The Twilight of the Business Woman
I
I HAD an experience, the other day, that startled and impressed me more than anything that has happened in years. I have a daughter, aged almost sixteen, and for some time her mother and I, in the usual manner of parents, had been upset and worried because her future was not completely settled and ticketed right up to the age of seventy. All the usual possibilities had been considered — an artistic or literary career (rather frowned on because of the shocking example of her father), the stage or movies (still less encouraged because of certain depressing memories of her mother), trained nursing, college, a library course, but chiefly that mystic thing known as ‘a job,’ a word which for the past dozen years has seemed to express to the feminine mind everything that is exciting, noble, or desirable in life.
On a recent morning, however, my wife looked up from her coffee cup and, without one word of warning, uttered this world-shattering statement: ‘You know, the more I think of it, the more I believe that Jeanie is the sort of girl that ought to marry — and marry quite young.’
Only a father, and especially a father who has been thrown largely into a world of women, can quite realize the unexpectedness and the impact of that statement. It was exactly as if I had suddenly looked out the window and seen a man ride by on a high bicycle. Even so, I had been married too long to allow my face to reflect my emotions. Any exultation or too vivid agreement would have been interpreted as ‘I told you so.’ Thus I pretended to weigh the statement for a moment, then answered, ‘I don’t know but what you’re right.’
Nevertheless, when I went to my study I was tingling with excitement. Was it really possible that the modern American worship of the business woman was coming to an end — along with the worship of the business man? Should I actually be able to sit down at a tea table without hearing incessantly, ‘What’s become of Elizabeth?‘ ‘Oh, have n’t you heard? She’s got the most marvelous job at the A. & P.’ Could I now go out for an evening without being taken aside by my hostess and told, in awe-struck whispers, ‘I do want you to meet Clementine Spugg, the most stimulating person! She’s practically the head of all the silk buyers at Scheinfelt & Dubie’s.’ Especially, should I be able to pick up a modern novel without finding that the heroine was a clear-eyed, worldly-wise woman, who quietly ran the hero’s whole business for him, signing his checks, cajoling his creditors, belaboring his salesmen, and soothing his nerves, while his wife, a brittle, butterfly sort of creature, wasted his substance at the Plaza and the Ritz?
No, at the moment I could n’t believe it. It was too much.
II
But when you have seen the first yellow leaf of autumn you are soon likely to see a lot more, and within a fortnight a number of such leaves came tumbling down the wind. Two or three days later I went canoeing with a young divorcee who, to the delight of her friends, had stepped straight from the courtroom into one of those vague, cardcataloguy jobs which seem especially created for people of her type.
‘Well, how’s the office getting on?’ I asked, expecting to hear the usual chirp about ‘the most fascinating work’ and ‘such interesting contacts.’
‘Oh, why did you have to bring that up?’ she retorted. ‘If you want the truth, I never hated anything so much in my life. I can’t even think of going back to the office without a dull, sinking feeling.’
Shortly after that a pretty young blonde, whose family conditions were rather difficult, came around with the usual announcement that, in order to have a winter in New York, she was going to ‘take a job.’
‘What kind of job?’ my wife asked, still faintly interested to know that there were jobs to be ‘taken.‘
The young lady shrugged, with a sort of contempt. ‘Oh, probably I ’ll end up behind a counter at Blank’s.’
And, again, to realize the heresy of that remark it was only necessary to turn the calendar back one or two years. Two years before, that same young lady would have answered, starry-eyed,
‘ Well, if I’m lucky I hope to get in at Blank’s, but you know they only take college graduates or girls who have social connections in New York.’
III
Now, in order to have no misunderstanding, please let it be stated that I have no quarrel with legitimate business women. In that term I include all women who have to work, all women of some special bent who are led by circumstances into the commercial sides of their vocations, and those few women who, like some men, are natural-born traders. I have only respect for the girl who likes books and so opens a bookshop, or the girl who can draw and becomes an art editor. I admit without question the value of the skillful secretary, and I take off my hat to those heroic women of all ages who pull together the family fortunes by any means open to their hand. What I do call ridiculous is the very widespread belief that a girl who takes a ‘ business ’ job, no matter how lowly, is doing something impressive and important, and far outranks, let us say, the girl who teaches the history of the Saxons or who becomes a country minister’s wife.
The case is perfectly illustrated by the reference to ‘ Blank’s ’ made by our little blonde. A year or two ago it was widely reported that a certain smart department store in New York would accept as new clerks only college graduates or girls in touch with the social register. And the implication was always ‘How nice for the colleges! How nice for Park Avenue!’ It was never ‘How nice for Blank’s!’ If the story was true, — and to some degree it probably was, — it argued well for the sagacity of the storekeepers, but what an appalling idea of a college education! Imagine the uproar if the Bluebird Bus Lines should advertise, ‘All Our Drivers Are Yale Men,’ or if Roxy should attempt to recruit his ushers from the Racquet Club. It is still taken for granted that boys do not go to Harvard to become chauffeurs or gigolos. Why, then, should girls go to Wellesley to become cloak models or lingerie clerks?
Well, of course, they don’t. In reality the incident illustrates not the manner in which women undervalue education but the manner in which they overvalue the importance of business — any business at all. Even at this late date women in business are apparently like men in a mining camp. The humbler the job, the greater its éclat. If a girl of good education takes a job selling buns in a bakeshop it is applauded as an indication of her enterprise and lack of nonsense, but if a boy of the same standing were found selling cigarettes in a tobacco shop it would lead to the conclusion that he was not very bright.
