The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-06-25
WANTED, \ STENOGRAPHER
TYPEWRITER QUESTION FROM ANEMPLOKER'S STANDPOINT.

Weeks Experience of Business Man
 With Applicants for Vacant Place
 Some of ths Girls COuidn't Read Their
 Own NoIss-Assorted Troubles of she
 Others.
 A red-faced and wrathful-looking business man storned into the office Of an employment bureau for shorthand writers on Saturday afternoon last. His voice was hoarse. his hair tousled and his frame was shaking with an emo- tion that was obviously not of the ten der sort.
 - Say" he broke out, herding the man. ager of the employment concern into a corner Of the office. can you furnish me next Monday morning with pot hook rassler that's guaranteed to know how to read his or her own shorthand notes after taking 'em down, that won be seized with the pip or the tizzy- wizzy and have to go home to treat it after a couple of hours work, that won't get google-eyed when it goes out to lunch, that won't get into scraps with the hired men around the office building and that won't-er-have to knock off work on account Of census-padding events in it's family?''
 The manager of the stenOgraphers employment bureau thought that he would be able to send such shorthand writer to the business man.
 Whichever you've got" said the red faced business man, mopping his fore head. Its a stand-off with me. Hike along any kind that you think I'll be able to dig a little work out of. I've had fun a-plenty this week with both 7 kinds. Now want to transact little business. need the money"
 Yours" put in the manager of the employment concern. ''seems to. be 8 sad. sad story. Got time to let me ir on it?'
 . q haven't got time. but I'll take it; it'll give you a line on the shorthand game from the busy business mans point of view that perhaps you haven't picked up.' and the. red-faced man plumped himself wearily into a chair "A week ago last Thursday had to fire my regular stenographer-goOd man when he'd work-for sneaking away from the office couple of hours every afternoon to play the horses in pool room. l put an ad. in Fridays papers for stenographer and typewriter. didn't specify whether I wanted man or a woman--1ust stenographer and typewriter.
 T took on the first one that came along on Friday orenoon-anaemic looking girl with nyopic eyes: but was too busy to do any picking and choosing, and when she assured me that she could do the work told her to report on Monday. Two or three dozen more of them came along during Friday and Saturday, men and women. l took the names and addresses of half a dog en of them and had my office boy dis pose of the rest.
 'I let my correspondence slide on Fri day and Saturday, figuring on rattling it all off in bunch when my new short hand girl reported on Monday morning She got along on time all right. and immediately heaped my letters together stfid went at 'en.
 f.sThe girl appeared to get on all right with the dictation. slappiug down the notes in her book in way that struck me as being mighty workmanlike. Sev- eraI times, though, when thought that perhaps I might have on too much steam, I checked myself and asked hel if I was going too fast.
 .-i :. .Nos indeed!' she replied every time in tone clearly meant to imply that it would take pretty swift talker 10 goi ahead of her.
 "'Her notebook was full up, forward and backward, when got through with the dictation just before noon. and il was weight off my mind to get rid of that correspondence.
 "When the girl returned from lunch lshe sat down at the typewriter. full of iiusiness. and I thought that she was just going to eat up those letters. But she didn't. She got away haltingly scratched her nose a. lot. looked up at the ceiling and studied considerable and then she began running to my desk tc ask me what her notes meant.
 stAfter about an hour and quarter she had one ten-line letter finished, and 1t was all balled up and impossible. al that. I was noticing her moves out of the tail of my eye, and the conviction grew upon me that she couldn't read her notes.
 ITO try her out. I asked her to read aloud to me a letter about in the mid dle of the dictation. Well, she only got to the Your favor of the Sth received and contents noted before she broke down. Her notebook was just a. San skrit tome to her.
 "She flushed when she came to the dead halt in trying to read that letter and said tE:at she thought perhaps she had used too many word signs, owing to my talking so rapidly. paid her for a. days work and let her go, and she ! left that stuffed notebook on my hands it was just as much Greek to her as it was to me.
 "I wired to one of the applicants whose name had taken to report fol duty at my office on the following morn ing-Tuesday-and then I dug into that stack of letters that thought was all off my hands except the signing of the letters, and wrote brief answers to the important ones myself with a pen. Ii was the toughest afternoons work I'd put in in long time.
 "The young man for whom I'd wired