It was withal a very kindly voice and there was in it a distinct note of pride when he said: “Now I want you to see a journal one of my girls has done.” He came back with it and as he turned the pages for my inspection, he commented: “I find the greatest success with those who at 17 or 18 come direct from school, ‘fresh off the arms,’ as we say in Scotland. They, well, they know their arithmetic better. My one criticism of women employés is that some of them are not always quite strong on figures. And they lack somewhat in what I might call staying power. Business is business and it must go on every day. Now and then my girls want to stay home for a day. And the long hours, 9:30 to 5:00 in the city, well, I suppose they are arduous for a woman.” “Mr. Clarke,” I said, “may I ask you a question: What preparation have these new employés had for business?” And it turns out, as a matter of fact, most of them haven’t had any. A large number of this quarter of a million women who came at the call of the London Board of Trade to take the places of men in the offices, are of the class who since they were “finished” at school, have been living quiet English lives in pleasant suburbs where the rose trees grow and everybody strives to be truly a lady who doesn’t descend to working for money. It is difficult for an American woman of any class to visualise such an ideal. But it was a British fact. There were thousands of correct English girls like this, whose pulses had never thrilled to a career who are finding it now suddenly thrust upon them. “Mr. Clarke,” I said, “suppose a quarter of a million men were to be hastily turned loose in a kitchen or nursery to do the work to which women have been born and trained for generations. Perhaps they might not be able to handle the job with just the precision of their predecessors. Now do you think they would?” Mr. Clarke raised his commercial hand in a quick gesture of protest: “Dear lady,” he said, “I remember when my wife once tried me out one day in the nursery—one day was enough for her and for me—I, well, I wasn’t equal to the strain. Frankly, I’m quite sure most men wouldn’t have the staying power for the tasks you mention.” So you see, in comparison, perhaps the new women on the high stools that have been specially made to their size, are doing pretty well anyhow. There are 73,000 more of them in government offices, the lower clerkships in the civil service having been opened to them since the war. And no less than 42,000 more women have replaced men in finance and banking.