SECTION VI

WOMEN CLERKS AND SECRETARIES

The salary of the woman secretary of the best class, whether working privately or for a firm, seems to be L100 to L150 a year.  Generally speaking, this is exactly what it was twenty years ago.  It would seem that the highest salaries are those given by City men to confidential clerks (sometimes relatives), who are either good accountants or good linguists.  The head of an influential typing office and registry in London informed me that the highly paid posts of translators to City firms are usually filled by German girls.  The woman receiving L200 to L250 is a very rare person.  I know only of one who receives L5 a week, and that is from an American firm in London.  She does private secretarial work, but has no book-keeping and no foreign correspondence.  Some years ago I knew of another woman, private secretary to the head of a large publishing firm, who had L200 a year.  She was an efficient French correspondent, an able, all-round woman, and had been with the firm for twenty years.  There are now two clerks in her place at much lower salaries.  There seems to be a tendency to employ two cheap clerks in place of one expensive one.

People unacquainted with the facts, seldom realise how small is the remuneration of capable secretaries.  I am acquainted with the work of a woman who has the following qualifications:  verbatim shorthand, neat typing and sound knowledge of secretarial and business work, including book-keeping; she is methodical and conscientious in her work, has had some years’ City Experience, three years in the shorthand and typing offices in the Houses of Parliament and with peers and members.  She is asking 45s. a week, and would take 40s. “with prospects.”

Well-paid posts seem to be exceptional.  A woman with an intimate knowledge of City conditions, who was chief accountant to an important firm for sixteen years, informs me that L175 is the highest salary she has ever known a woman clerk to receive.  The lowest on record seems to be 5s. a week.  There is a woman running a typing office in the City who hires out shorthand typists at this figure to business firms.  She employs a staff of from fifteen to twenty girls.  Similarly, an industrial insurance company, nine months ago, opened a new department to deal with the work of the new Act.  They engaged fifty girl clerks at 10s. with a superintendent, also a woman, at 30s. a week.

There is sometimes difficulty in getting accurate information with regard to payments.  The heads of typing schools and colleges are apt to give too rosy a picture, and the individual clerk has usually a somewhat narrow experience and is inclined to be pessimistic.  A man whom I interviewed (in place of the manager, who was engaged), at one of the biggest schools for training clerks, informed me that everything depended on the clerk.  He said the girls who were