s they have had have not been
brilliant, but every opportunity, however small, carries with it the
responsibility to make the best of it. Upon these girls, since they
outnumber the others and because they have had advantages (a high-school
education is an enormous advantage if you are looking at it from the
point of view of a person who wanted one but was not able to get it),
rests the responsibility of setting the pace for others. And the
standard of behavior for the business girl, whether she be rich or poor
or in between, is the same.

The wealthy girls who enter business deliberately are usually followed
by the same sensible impulse that started them on their careers, and, as
a rule, they conduct themselves with dignity and modesty. The wealthy
girls who, through a turn of fortune have been forced into work and have
gone unwillingly, are another matter. "The rudest girls we have," is the
testimony of most people who have to deal with them. Conventional social
charm and poise they may have but they are without that finer sense of
courtesy which makes them accept whatever fate gives them and make the
best of it. The fading splendor of the days of plenty envelops them like
a cloud--remember that we are speaking of the unwilling ones--they lose
themselves in self-pity, and the great fun that comes from good work
they miss entirely.

Many of the poor girls in business have never known anything but
poverty, and their lives have been cast among people who have never
known anything else. They have had no home training in the art of
behavior (for the people at home did not know how to give it to them).
No one has ever told them how to dress or act but there have never been
lacking those to condemn them when they dressed foolishly or acted
indiscreetly. "The silly little things," they say (and oh, how superior
they are when they say it). Employers agree, for, after all, it is true,
and the silly little things hold their jobs until they are married,
until they are fired, or (and this happens frequently) until they wake
up, and then they are promoted to something better. We cannot expect
girls like these, who have grown up without contact with the gentler
side of life, to begin with a high standard of behavior, but we can (and
do) expect them, once they have been brought into touch with better
things, to raise their standard. It is no disgrace for a girl to begin
in ignorance and squalor; the disgrace lies in staying there.