The fear that I should not earn my salary proved groundless. I earned it twice over-railroads were expanding in those days-but nothing was said about an increase. Things went on for two years but I shrank from asking for more money. None of our group had done anything so personal as that. However, I mustered courage at last and took the matter up with the chief. He asked me what I was getting!

When I got over my astonishment and took it in that the man who had loaded me with responsibilities had not only paid me the compliment of letting me shoulder them alone, but of thinking I was business woman enough to see to my salary, I learned the biggest of all my lessons-the right attitude toward business values. I got not only the increase and the assistant I asked for then, but have been given all the increases and assistants I have ever asked for since.

A word about assistants. They They were by no means easy to find. Women had not "invaded" Wall Street then; they had to be hunted out and lured there. None of the business schools had courses in office management, filing or systematizing of any kind, and very few library school graduates could be, tempted downtown. Finally I had a happy thought I would train my own assistants. Blithely I knocked at the doors of the colleges. Alas for hope! "Very few of our students turn to business," they reported, "and those few prefer secretarial work."

If there were few college graduates in the Wall Street of those days, there were fewer married women.

One was sent to me, but employ, even teach, a woman whose husband could support her! I was not alone in this narrow view. Men and women alike felt keenly about the "intrusion" of women who were economically independent. "Careers" were never heard of, it was all a serious business of bread and butter.

21

Time flew by. The chief was made chairman of the board and all the world knocked at his door. Roosevelt had his big stick out for the trusts and was making it easier for business men to be honest. Everybody was going after the railroads which were harassed, not only by the people but by politicians, with requests for rebates, passes and privileges of all kinds in exchange for their services. If the pioneers learned something about business they certainly learned something also about government and began quietly doing their bit toward hastening the day when they too should have a voice in the matter.

At that time, however, suffrage seemed generations away. We had no business organizations of our own and were certainly not admitted to those of the men. We did not attend staff meetings or even dream of officerships. There was no "woman problem" in the days of those first thirteen milestones. Perhaps we were a little too content. We had systematized-almost monopolized-the service end of business. Here and there overbusy women earning, some of them, as much as twenty-five hundred a year, served with the zeal that Chesterton dubbed "women's wolfish wifehood" for the firms who employed them.

About the relations of men to the women in their offices. They were courteous, even friendly, but nearly always formal. There are no greater exaggerations than the reports of office romances. Even if women were willing to forget the dignity so necessary in those days, men would never have been allowed to do so. To be interested in a "girl in the office," was thought to be fatal to the career of any promising young banker or lawyer or bond man. I knew of several cases in which a young man who had temporarily lost his heart or was it his head?-was quietly rescued by his associates, who took him in hand until he came to his senses, and who, just as quietly, "worked the girl out" unless she understood and resigned in time.

23

When the Interstate Commerce Commission ordered our headquarters back to the West I began my first search for a job-I mean a position. Women did not speak of jobs in those days. My modest salary-less than twenty-four hundred a year-was the stumbling block. I remember one man to whom I mentioned it. He fell back in his chair, gave a long whistle and exclaimed, "What a salary for a woman!" with all the abandon of utter astonishment.

"But if a woman earns it?" I asked, amused in spite of myself. I rose to go, for I saw that our points of view were years apart. No, there was no woman problem, as far as business was concerned, in the year 1913.

Then, quite suddenly, the Germans advanced on Belgium. I was in one of the country's greatest bank

ing houses and saw what was coming. When foreign loans got into the air we girded ourselves for action. I asked for another assistant, and because she must be worth two to carry the load, decided to find a trained and thinking college woman for an organization and a field where college training had seemed most unnecessary for women clerks. There must be no failure in the experiment, so I searched for a girl of high grade but no slightest hint of the bluestocking about her. Vassar produced her and she made good. Smith College sent the next, Barnard followed and then Wellesley. At once controversy arose in the publicity department.

"Why not put this division in charge of a woman-one of those college girls?" a junior officer asked.

"She will never be able to carry it," his senior objected.

"She's made good so far." "So far, but she won't stick it out."

"Try her, you'll see."

"You'll see but go ahead."

She too, made good. Other officers said "go ahead" and the search began in dead earnest. There was one condition. Graduates, whether of high school or college, must have excellent rating. As for jobs going only to the needy, I had not only found the needy too often handicapped by lack of training, but I had learned the danger of putting a premium on such handicaps. "What's all this talk you've been giving my daughter about education?" one irate parent called up to ask. "Why should I keep her longer in school when she can get a job without it?"

Why indeed? Because business was paying too high a price for training that parents and the state should give.

22

War was in the very air and the call for college girls and technically trained women became insistent. There may be fields they have invaded and captured against the will of others but they are certainly not in Wall Street. I gave up the evening classes I had been teaching at the university and devoted myself to the work of "recruiting women" to fill the jobs of fighting men. They were desperately needed if the business of the nation and the war was to go on, but to me there was another need, even greater and more far-reaching. The years in Wall Street had taught me many things, above all that business is the foundation of our institutions. Business is splendid, stimulating, but it is cruel as well and takes its toll of human happiness and human life. I had seen one promising man after another give way in health or in moral fiber, rather than be counted among its so-called failures. I had seen our own country twice plunged into war and knew that more wars must follow unless unless what? We are still groping for the answer, but it seemed to me then as it seems to me now, that it waits for the partnership of women. Both business and government need the rectitude of women, need their deep concern for human happiness and life. Mere numbers, however, will accomplish nothing. Tens of thousands holding service positions only, will not make a dent upon the surface. If civilization is to reap the benefit of the changed status of

women there must be opportunity for women with leadership ability and civic conscience to shoulder with men the responsibilities of business and government. Also, and most important of all, there must be opportunity for potential mothers to know the world for which they must gird their sons and daughters.

