What preparation have these new employés had for business?"
And it turns out, as a matter of fact, most of them haven't had any. A large number of this quarter of a million women who came at the call of the London Board of Trade to take the places of men in the offices, are of the class who since they were "finished" at school, have been living quiet English lives in pleasant suburbs where the rose trees grow and everybody strives to be truly a lady who doesn't descend to working for money. It is difficult for an American woman of any class to visualise such an ideal. But it was a British fact. There were thousands of correct English girls like this, whose pulses had never thrilled to a career who are finding it now suddenly thrust upon them.
"Mr. Clarke," I said, "suppose a quarter of a million men were to be hastily turned loose in a kitchen or nursery to do the work to which women have been born and trained for generations. Perhaps they might not be able to handle the job with just the precision of their predecessors. Now do you think they would?"
Mr. Clarke raised his commercial hand in a quick gesture of protest: "Dear lady," he said, "I remember when my wife once tried me out one day in the nursery—one day was enough for her and for me—I, well, I wasn't equal to the strain. Frankly, I'm quite sure most men wouldn't have the staying power for the tasks you mention."
So you see, in comparison, perhaps the new women
