o to work at an earlier age, but also because business
itself intends to round their training. Girls, on the contrary, are
expected to enter completely trained for definite positions. This fact
alone would in most cases compel them to be older. Furthermore,
because boys in first positions are looked upon as potential clerks,
miscellaneous jobs about the office have for them a two-fold value.
They give the employer a chance to weed out unpromising material; and
they give boys an opportunity to find themselves and to gather ideas
about the business and methods which they may be able to make use of
in later adjustments.

[Illustration: Diagram 2.--Men and women 18 years of age and over in
clerical and administrative work in offices in Cleveland. U.S. Census,
1910]

Diagram 2 shows that girls' training, if it is to meet the present
situation, must prepare for a future in specialized clerical work;
boys' future must apparently be thought of as in mostly the clerical
and administrative fields. The term "clerical" as here used, covers
bookkeepers, cashiers and accountants, stenographers and typists,
clerks and a miscellaneous group of younger workers such as
messengers, office boys, etc. "Administrative" covers proprietors,
officials, managers, supervisors, and agents, but it does not include
salespeople.

The usual commercial course gives impartially to boys and girls two
traditional "subjects" which they are to apply in wage earning
whatever part of the wage earning field they may enter. These are
stenography and bookkeeping. The evidence collected during the survey
shows that these are rarely found in combination except in small
offices. Of the men employed who are stenographers, the majority are
of two kinds: (1) those who use stenography incidentally with their
other and more important work as clerks, and (2) those for whom
stenography is but a stepping-stone to another kind of position. The
only firms which make a practice of offering ordinary stenographic
positions for boys are those which restrict themselves to male
employees for every kind of work.

Independent stenographic work of various kinds is of course open to
the sexes alike. In Cleveland there are a few women in court
stenography. The 10 public stenographers' offices were found upon
inquiry to include two men and 10 women. No figures regarding
convention reporters were obtainable. In the positions of the
bookkeeping group also there was some sex differen