Page:Women Wanted.djvu/235

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
THE OPEN DOOR IN COMMERCE
217

War Office, the Ministries of the Interior, Agriculture, Education, Transportation, and at the Chancelleries of the Imperial Court and Crown Property. The Imperial Russian Bank employed women by preference.

In the German government bureaus and offices, the women employés outnumber the men and they are to be found now in every bank in Germany. There are even new women in commerce in Germany conducting business houses that soldier husbands have left in their hands, who are beginning openly to rebel against the restriction which excludes women along with "idiots, bankrupts, and dishonest traders" from the Bourse in Berlin. And recently a petition has been addressed to the Reichstag for the removal of this bar sinister in business.

MOVING ON LONDON'S FINANCIAL DISTRICT

Probably the largest invasion of the business office, whether that of the government or of the private employer, has taken place in England. No less than 278,000 women have directly replaced in commerce men released for military duty. Petticoats in the district that is known as the "city," I suppose are as unprecedented as they could be anywhere in the world. The most visionary, advanced feminist, who before 1914 might have timidly suggested such an invasion, would have been curtly dismissed with, "It isn't done." And in truth I believe it never would have been done without a war. Down in Fenchurch Avenue, in the great shipping