th myself and all the
rest of the struggling, ill-paid, wretched working women with whom I had
come in contact during my apprenticeship. What that trouble was I shall
revert to later.

When I had thoroughly learned the principles of my trade and had
attained a speed of some hundred and odd words a minute, the hardest
task was yet before me. This task was not in finding a position, but in
filling that position satisfactorily. My first position at ten dollars a
week I held only one day. I failed to read my notes. This was more
because of fright and of self-consciousness, however, than of
inefficiency. My next paid me only six dollars a week, but it was an
excellent training-school, and in it I learned self-confidence, perfect
accuracy, and rapidity. Although this position paid me two dollars less
than what I had been earning brewing tea and coffee and handing it over
the counter, and notwithstanding the fact that I knew of places where I
could go and earn ten dollars a week, I chose to remain where I was.
There was method in my madness, however, let me say. I had a considerate
and conscientious employer, and although I had a great deal of work, and
although it had to be done most punctiliously, he never allowed me to
work a moment overtime. He opened his office at nine in the morning, and
I was not expected before quarter after; he closed at four sharp. This
gave me an opportunity for further improving myself with a view to
eventually taking not a ten-dollar, but a twenty-dollar position. I went
back to night-school and took a three months' "speed course," and at the
same time continued to add to my general education and stock of
knowledge by a systematic reading of popular books of science and
economics. I became tremendously interested in myself as an economic
factor, and I became tremendously interested in other working girls from
a similar point of view. Of science and economics I knew nothing when I
started out to earn my living.

One day I answered an advertisement calling for the sort of stenographer
I now believed myself to be. It brought a response signed with the name
of a large religious publishing house. I got the position, beginning
with a salary of fifteen dollars a week, which was to be increased to
twenty dollars provided I could fill the position. That I should succeed
in doing so, there was evident doubt in my employers' minds, and no
wonder! For I was the fifth to attempt it.

My work consisted for t