The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1900-12-16
WOMEN AS B%OOKKEEPERS
THEIR POSITION WELL ESTAB-
LIsHED IN THE BUSINESS WORLD.
Old PreJudices Against the Sex
Proved by Trial to Be ~Unfounded-
An Employers Experience.
New York Sun.

ness world is one of the straws which
shows the way the wind is blowing. If
the testimony of a large number of bust
ness men of New York is to be accepted,
the woman bookkeeper has come to stay,
and is slowly but surely replacing her
brother in the work. A hint Of the old
prejudice still fingers, and there are men
who insist that they will never employ
women for Office work; but, when forced
by a Sun reporter to stand and deliver,
these conversations could rarely show an
argument more logical than personal pre-
JUDGE and the fact that a man had to be
careful about the language in an office
when there were women around
On the other hand, employers who AVE
made the change and employ women book
keepers are loud in praise of the innova-
ton. One recent convert has a staff Of
six ~bookkeepers in his office. and looks
upon them with as much pride as though
they were a pudding of his own invention.
How do / like them? It's great" he
said enthusiastically. ut took me a long
time TO come around to it. OF course there
have been women bookkeepers ever since
the flood, but there were not very many
of them, and thought a man was a fool
IOi SAhIioyiHS OhC- He u a " VI
seedy old traditions about women that are
honored just on account of their antiquity,
and / believed them all. If they had been
true, my attitude toward women in Office
work would have been all right, but they
were not true. so l started wrong. A man
who has never run UP against the working
woman, and Celebrates all his theories
about womankind from study of woman
- g. II, 49,, collie a~I 1nosoI 0t~nIor
needs enlightment. Now, L firmly believed
a sort of creed. Women were physically
Incapable of steady and trying work. Wom-
cn were too narrow to grasp broad business
principles. Women talked too much to
be trusted. Women were too frivol-
Gus TO take a deep interest in an employ
er's business. Women were inaccurate.
Women couldn't keep the personal equation
out of business relations. / could have
gone on that way all day, telling you
reasons why women weren't fit for office
work. 1 was a fool. In fact, l was several
kinds of a fool. I've a senior bookkeeper
and five junior bookkeepers, all women,
and that creed of mine has been knocked
into a cooked hat by highe criticism.
CHANGE OF OPINION.
within the last ten years more and
more women employees have been turning
UP in the downtown offices. and my friends
who had tried women for their bookkeeping
all insisted the experiment was a success.
Out l. nelQ OH. ABOUT Three years d6O II
head bookkeeper took to mixed drinks,
and began giving me Manhattan and Mar
TIM ledgers, so / had to fire him, and while
1 was wondering what TO do a friend in
my line of business came in. lie was just
closing out here, preparatory to moving
West, and he had the best ~bookkeeper that
ever struck off a trial balance.
Send him around L said.
Hes a woman.
That settles it. But ii didn't settle it.
I was talked into giving the bookeeper a
trial; and the next day a quiet little woman
lin black walked into the office. She's there
yet. When she leaves I'll retire from bust
ness. There hasn't been a hitch since she
struck the place. She has missed two days
IN three years, and then she was burying
a brother. We set our clock by her ar
rival i'm the morning. I've never seen her
angry. I've never seen her cranky. She
has a low voice, and at first some Of the
men used to put up pools on the number
OF words she would speak in a day. She
didn't waste any. She has a head for de-
tail that is simply amazing, and she is so
methodical and neat that our books are
works of art.
"At first she had men for her juniors,
and they resented her arrival, but she man.
aged them perfectly. I've a notion that
she manages all of us, but we don't know
it If she is forced into assuming respon-
sibility she does it and she is usually right.
but she prefers consulting me. It's a mat
ter of form, ordinarily, but 1T is decidedly
better than the mans fashion Of thinking
he knows more about the business than
his employer and going Off half-cocked. 1
find that a oman's lack of self-confidence
H.. If not excessive. one of her merits I'm
clerical work. She isn't taking any
chances. and when a new problem con-
fronts her she finds out, once for all, how
1t ought to be met.
A SAFETY GUARD.
That very lack of se~lf-conidence makes
her more accurate than a man. A woman
iG horn IN detail and she iS patfepf With ~
She is painstaking about every feature of
her work. When a man can't get his trial
balance and is in a hurry he makes a cross
entry. forces a balance. and some time
during the next month finds where the
trouble was. You will not catch a woman
bookkeeper doing that. She isn't confident
enough. She'll strike off that balance when
ii is due if she has to work nights and Sun
days, and VIII get everything Strengthened
out before she goes on. If a woman book
keeper is competent at all you'll never find
her books in a muddle. Then, a woman
usually gets her trial balance more quickly
than a man because she has been more
has no mistakes to throw her off. IF
course. my senior ~bookkeeper is a model.
She's one in a thousand; but I've FIVE other
W0mds working under her now, and there
have been changes in those ranks. SO /
know what I'm talking about.
Absences are quite as rare as they were
WIlef Il GflDlOycu HlGn y the places. Ire
girls are more punctual. They don't come
down unfit for work after spree nights.
the way many of our young men did. They
buckle down to extra work in busy sea-
sons without any of the grumbling and
kicking and sulkiness the men used to
show. They have more conscience than the
average mar and infinitely more pride in
their work. You see, their very limitations
are virtues in a bookkeeper. Put a smart
young fellow in a bookkeeper's position and
he is dissatisfied. He looks at the work
just as a stepping stone. and is always
reaching out after something else. He
wants promotion and, eventually a busi-
ness interest of his own. His head is full
of things other than his bookkeeping. Now
that is natural and right. There are big
business chances before a young fellow
and he wants TO keep his eyes open.
The mar who settles down content in
keeping books isn'r worth a salary. When.
I see a man who has been keeping books
more than five or six years / say, What's
wrong with him?' You see what I'm get
ting at. The alert, capable young man who
keeps books isn't going to stick to il very
long. He may do 1t fairly we'll while he is
a. 1T, but about the time he is expert he's
jumping out Of the work into something
better.
STICKS TO HER JOB.
"A girl isn't so lucky. Few business op-
portunities are open to her and she knows
I. If she is a bookkeeper the chances are
that in the mercantile world there isn't
anything ahead of her except TO attain