It is easy, I admit, to understand why most girls are fascinated by the idea of business; why, indeed, many of them still like it after a year or two of experience. If one does not have to worry about raising the pay roll or the interest charges on the building, most businesses are fun. To step into a wellrun office on a pleasant morning is, to almost anyone, as stimulating as going back to the routine of a regiment or a school. Furthermore, after the folderols and the mawkishness which are still apt to surround most of the older occupations for women, the brisk masculinity of an office seems like meeting life on honest terms.
As a matter of fact, however, is it not sometimes dodging life rather than meeting it? When a girl of real capability — even if it is only social or domestic capability — takes a commonplace job in a routine business, is it not possible that she is unconsciously evading some better way of life? Under the sanction of the great god ‘Business,’ is she not shutting her eyes to some nearer vocation which, in the end, would be both more profitable and more honorable, but which, at first, would demand much more from her patience and her powers?
It is far easier, for example, to file letters in an office or to check samples in a shop than to go through the drudgery of a young teacher’s life, but certainly to find one’s self a college professor at fifty would be more satisfactory than to be a silk buyer at Scheinfelt & Dubie’s. One might even venture to guess that a girl of good background who stayed right at home, among cultivated people, learning to read good books, follow some sport or hobby, and respond intelligently to the humors of social life, would, in the end, be more of a person than a girl who was cemented too early into the catch jargon and limited outlook of the business world. To mention nothing else, such a girl would be much more likely to marry solidly or even brilliantly, and the fact that her marriage might come rather late in life only shows the nature of the problem. I know four sisters, daughters of a country lawyer of only moderate and local prominence, who did not leave their native village until their late twenties or early thirties, but yet made their home both so sprightly and so unusual that eventually all four married either wealthy or distinguished men. Individually and collectively they now all enjoy lives of far greater color and interest than probably would have been their lot if they had taken ‘jobs’ or even set themselves deliberately at ‘careers.’
IV
Undoubtedly one would not have to dig very far to discover that the whole question still comes back to those greatly misunderstood words ‘dependence’ and ‘independence.’ To be sure, one cannot imagine a modern girl using the once traditional argument, T could never bear the idea of being dependent on a man.’ On the contrary, modern maidens seem to find very amusing the idea of being, in one way or another, dependent on a man, implying, of course, that the man is really dependent on them. Nevertheless the idea still persists. If it is not a distaste for being dependent on a husband, it is a dislike of being dependent financially on the caprices of Aunt Susie, of being dependent socially on the neighborhood Smiths and Joneses, or of being dependent intellectually on the resources of the village rector.
But possibly women are now beginning to realize that the business world, like any other world, is populated very largely by Smiths, Joneses, and even Aunt Susies, and that a mind which rebelled at the limitations of the village rector would find little greater stimulus in the conversation of the average sales manager. It is difficult to see, in fact, just why there is any greater degree of dignity or independence in being charming to stuffy old ladies in Madame Vivienne’s dress shop than in being charming to similar old ladies at Aunt Susie’s dinner table. And when, as frequently happens, a girl is employed deliberately for the purpose of preying on her social acquaintances, the question of her dignity and independence becomes a very doubtful one indeed. It is, perhaps, a cold way to put it, but even a business man would admit that being a niece to Aunt Susie would be a more promising career than being her milliner.
V
‘But,’ cries a chorus of indignant young ladies, ‘what would you have us do —just hang around home all our lives?’
That is, I admit, a very difficult question to answer, because I have only to turn back the years to remember that when I myself graduated from college my one firm resolve was not to ‘hang around home.’ Yet I did hang around home, my parents’ home, until I was thirty-one years old, and discovered to my astonishment that the years grew increasingly pleasant as they passed. For one thing, it is not sufficiently realized that, if one uses the same tact and tolerance that would be required elsewhere, the life of an adult in any household is a totally different thing from that of a child in the same household.
The trouble is that we always argue these things by extremes. We see some keen, clever woman who has gained a high place in business and contrast her case with that of a sad-eyed spinster who has been dragged into middle age at the heels of a whining mother. We overlook, on the one hand, the hundreds of weary, spiritless women who can be found in subordinate posts in almost any business. We overlook, on the other hand, the dozens of women of our own acquaintance who, married or unmarried, have remained in the ordinary paths of private life and yet seem to find their days full of interest and variety.
If you mention one of these to some restless, dissatisfied girl, she will answer, ‘Oh, yes, but she’s an exception. She had a little money—’ or ‘She has special talents,’ or ‘She is so amusing that people are always asking her places.’ But this is merely another way of saying that the same qualities that bring distinction in business bring distinction in private life. We also forget that home life itself cannot be summed up in any one damning generalization. For every whining, invalid mother or loutish, overbearing father there are, in these modern days, dozens of parents who are still youthful, gay, and sympathetic, and who, if they were not stampeded by the career fetish, would ask nothing better than to have a daughter remain with them as long as she wished.
The probable truth is that, in voicing their weariness at ‘hanging around home,’most young women are diagnosing their own cases more accurately than they realize. A state of mind which can find nothing to do but ‘hang around’ anywhere will not be relieved by a mere change of scene. Rushing into business just because hundreds of other girls are doing the same thing is, in itself, a form of ‘hanging around.’ Like all other popular movements, the rush into business was originally started by a few daring and pioneer minds. From many visible signs the time is now peculiarly ripe for another rush, equally original — for some new pioneer to arise and make the novel announcement, ‘Unless I can have a genuine career, I am going to start a movement of my own. I am going to revive the quaint old trade of simply being a daughter.’