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114 A YEAR'S EXPERIENCE.
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Transcript
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
W Nearly A Year Has Now Passed Since, Th...
hear of lier through our simple plan , combining * an entry in a register book and an advertisement in the Journal for tlie current
month . If in this way we get two really good and well-trained officials placed in a month , it would compensate for the little extra
trouble . Being thus , as it were , a plan-- private to the _circulation of the Journalit was not otherwise advertisednor "was any
publicity then soug , ht for it . But when the whole question , started into lifethe advertisements put forth by the Society appear to have
, aroused the attention of "women in all parts of the country _; and as the Society and the Journal now had contiguous offices in the same
house , no practical distinction could be made , and the secretaries of either were literally deluged with applications for employment .
We had no sooner explained to the ladies who came on . Thursday that the formation by the Society of model classes or businesses for
a select number did not imply an ability on our part to iind _remunerative-work for indiscriminate applicants , than the same task had
to be gone over again on Friday . Indeed , I remember one Friday , in the month of Marchwhen twenty women applied at our counter
, for work whereby they _coiild gain a livelihood—all of them more or less educated—all of them with some claim to the title of a lady .
Although not professing personally to enter into these applicationsthe replies to which devolved on the secretariesI was very
constantl , y in the office of the Journal when they were , made , and entered into conversation with the ladies ; in many cases , indeed ,
they came with notes of introduction to me or to my co-editor , and I had to ask them what kind of work they wanted , and , indeed , a
more important question , for what kind of work they were fitted . In this way we may certainly lay claim to have heard more of
women ' s wants during the last year than any other people in the kingdom ; and thatjust because the demands were so indefinite— -the
, ladies did not want to be governesses , they wanted to be something elseand we were to advise them . In this way I have conversed
with , ladies of all ages and conditions : with young girls of seventeen finding it necessary to start in life ; with single women who found
teaching unendurable as life advanced ; with married ladies whose husbands were invalided or not forthcoming ; with widows who had
children to support ; with tradesmen ' s daughters , and with people of condition fallen into low estate .
To find them work through the Journal Register was a sheer impossibility . Not only were they far more numerous than one had
ever contemplated ; but they were of a different class . I had hoped to hear of and to supply a few well-trained picked women to places
of trust among our subscribers ; but here were literally hundreds of women neither well-trained nor picked ; outnumbering any demand
by ninety-nine per cent . The Victoria Press and the Law-Copying Glass got into workand employed "from ten to twenty girls and
women each . ; but it , stands to reason that more could not be drafted
into either establishment during the first year of its existence , with-
114 A Year's Experience.
114 A YEAR ' S EXPERIENCE .
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Oct. 1, 1860, page 114, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01101860/page/42/
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