The Savannah morning news., 1904-02-07
WHY WOMEN
FAIL IN BUSINESS.

The other day a. woman's club, not a
to quote the inspired words of the
back-woods statesman. doesn't know
what it is here for had a CLEAN of
sanity. 1t proposed to inaugurate d
series of business women's teas, to
which the girls who clerk in stores and
live in hall bedrooms were to be in
vited to enjoy a pleasant evening full
of tea and sandwiches, and music. and
heart-to-heart talks with their sister
women.
1t was a lovely idea, instinct with the
phila ntrophy that is not patronage,
and had it been carried out undoubted-
ly it would have proven an oasis in the
life of many a hard worked little shop
girl, but unfortunately it died a-born-
ing. The project was bitterly opposed
and killed by a working woman who
declared, in the first place, that no self
respecting girl would go to tea, or
anything else that was labelled "busi-
ness womans." and. in the second
place. that she resented nothing so
much as having her occupation thrown
in her face, and then she sat down
with a so-there-now air that was fatal.
The incident, pitiful in it's petty van
ity as it was, would be of little mo-
ment except that it turns a whole
search light of reason on why women
so seldom succeed in business. A
thousand fallacious theories have been
advanced to account for the fact that
women rarely prosper in their CONNER
cial undertakings. Lack of business
training, lack of intelligence, lack Of
industry, the feminine temperament,
the feminine constitution have all been
offered as reasons for their failures, but
all of these excuses are wide of the
mark. Women do not lack intelligence.
They are quicker than men to pick up
anything they want to learn. They
have health enough to do anything they
desire. 1t is no more difficult to learn
to keep books than it is to play bridge,
and clerking in a store isn't half as
wearing on the constitution as a social
son.
The real reason that women fail in
business is because they are ashamed
of their work, and because nobody has
ever yet succeeded in anything In which
they do not put pride and heart and
enthusiasm. Here and there, of course
there is a woman who glories in her
occupation, and she is the woman we
are writing up in the newspapers as
that rare avis, a hen who has scratch
ed UP the nugget of fame and fortune
in the barnyard instead of the poor
worm that is all that the balance OF
the bullets get. She succeeds as a
man succeeds, because her ambitions,
her aspirations and her hopes are all
conferred in her labor. and this forms
a resistless force and energy that
carries her inevitably to the goal Oh
her desires.
These women are the exceptions.
The majority of working women hate
their work. They are ashamed OF 1t.
They do it as much as possible behlnd
their backs. They spend their time
trying to keep their right nand from
knowing that their left hand has TO
Toll for living. and their one absorb
ing ambition is not to win fortune by
succeeding III their occupation. but for
some miracle to happen so that they
won't have to have an occupation at
all. This isn't because they are lazy
Inc women who are not compelled 10
support themselves are not idle. They
save like coal beavers over clubs ana
society and fashion, and philantrophles.
,"oman's objection TO work lies solely
IN faet that she thinks that some stigma
Is attached to honest labor for money,
ana that 1t is a reflection upon her to
oe profitably employed.
uere you have the fundamental dill