her own price if she specializes. In union shops she will work eight hours a day, and her employers must live up to all union regulations covering holidays, half holidays, overtime, etc. The conditions under which a proof-reader works are better than those in the average department stores, and not less sanitary than in the average office building. Neither is proof-reading a crowded trade, and the woman who has mastered it can make a place for herself. There are about six thousand union printers and proof-readers in New York, and it is said that not more than two hundred and fifty of these are women.
The girl who decides to take up proof-reading should have good health, or the nervous energy which, with women, is often a substitute for perfect health. She must have a thoroughly grounded education in English, though a college education is not essential. She should be what is termed a born speller and a mistress of punctuation. She must have a well-developed bump of accuracy, for inaccuracy is the unpardonable sin in a composing-room. While she must be accurate to the point of being mechanical, she must learn to recognize a mistake intuitively, rather than to follow copy slavishly. She should be a student of current events and keep in touch with all the movements and prominent people of the day. She must have the patience and grit
