The Girl Who Earns Her Own Living/Chapter 14
Women have hazy ideas, often grave misconceptions, concerning proof-reading and all work for their sex offered by publishing concerns. For some inexplicable reason, the average out-of-town woman imagines that every branch of work connected with the publication of books or magazines is extremely lady-like and elegant. They cannot appreciate the close connection existing between the literary and the mechanical ends of the business. They picture women employees at home, turning out in leisurely fashion the "work" which is finally shipped by messenger, mail or express to the few poor unfortunates who must remain at the "shop" and keep the wheels spinning round.
Occasionally correspondents who hold such views come to see me at the great noisy building where we, who have served some sort of apprenticeship in the art of making books and periodicals, are turning out pages for other folk to read. They listen to the clack of half a hundred typewriters. They peer into editorial dens, separated only by thin half-partitions from the rush of many feet, the issuing of many orders, all the turmoil common to any great business concern. And they murmur: "Nobody could write in an atmosphere like this and remain sane."
But we do—and we learn to love the atmosphere.
Then these women climb winding stairways to where intent, silent girls click out columns of copy on linotype machines, and they enter small, electrically-lighted rooms, where other intent girls sit beside coatless men, reading proof.
"Why, I never dreamed it was like this! I thought proof-sheets were sent to women to read at home. I could not think clearly in this dirt and noise."
Much of this misconception of publishing house work is due to the misleading advertising matter issued by certain unscrupulous managers of correspondence schools in proof-reading. They flood the country, and especially the rural districts, with circulars stating that the girls who master their system of proof-reading by correspondence will have work in plenty sent to their homes. These promises are so cleverly worded that the guarantee of work or a position on completion of the course is quite within the law, and the student, perhaps unable to leave home in search of work, has no redress, and nothing to show for the fee paid for the course.
The course of study may be entirely sincere and reliable in theory, but the man behind it cannot furnish home work, and he has no right to guarantee it. I have the backing of employers in many cities and practical foremen and printers when I say that ninety-nine out of every one hundred students who take a course of home-study proof-reading will never make use of it. The hundredth boy or girl will be a worker born, and will go out into the printing world to seek practical instruction and training, but not one out of the hundred will ever receive a galley of proof to read on the farm or in the little village.
Personally, I am a firm believer in any reliable correspondence course, and particularly a university extension course, for the young man or woman who is far from educational and business centers, and who yet desires to keep in touch with the world's progress. It has spurred many a girl and boy on to efforts which have brought rich rewards, when without this impetus they would have vegetated or stagnated in the village or on the farm where they were born. It is also a boon to the man or woman whose early education has been neglected, but, like the college or university diploma, it is not the key to business success and an assured income. It cannot give the essential and practical experience obtained in an office, composing-room or factory; but it can make first experiences in the workaday world much easier. The college-bred lad who decides to become a proof-reader must serve his apprenticeship, his diploma notwithstanding. Why should a student expect a diploma or certificate from a correspondence school to do away with this apprenticeship or nullify the rules and regulations of one of the strongest unions in the labor world?
The home-student may take her correspondence course if she lacks the courage to enter upon an apprenticeship without theoretical training, but she must not expect the course to open the door to easy work, short hours and big pay. These are the reward of an apprenticeship covering four years or more.
Neither is proof-reading a trade for the girl or woman who wants home work. It is bound to take her into the "shop," as the composing-room is commonly called. Why should publishers send work to the home of refined or delicate or sensitive women who need the wages, when hundreds of strong, skilled and willing women are knocking at the doors of their composing-rooms for work on the premises?
The foreman of the shop connected with a publishing house of national fame told me that last year he received five hundred written applications from women who desired to do proof-reading at home and expected to follow the trade without leaving home, having work sent to them and called for, drawing the regular union wages, thus working in what some of them termed a "quiet, ladylike, confidential way."
I want to impress on the mind of all home-staying girls that the time for this sort of nonsense has passed. Business men are not conducting socities for the amelioration of the condition of distressed gentlewomen. They are demanding that every one of us women who compete with men in the field of labor work under the same conditions and give the same results as the men with whom we toil shoulder to shoulder.
As a union proof-reader, a woman will be paid precisely the same salary given to the male worker, but she must do the work just as well, and reach her position by precisely the same method of training, the same apprenticeship required of a man.
And now, having learned what proof-reading is not, and how girls cannot attain a position in this trade, let those who really mean to "make good" take counsel together.
Proof-reading is one of the best-paid trades for women. The minimum salary is twenty-one dollars per week, and the expert worker names 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 to endure a long and tiresome apprenticeship and the tact to secure the most rapid advancement consistent with union rules at the hands of the powers above her.
Having looked over the field and decided that she is not only suited to the work, but deeply interested in the mechanical making of books and magazines, she must find her opening. This is not easy to secure, for printers are, above all other union men, the most clannish.
A sincere friendship or a ripening acquaintance with a working typesetter or proof-reader, man or woman, is worth a dozen letters of introduction to the man who owns the shop. The foreman of the composing-room or the superintendent of the shop, if it be a large establishment, is an autocrat before whom even the proprietor bows. No girl wants to enter a shop to be tolerated, rather than advanced. Therefore let her make friends with practical printers.
The most successful, the best-paid women proof-readers are those who started at the printing-case, that is, set type. There is nothing about the trade they do not know, and their knowledge of proof-reading is built on the firm foundation of typesetting and all its correlative work. Perhaps the girl in the smaller city has the better chance to start at the case, where, by the way, she draws the munificent salary of three dollars per week, or five dollars at the most, with a dollar raise from time to time as she becomes more adept. This is true because in the smaller cities linotype machines are not so common as in the great trade centers.
