This book has been added to our online repository of curated HR- and management-related classic books, available to paid subscribers.
Ms. Richardson’s book is an intriguing, honest and thoughtful portrayal of the lives of working girls in the early 1900’s. The focus is on 19 positions that were open to women at the time, including stenography, millinery, government work, “kindergartening,” social services, and “art for the girl who must be self-supporting.” Here is a snippet from Chapter 12, “The Girl in the Factory.”
In the vocabulary of those who write and lecture on the self-supporting woman, there is no more misleading phrase than “the poor factory girl.” The self-respecting, alert factory worker—and there are thousands upon thousands of such workers in the United States—neither asks nor merits pity. Many of them make more money in a week than the average mediocre stenographer makes in a month. Thousands of them perform less exhausting work than the girl who stands behind a counter. The vast majority of them have union hours, and each year officials get closer and closer to the heart of factory life, enforcing laws of sanitation and human safety.
The final two chapters are of special interest to today’s reader. In Chapter 19, “The Girl the Business World Wants,” we read:
When you first enter the business world you will meet many fellow-workers who pretend to do big things, to work hard and to have their employers' interest at heart, when, in reality, they are simply making a superficial showing, and they are not working, not putting heart and soul into their work. Be not deceived by their methods. Be sincere. Do your work so that each night as you pass the timekeeper or the cage in which sits the cashier, you can say in your heart : "To-day I have earned all that Mr. Blank pays me and — more." These words are a satisfying chant, but if you simply make a pretense at working, there will be no song on your lips; rather a shaky feeling in your knees and a sinking in your heart not pleasant to feel. Whenever a girl tells me that she has an "easy" position, I mark her for a girl doomed for early dismissal. It is never really easy to earn your salary and incidentally work toward promotion.
We find this passage intriguing. The last line of the excerpt is reflective of the many reasons that are given by those who quit their jobs during The Great Resignation that emerged from the Covid-19 pandemic, one of which is “lack of opportunity for advancement.”
Chapter 20, “Living Expenses of the Self-Supporting Girl in the Big Cities” is informative and worthy of comparison to the experiences of the modern working woman. Here we find:
The inexperienced city girl must also start at the smallest wages which the superintendent of the establishment dares to offer, simply because, as I have explained in other chapters, the employer feels that her mistakes will be many and costly, and she will not earn the sum he pays her, no matter how small that may be. Both the city and the country girl are forced to accept three, four or five dollars per week, quieting their fears by repeating the superintendent's consoling words: "But we will increase your salary as fast as you prove your worth.” But even when a girl tries her level best to prove her worth, and when she gives her undivided attention and efforts to the firm's business, it takes weeks and months to master details…
Here, again, we are invited to compare the experience of working women at the beginning of the last century to working women at the beginning of the current century. In this case, the comparison also covers the experiences of many working men who are just beginning their careers. Circa 2022, the prevailing themes of new workers have included a disillusionment over not advancing rapidly in pay and position, with little awareness of or agreement with the concept of “proving your worth.”