THE TYPEWRITER GIRL

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Mar 21, 1906

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 32, No. 12.

THE TYPEWRITER GIRL.

MANY of the readers of the World must have noted recently with surprise the account of the thirtieth business anniversary of the first "typewriter girl." So fully has the typewriter occupied the field that it seems almost incredible that it was still practically unknown when Hayes was elected President, and that England did not take kindly to it until a dozen years ago.

To-day the typewriter is in every continent and country. It is fitted for fifty languages and a thousand dialects. One of its best markets is in what was Cetewayo's Zululand when it was invented. It lightens the labors of Arabian scribes and Parsee money-lenders. A modification of its familiar principle has been made to fit 4,000 ideographic characters of China and Japan.

The typewriter has been for thousands of women a broad avenue to business success. At the same time that the wages of the great army of amanuesses have been forced down by competition, the pay of operators holding court positions or places of trust and responsibility has held its own or risen, and

many women who began business as operators have become secretaries and general managers of important enterprises. Typewriting now vies with teaching as an occupation for educated and ambitious young women.

Humorists have made the typewriter girl the butt of many jokes, but she could not occasionally marry her employer and turn upon him the tables of dictation if she had not brought to his office a grace and charm which thirty years ago it would have lacked. The vast volume of business now done in the commercial world would be almost impossible without her and her machine.—N. Y. World.