Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1902-11-29
THE BACHELOR GIRL
She Begins to Overrun the
Great Metropolis.
Is MET EVERYWHERE
WHY THE SOUTH AND WEST NO
LONGER ATTRACT.
To Win Success in the Workaday
World Must Be in the
Fray.
Is MET EVERYWHERE

Written for The Evening Star.
New York is the home Of the bachelor
girl. In no other city in the world does a
girl dare to live alone and unchaperoned,
inviting the criticism of friends and foes
The large studio buildings are peopled
with these lone girl tenants, living singly
and in groups of two and three on the CO.
operative housekeeping plan, which means
something weird and terrible in these
Adamless Edens.
Besides these settlements Of girl bachelors
hardly an apartment house in the metropo-
lis is without at least one of these women
wage earners whose home is perhaps the
only joy of her lonely existence. Not that
the bachelor maid is an unsocial creature,
but because one of the first lessons that she
learns in her city experience is that she
must be wary in the making Of close ac-
quantanceship, which, If she be in earnest
in her work, she will find more Of a per-
sistent deterrent than a help, unless they
are strictly of the right sort.
The Bachelor Girls Loneliness.
The loneliness Of the girl bachelor is a
stern discipline to which she must learn to
submit, a fact that is rarely considered by
the eager girl who comes to town with the
| ambition to succeed in a profession. One
of the charms with which she invests her
life In the big city is the congenial COM
partnership, the host of clever friends with
whom she will be in touch Invariably she
has come on from some distant city, south
or west with the idea of pursuing her
chosen work in New York. She leaves the
safe environment Of her home and friends
and ventures into strange world that she
has pictured in her imagination as an en-
chanted land with genial and open-hearted
people. But the reality is-loneliness.
The army of girls that come to New
York each year, seeking employment which
they could frequently find at home, has
never been enumerated 1t would be hope
less task to attempt to estimate the thou
sands that during a year besiege the stage
doors, newspaper offices and studios, for as
rule, they select those professions that
will best allow the putting forth of that
which they feel to be within them.
The Autumnal Invasion of Girls.
The spring sees goodly number of these
girl emigrants, but the autumn witnesses
the strongest charge of the eternal girl on
the ramparts of fame and fortune, as they
picture them. With neat gowns and pretty
hats, often made by their own hands, these
girls throng into the avenues Of profess
sional life, eager-eyed, earnest and enthu-
siastic In the pursuit of the ideal that pos
seSses them.
They are vastly interesting and pictur-
esque, representing, as they do, an entirely
new phase of femininity-the girl strenuous,
eager and anxious to compete with her
| brothers in the strife for place and pelf.
Twenty years ago school teaching and
dressmaking offered the only two oppor-
tunities to girls DESTROYS of making a liv-
Ing. Today these two vocations are far In
the background from the modern girls view
Of desirability Even manicuring stands
| n nf 1ync In, he frtr lie
anxious to do things. Typewriting and
stenography have displaced school teaching
as choice with girls for it takes less time
to fit them for the work, while returns are
quicker and yield better results. The pretty
typewriter, at first taken as joke, in re-
ality opened the door of the strenuous life
| for women.
The Rush Overdone.
But the tremendous rush of girls for the
| metropolis In search of work has been very
| much overdone, and besides the coming OF
girls themselves, bushels of letters arrive
| each day to editors and writers, asking for
| opportunities and chances in various fields
| Girls entirely unequipped for the struggle
| Of work push on valiantly to the citadel
| and one out of twenty survives.
Very few of these girls are actually poor
| and in need Of work. They start out as a
| general thing from comfortable homes with
| the idea that they can study music, art and
| literature better In the large city than In
| their native town. Usually these girls have
an allowance, large or small, from theil
| people, and live on it until they find op-
| portunities to make money and be self-sup-
| porting, although half of them return home
| and many go on the stage as last resort
rather than asian ambition.
The girl who comes to the city to enter
| the working field and secure a position by
which she may make money enough tc
| &c 10 tfr1on IN he An11
| She is at once put to the test of what is ir
| her. She does not find it difficult to OBJ
| tain work. These bright young faces an6
| hopeful eyes find ready sympathies, anG
girl applicant, who, with her southern
! drawl or western burr, betrays her new
! ness to New York.
They Find the Work Hard
| Work in the professions In New York Is
TO trivial matter to a woman. 1t mean.
requirements that not one woman in TWEEN
| ty possesses in conjunction with one an
| other. Physical strength is one of the frs
necessities, and the girl who has this Il
quite apt to be handicapped by a too great
fund of animal spirits, fondness for fun anc
adventure which will help to keep he
back If INDUCED too much.
Endurance, patience, serious purpose
keen perception and intuition, and, abov
all. steady, plodding industry, with i'm
mense concentration of thought-aIl thes
are required from the girl worker in New
| York. But any one accustomed to talkin;
| to these girls and receiving their letter
| soon learns that they have annoyingl,
| vague ideas Of what is meant by work il
any field.
They fancy, great many of them, tina
1t Is possible to step into positions that viii
carry authority, large salary and cas-.
times without serving any apprenticeship
| They invariably associate success with I'm
limited time to play. They have an ide
THE STOLEN BoTT