Women wanted: The story written in blood red letters on the horizon of the Great World WarDaggett, Mabel Potter
History
Women wanted: The story written in blood red letters on the horizon of the Great World War
Daggett, Mabel Potter
Women -- Employment; World War, 1914-1918 -- Women
Like that, little peaches are getting picked in all languages. And
after them are the others fresh from the gardens where the rose
trees grow. And among these ornamental companions of her employer’s
selection, the really useful employé who gets in, finds herself at a
disadvantage. The little peach “bears” the whole woman’s wage market.
She has hysterics: all the wise commercial world shakes its head about
the staying power of woman in business. And the whole female of the
species gets listed on the pay roll at two-thirds man’s pay.
The Orient Steamship Company, I believe, is giving equal pay for equal
work. To an official of another steamship company complaining of the
inefficiency of women employés, Sir Kenneth Anderson, President of the
Orient Line, put the query, “How much do you pay them?” “Twenty-five
shillings a week,” was the answer. “Then you don’t deserve to have
efficient women,” was the prompt retort. “We pay those who prove
competent up to three pounds a week. And they’re such a success we’ve
decided we can’t let them go after the war.” But Sir Kenneth Anderson
is the son of one of England’s pioneer feminists, Dr. Elizabeth Garrett
Anderson, and the nephew of another, Mrs. Millicent Garrett Fawcett,
president of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. And
I suppose there isn’t another business house in London that has the
Orient Steamship Company’s vision. Women clerks in London business
circles generally are getting twenty shillings to thirty shillings a
week. The city of Manchester, advertising for women clerks for the
public health offices, offered salaries respectively of ten shillings,
eighteen shillings and twenty shillings a week, “candidates to sit for
examination.”
[Illustration:
MLLE. SANUA
Who, at the Ancien Prieure in Paris, holds open the door of commerce
for women in France.
]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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