ogether, no girl should
be allowed to enter the profession until she is old enough and wise
enough to protect herself, should need arise, from the undesirable
employer, who may insult her with unwelcome attentions. The
possibility of such annoyance is an additional reason for all clerks
to join a Trade Union, which helps individuals to insist on proper
conditions of work. [EDITOR.]]

SECTION VII

ACTING AS A PROFESSION FOR WOMEN

I do not know that the first actress who ever faced the public told
her friends that _the_ profession was not all paint and glitter,
because being a pioneer, and so treading on the corns of custom, she
was held as an unwomanly creature, and had unpleasant things thrown at
her, as well as words. So her impressions are not recorded. But when
women had settled down into the work, and were allowed to represent
themselves in the theatre (a privilege not as yet accorded to them
elsewhere), they announced practically and forcibly that all that
glittered was not gold, and that a successful, much-loved heroine
did not invariably tread the rosy path without finding the proverbial
thorns.

The word "hardship" often repeated by successful artists, is accepted
by the public as a truism, which affects their attitude towards the
stage as a career about as much as the statement that the world is
round, when in their eyes it appears disappointingly flat. Yet the
word "hardship" has a meaning which most hurts those who have most
capacity for pain, and who are specially sensitive to humiliations,
disappointments, and discomforts--artists.

But there are compensations, urges the outsider: good pay, congenial
work, and fame. If there are hardships what a glittering prize
compensates for the suffering!

Let us at once grant the compensations which the few achieve. The few
make world-wide reputations, large salaries, and many devoted friends:
their life is full of interesting and successful work. But the average
individual is in the great majority, and the many spend all and obtain
nothing, trying to obtain a bargain which is no bargain: a bargain in
which there is something to sell and no one to buy--even our average
actress has something to sell, something worth buying--composed of
talent, ambition, long study, and application. There are, of course,
many more successful women in the theatre than there used to be, owing
to the tremendous opening up of this means of livelihood; but though
the success