The Savannah morning news., 1902-04-20
A SELF-MADE WOMAN.
She, Too. Is a Captain of 1ndu.

She' Too. Is "A Captain of Indus
try.
New York. April 1S.-The sociologist
says that the woman who goes into
commercial life as a competitor with
men is bound to unsex herself. for
trade is as hard as nails. Verify the
soclologist will have to recall this
statement when he meets Miss May
Williamson. She is a self-made wo-
man; she is a personality to be reck-
oned within the big, hard busy trade
world of New York city, and she is a
manufacturer with ambitions and abil-
tltes that her masculine rivals take
very seriously indeed. She manufac-
lures women's dress, not for the indi-
Vldual, but for the huge retail dry
goods houses all over the United
States, and she designs the frocks that
her work-rooms turn out by the great
gross. Less than five years ago she
maze her start in New York city. and
II any plucky, able young woman ever
MADE more modest beginning and
ever rose more promptly to the digni-
ned independence of standing at the
mead OF her own business, we would
like to hear about it.
MISS. Williamson entered the siren
uous lie OF commerce as a model in a
tailoring house. 1t was a humble
enough beginning, but her talents
found her out, and she was called to
assist in creating the success of a new
~ formed firm of manufacturers. For
Two years now she has been at the
head of her own plant, and friends and
rivals admit that her immediate sue
cess proves that for acute insight.
ready judgment, cool daring and I'M
conquerable tenacity, there is hardly a
better business head in New York
city; yet Miss Williamson is a woman
every inch of her, and, furthermore,
she IS Southern woman, a North
Carolinian.
This. is where the surprise and con-
tradiction awaits the sociologist. for
the feminity of Miss Williamson is too
potent to escape observa ton. Here is
woman who negotiates with mascu-
line customers, fights masculine com
petition, dominates her Office, sells her
own goods, directs big force of en-
ployes and speaks in a voice that is
purely Southern, drags a train at her
heels, avoids semi-masculine tailor
made clothes and uses not even the
half legitimate slang of the day.
IL there is an independence in her
bearing, 1t is only the native dignity
of tall, slim woman, and not swag-
ger nor self-assertion. In these hust-
ling days, when her working hours
extend far into the evening and en-
croach on her Sundays, she can slip
gracefully into. a chair and talk leis-
urely and agreeably of women and
what they are doing in the big trade
world. She is as interested a specta-
tor as an actor, interested in the big
corps of expert colored women in her
employ, and in the fact that she finds
them far more faithful and docile than
her white workers.
Asked to express her opinion on wo-
men in commercial life, Miss William
son believes that through the possess
sion of executive ability a woman can
climb far and high alongside men in
business. If far too modest to instance
her own case, she tells of many others
that have come under her mother; of
one little woman who began as a cash
girl and now disburses two millions of
dollars a year as the buyer for one of
the richest retail houses in the United
States. In every instance she believes
that executive capacity has been the
telling quality, and that the successful
business woman can be a business wo-
man, indeed, in the very largest sense
and yet hold fast to the femininity
that is a help to her and not a him
drance. Fanny Enders.