Four Years in the Underbrush: Adventures as a Working Woman in New YorkAnonymous
History
Four Years in the Underbrush: Adventures as a Working Woman in New York
Anonymous
Women employees -- New York (State) -- New York
If I should be employed here I would certainly work in marble halls. The
bank, as far as I could see on that floor, was beautiful marble and
bronze. Wonderful! The huge flat-top desk beside me and the chair in
which I sat were both exquisitely grained mahogany. And there were five
other desks and numerous chairs just like them on the officers’ floor—at
the front of the bank and raised one step above the general floor level.
While I was busy studying the faces of the men at the other desk Mr.
Morton arrived without my being conscious of his approach. He spoke to
me, and looking up I beheld a long, tall man, with becomingly gray hair.
Now I like gray hair, and I also like eyes that meet mine calmly and as
a matter of course when the owner is talking to me. There’s a difference
in eyes—eyes that play hop, skip, and jump, trying to see everything,
look everywhere except into the eyes of the person addressing them; eyes
that stare at you as though wishing to jump out and snatch your eyes
bald-headed, and eyes that have a predisposition to study the toes of
shoes and the figures on the carpet, darting up once in a while to catch
you off your guard, and perhaps murder you.
My interview with Mr. Morton was encouraging. He felt sure, he said,
that if women of my “attainments” would offer their services they would
be gladly accepted by the banks and similar corporations. As he saw
conditions, if the war continued as long as persons in a position to
know appeared to expect it would, half of the work of the Trust Company
would have to be done by women.
“Everybody don’t agree with me,” he added. “Some think it unnecessary,
my employing women here. Some of our men enlisted, many were called in
the first draft, others will be caught in later drafts. The situation is
serious, and I want to meet it.”
On learning that he was a Princeton graduate, I decided to give him a
trial as a boss. Fortunately for me, he decided to give me a trial.
After taking the names of my references and some more general
conversation, he asked me to report for duty the next Monday morning.
On my return trip up-town I took stock of myself. Pat myself on the back
as I might, I was forced to admit that my clothes, in their present
condition, were not suited to a dweller in marble halls. Determined not
to take my trunks from storage, I was even more set on continuing to
live on my wages. What to do I did not know.
Being Friday I resolved to loaf until Monday. Leaving the surface car at
Store Beautiful, I proceeded to carry out my resolve—loaf. Perhaps while
doing so a solution of my problem might develop. But an hour spent in
roaming through the most beautiful department store in the world only
added to my conviction—the unfitness of my clothes to marble halls.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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