The Stenographer 1910 Edison Film
In the 20th century, we had the pink collar ghetto of the female office worker.
When I applied upon graduation at an advertising agency in Montreal, I was told I would have to work 2 years first as a receptionist, then two years as a typist before getting any chance to write copy.
I wondered what the male graduate had to do to enter the field. Luckily, I could not type well.
I have a letter in the Nicholson stash from 1902, from a woman working in an office in Montreal. It is Christmas and she is busy doing commissions for people back home in Richmond: She describes her life, in general, as otherwise monotonous. She works in an office, gets home at six every day, eats a crappy hash made by the rooming house matron, and then dresses for an evening out that is also predictable and boring.
According to one 1912 article, New York Post, there were 100,000 thousand woman working as stenographers (which meant office workers) in New York City alone in 1912 (Doesn’t seem right.)
80-85 percent of all commercial typewriting in the country (up to 250,000 typists) was being performed by women.
Edith Nicholson, of my story Flo in the City, didn’t have a teaching diploma, so she went to secretarial school in Boston and ended up working for Sun Life Insurance during the war, and later for the Registrar at McGill, a most interesting job, I am sure. She was the Assistant Registrar.
Here’s some more of the Post article.
“Although a machine for the impressing or transcribing letters progressively or singly was patented in England in 1714, it was not until 1874 that the working typeriter was put on the market, and its story as important economic factor has been packed in the last 30 years. Women have been in offices before the evolution of the typewriter, but they fairly poured in afterward. It is questionable if the women themselves have yet even recognized how wide is the door into the business world which the little bell on the typewriter may be said to have opened for them. (sic).
But women lack vision when it comes to business, or they aren’t ambitious..
“Some people read in it the salvation of the nation:and jubilate that the marrying instinct is so strong in women that it can be relied on to survive all phases of industrial readjustment. Others wring their hands over the waste of materials and opportunity involved in the girls’ attitude of indifference.”
(Examples are given of what some women have done with the opportunity. One woman at one company became an office manager! And one woman rose to be confidential secretary of a financier at a salary of 10,o00 a year. (HUGE Salary!)
(In 1912, in Montreal, it was said that a stenographer could make 1ooo dollars a year, which was very very good pay. The census shows them making between 400 and 700, the same salary as a teacher with diploma.)
The article then describes the male typists who like the competitive aspects, the speed tests! It’s their ‘racing instinct’.
“Never has women had a fairer field, a wider prospect (than with office work).
She still had difficulties before her, prejudices to overcome, like equal pay for equal effort.”
Henry Spillman, who in interested in developing a work force out of women typists, says that success in the field is 50 percent personality, 30 percent general education and 20 percent technical. (Hmm, I guess physical beauty is part of personality.)
