a news sense, write just as well, have just as much initiative, know how to meet people just as well and are just as hard workers and just as loyal as men, is beginning to be met with some sort of reward, for the shortage of reporters of the male sex has become so acute that editors are forced to take on women. I know of a number of instances where, as a last resort, women have been made members of the reportorial staff, and without a single exception they have made good.
“For years past women have been begging and beseeching for just a try out. Splendid, up-standing, college-bred women have seen themselves refused, while a mere chit of a boy just out of high school, wearing loud ties and smoking cigarettes, and otherwise announcing that he is a man, is given a position, the only possible excuse being that he wore trousers. But, for the last six months, the newspaper woman has come into her own as never before, and the future holds even greater opportunities. The war is getting news paper men in greater numbers than in many of the professions, because it includes so many young men. A small army of women are taking their places, and they are doing in such splendid style the same work hitherto done by men that it is hoped they are establishing such a precedent that in years to come reporters and editors will be given positions on their capabilities alone, regard less of sex.”
Lucile Saunders Visits from Salem.
Miss Lucile Saunders, now telegraph editor on the Oregon Statesman, has been steadily climbing since she left the University of Oregon to take a position as reporter on the Coos Bay Times, and later she worked in the same capacity on the Bend Bulletin. Miss Saunders’ letter says:
“Just now women are the big factor in the newspapers of the state. I’ve heard half a dozen small-town editors within the last month wonder where they could get a reliable woman reporter—men who wouldn’t think of having one around the office a year ago. What were they good for anyhow! True, they could write up the annual reception of the W. C. T. U.—if they have such things—or could keep the office dusted, but generally they cooed too much over the former and mussed up all the sacred stacks of papers in doing the latter. This attitude has changed since last summer. The editor wants a woman who can do a man’s job, sit down and stick it out until it’s accomplished, and then not go off and tell the next fellow what terribly hard work she is doing.
He’s pleased as a youngster with a new toy if he can find a girl who isn’t going to giggle or receive telephone calls from her friends during working hours, or crawfish when she is sent after a political or market story.
“If she isn’t afraid of work and can take a little advice or a scolding from the editor with a stiff upper lip, and if she has confidence in herself, any girl can make good in the newspaper business in the present emergency. When the war is over editors will have been won around to the place where they won’t turn a woman applicant for a position down the first time because ‘there aren’t any vacancies just now in the society or women’s clubs departments.'"
