twenty-five, thirty, and thirty-five dollars, according to the locality, the nature of the work, and the skill of the worker. A first-cla.s.s cook commands high wages. So also does a first-cla.s.s managing housekeeper. A general servant of ability and character, who undertakes most of the work of a household, with the exception of the washing, will receive twenty, twenty-five or thirty dollars. In some parts of the country her wages may be higher. If trained workers, who have special gifts for household management and who feel that they can do better in this employment than any other, would undertake the re-organizing of house work, this occupation should take its rightful place as one of the best occupations for the average woman.
From a consideration of domestic service we naturally pa.s.s on to those occupations of girls which grow out of a knowledge of "domestic science."
The study of domestic science is making itself felt in the homes of the country and is opening up many avenues of employment for girls. The management of clubs, hotels, restaurants, tea-rooms, cafeterias, and lunch-rooms in connection with colleges, departmental stores, and banks, affords employment for those who have the gifts and training necessary.
Special cooking for invalids, the supplying of specialties, such as marmalade, pickles, preserved fruit, canned fruit and vegetables, salted nuts, cakes of various kinds and other dainties is work which is being carried on successfully by numbers of women and girls. The girl, in considering employment, should remember that she will be at an advantage in any specialized women"s employment and that the world is offering her opportunities for good work which a few years ago had not been dreamed of.
The occupation of house work, household management, cooking, all the arts of the home, will well repay the enthusiasm and energy of every girl who has a gift in this direction. What the girl with ability for this work needs to bring to her problem is, not only enthusiasm and energy, but originality and initiative. "I have a real gift," she should say to herself; "how can I make the best use of it?"
Universities have established departments of domestic science, and there are also domestic science training schools. Numbers of graduates find positions as instructors. Many other positions are open to the domestic science graduate. Practical experience is required in most of these openings. After graduating it is advisable to find a position as an a.s.sistant. In this way the young woman in this occupation will become fitted to hold the most responsible and remunerative posts. There are possibilities in household work and domestic science which have not yet been realized.
CHAPTER VIII
THE TEACHER
Two girls were playing a game of tennis together. One of the girls was a skilful player, but the other knew little of the game. In a few minutes the skilful player came to the side of the net where the other stood.
"See," she said, "this is the way to hold your racket. This is the way to strike the ball." The unskilled player grasped the idea, and immediately much pleasure was added to the game for them both.
A singer was giving a lesson to one of her pupils. She explained to her carefully how to stand, how to breathe, and how to let her voice flow easily and naturally from her throat. The pupil"s voice became to her thereafter something more than it had ever been before.
Two men in a business office were discussing whether or not they should undertake a new enterprise. One of the men, seeing that the other man had not yet perceived the principle underlying the business situation, drew a sheet of paper in front of them on the desk and made on it a series of calculations. "I understand now," the other man said, "I see the risk and how you have made provision for meeting it."
The skilful tennis-player, the trained singer, the able business man were sharing their knowledge with others, showing them how to make the best use of their powers. That is to say, they were teaching others. Every person is to some extent a born teacher, but some men and women make teaching their life work.