Those were wonderful days, really stimulating. The United States was fast changing from a debtor to a creditor nation and Wall Street was hard pressed to meet the demands made upon it. Our organization had leaped from four hundred to nearly as many thousand and was still growing. Almost without exception our college and technically trained girls were a success from the start. As time wore on they stood up splendidly under the strain of rush work, long hours and night classes. They were full of enthusiasm and quite free of the absurd social restraints that hampered the pioneers of a dozen years before. Men too were feeling more at ease about the women they met in business, and wedding-rings and wifely titles were coming to be openly worn.

Every day saw old prejudices and barriers give way and new opportunities pop up. For instance, the bond department manager came in to say, "We have a hard time every month getting the salesmen's records untangled. Do you want to try your luck with women? The right men can't be had just now."

They were luck, good luck, the girls who straightened out that division, so that only once did those millions fail to balance. The leader -we found her employed in a museum-organized her work so well that

later on she was sent to our branch houses to establish the same system. Opportunity knocked again. The publicity department called for a woman to edit financial bulletins and put them into French. We found a college instructor who was equally at home in English and the Latin languages. She too made good. When she wrote an article bubbling with delicious humor, they made her assistant editor of the house-organ and, womanlike, she took on the load. She got out an issue all her own and the Mighty exclaimed, "This is good! So good we must run off 50,000 extra copies and send them out at once."

Word of this achievement got about. The library and foreign departments called for translators with rare gifts; for instance a Spaniard with higher education and technical training, and a Russian who could translate, analyze financial reports, and find her way through the government documents of any country.

After a time we opened "a corporation school" but women were admitted only to a few of the classes. A number registered at the universities for extension courses in statistics and accounting or at the American Institute of Banking for its evening work in elementary banking. Five college girls however were extremely eager to take our own course in investments. The management stood firm but the sympathetic instructor sent them, daily, copies of the lectures that were multigraphed for his men. At the end of the course the girls filed in for "exams." He protested. They could never stand the

test-they had had no part in class discussions. They replied that they could not measure their understanding unless they did take the test. As for discussions, they had held their own.

Then came the grades and the honor roll and the tale they told is not an exaggeration but a fact story out of, shall we call it big business, or the woman movement? A girl from an Ohio university rated ninety-nine plus. Next a man and then more girls. The fifth fell as low as ninety-six and shed secret tears of mortification, uncomforted by the knowledge that at least two thirds of the men had not made the honor roll at all, and were still smiling.

After that every class in the place was open to women.

But their promotions! They had to be carefully handled, a young chief clerk explained, because of the feelings of the men. That youngster had spent his first days in office receiving congratulations at a desk banked with flowers, but girls were very quietly slipped into positions of responsibility. Our gifted Russian, for instance, was offered a three months' trial in the heretofore "closed to all women" statistical department, if it could be so negotiated that the men would not suspect. She was "transferred,” ostensibly to assist during an emergency, then as soon as she was proved, awarded the salary and title of a real statistician.

One significant thing stood out clearly-the men who believed in women and were willing to trust important work to them were men whose families boasted able and progressive women.

It is impossible to describe the growth and the thrill of that time. The air was full of big things, sacrifices, opportunities, enterprises that tested all one's abilities. Women as well as men flocked into the streets, for the streets were gorgeous. Flags hung from the windows of the skyscrapers, floated over Broadway, Broadway, that great defile, and catching the sunlight, filled the streets with color. Bands played on the busiest corners, even the hurdy-gurdies ground out patriotic airs. I shall never forget one frightfully busy morning when the "Star Spangled Banner" wailed below our windows, eight stories down. The army man who was talking to me sprang to his feet. The manager rose and continued his dictation. His secretary stood, still taking notes. In a In a moment we were all on our feet and all at work. No one smiled. This was war.

But if war work meant thrill and opportunity, it also meant confusion and mistakes. Because experienced men were overbusy, hiring and firing were usually left to youngsters who knew no more of psychology, especially female psychology, than they knew of the Fiji Islanders. The wrong people were taken in or the right people put at the wrong work. Medical and welfare departments were opened and costs mounted. The "woman problem" began. When the flapper invaded the strongholds of finance her dress, or lack of dress, her rouge and her high heels became trials to the Great. Strange and various ways of coping with the problem were tried; in vain of course when the power to promote and reward was left with the younger men. I well remember one who

almost disrupted a department of trained and able girls by selecting the two least valuable in the group for coveted promotion.

2

Long before the close of the war people began to be interested in business women-"big women" they were often called. Reporters searched them out. One was found who advised clients and bought and sold "on 'Change." Another, oracle for a bond house, had trained several of its younger sons for partnership in the firm. A "diplomat" not only got into a club of statisticians but even won an officership. But let them sell bonds! Make them officers of banks! Never.

"Why not?" some one asked our own bond department manager.

"Women who invest would not buy from women. They want to deal with men," was his smiling but confident reply.

His theory was put to the test. "How do you feel about it?" we asked a woman who had always been self-supporting.

"Certainly I would not buy from a woman," was her emphatic answer, "nor would I employ a woman doctor or a woman lawyer. Why? Because women of my age never have a chance to talk to men except when they pay for it. Why yield the opportunity?"

Then, quite suddenly, something happened. A well-known suffragist and club leader opened a bond department in a financial house of the best standing. The ambient air was instantly agitated. Newspapers and magazines took it up. A woman selling bonds! Others began to sell securities, not