Office Service; concessions about pay
have been refused. [EDITOR.]]

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 superinten