retary for a certain post. He agreed to find a
suitable person if the firm would guarantee a commencing salary of
35s. a week. After some demur this was conceded, and he sent to a
well-known school for three competent clerks that he might examine
them and recommend the best of the three. After the test he asked
them, in turn, what salary they expected. They were all over
twenty-one years of age and all competent. One mentioned 25s., the
second 23s., and the third L1 a week. On being asked, they said they
knew they were worth more, but they thought that, as they were women,
they would not get it.

Where there is no one to safeguard the interests of the clerk, an
employer, on the look-out for cheap labour, finds it easily enough.
The head of a big firm offered a French girl, an expert shorthand
writer in three languages, 15s. a week, with a possible rise after
three months. She finally accepted a post at 30s. a week as she could
get nothing better through registries or by advertisement.

Unless a girl has a claim on a school where she has trained, or has
influential friends, it is very difficult for her to get a post suited
to her needs in London. The whole profession seems to be in a chaotic
condition, and the chances through advertisement are haphazard and
unsatisfactory. Employment bureaux maintain that there are more good
posts than there are qualified women to fill them, but individual
secretaries are timid about giving up unsatisfactory posts as they do
not know how to get better.

Take the case of a private secretary to a Member of Parliament.
He loses his seat, retires to the country, and gives up his London
secretary. He gives her a number of introductions. These lead to
nothing, and she is forced into the competition of the City. Her
particular training is of no use in a commercial office, and her value
falls to 30s. a week.

A woman with an intimate knowledge of women clerks and secretaries
in the City for the past twenty years, says that it is difficult to
overestimate the poverty of a vast number of girls. Many of them are
the chief breadwinners of the family. She knows of half a dozen cases
of men of forty and a little older who are living on the earnings of
their daughters; there may be two girls in the family, one getting
12s. and the other 25s. a week.

The private secretary who lives in, has usually excellent food and
pleasant surroundings, but in some cases the life is a solitary
one. Unless ther