After many years of investigation of avenues open to working-women, I have reached the decision that in no other trade does the indidivuality of the woman, her very ego, count with such force as in securing an opening as proof-reader. She must make her presence felt among her associates. Only one woman in a thousand can step from the printing-case or the linotype machine to the proof-reader's table, and she must show a peculiar adaptability for the work. Her personality must triumph over obstacles peculiar to her trade.
On the other hand, for the woman who looks forward to a long career in the business or trade world, who finds a great and abiding happiness in surmounting obstacles, to whom success, hardly earned, is intoxicating (and there are many women of this sort to-day), proof-reading presents a most attractive field.
Perhaps the reader lives in a city of ten or fifteen thousand inhabitants, with its weekly or daily paper and a job printing shop or two. Let her go straight to the job printer himself or the foreman of the composing-room attached to the paper and ask for work. Nine chances out of ten she will find no opening, but she must go again and again, until the foreman is convinced of her sincerity. If she cannot get a place on the composing force at first, let her see the editor of the paper, and ask him if she may not contribute news items, accounts of social affairs, school or college or church notes. Probably he will say that he cannot afford to pay her. Let her write for him anyhow, and get a foothold on that paper. If he has never had a "social department," she can build one up for him. To all appearances she will be working on the editorial end of the paper. In reality she will be keeping her eye on the foreman of the composing-room, and when he realizes that she works with enthusiasm, that she does the small thing well, that she is using the items of news as a stepping-stone to his department, he will make room for her just as soon as he can.
This does not sound encouraging, I admit, but a woman who now reads proof in an establishment which publishes many high-grade text-books in various languages, and receives a salary of forty dollars a week, started in precisely this way less than ten years ago. For the weekly edition of the paper she condensed the women's news for the entire week, and went up to the composing-room to watch the foreman "make up" her special department. She won over that individual, a crusty, old-fashioned printer, by her enthusiasm, and finally he gave her a chance on his force. His staff was not large, though there was a job plant in connection, and he had time to give the girl individual attention. He had always read his own proof, assisted by the editor, but when this girl manifested a determination to master proof-reading it was gradually turned over to her. She worked in this shop for four years, the regulation length of apprenticeship, and when she received her union card she was drawing the munificent wages of eight dollars per week. But there was nothing about the trade she did not know thoroughly. More than that, she had learned the importance of cramming her brain with accurate general information. Ata glance she could tell whether the name of a prominent man was correctly spelled, whether the right initials or Christian name had been given also. If a political measure was brought into prominence, she read everything about it that she could find. If a small nation had come before the public, she studied up its history, geography and politics; in other words, she did what all successful proof-readers must do—she became a practical student with singular powers of concentration.
With her union card she went straight from her native city to New York, and in a short time secured an opening at the minimum union wages in the publishing house where she is employed to-day. She soon realized that if she specialized in some way she would command a larger salary. She took a course in German, then one in French, and now she can read proof in either of these two languages. She says she means to take up Latin and Greek next—and this is a woman who started on a district-school education!
I asked her whether she thought proof-reading was really worth the consideration of women workers. She answered:
"Unless you take joy in wresting hard-earned success from what seems like a barren field, no. But if you want a career which will forever broaden and lead you into new avenues of thought and study, yes. With most women, unfortunately, proof-reading is purely mechanical, and becomes trying on the nerves, almost maddening in its monotony. It is only when you study with an aim of increasing your value to your firm that you are happy in your work."
Another successful woman in this line of work never set type, but started in a clerical position. She had a letter of introduction to the foreman of a large printing and binding establishment. He said there was no opening for her as a copy-holder, the position at which she wished to start. The girl asked desperately if there was not something she could do, no matter how small. He said that if she had a head for detail she could keep track of proofs and other matters connected with his peculiarly responsible position—for a salary of five dollars a week. She jumped at the chance, and for nearly a year she worked thus, sorting proofs for him, keeping a record of everything that came to his desk or left it. And she did the work as if her life depended upon it. Never had his files been kept so well. When there was a chance for her to hold copy for an hour or two, he gave her the opportunity. This means that she held the original manuscript while the proof-reader held the proofs and read them aloud, the girl watching for mistakes.
When the copy-holder left to take a position as proof-reader with another firm, this girl took his place at eight dollars per week. She held the copy and attended to her clerical duties for four years, received her union card, and, as the firm's business had grown until more proof-readers were needed, she received the first position open. A simple tale of drudgery and persistency is hers, but the woman does not look at it that way. Every day she was learning. It was not a mere mechanical performance of duties, for she was constantly storing her mind with information on a wide range of subjects.
The girl who really wants to learn proof-reading can find a way—and she must find it for herself. Let her cultivate men and women in the printing trade. Let her take anything she can get to do in a printing or binding shop, and work, everlastingly work; and then study as if she were back in school.
If she cannot afford to work for a small salary she must not think of this trade. She cannot secure full union wages for at least four years. But bear in mind that during all this drudgery on a small salary she is being educated. Her parents must pay for her tuition in art, in music, in stenography—and then she must fight for a living. In the hard training that leads to the position of proof-reader she pays out nothing, she is paid something, and when she receives her "card" her position comes with it. There is no uncertainty.
Many women ask me what books they should study to prepare for this work. A thorough grounding in English—grammar, spelling and rhetoric—is essential. An excellent book on the art is "Composition," by Theodore Low De Vinne, the dean of American printers. This book is recognized as the one authority by all printers.
Another branch of work in publication centers for which girls yearn is manuscript reading, or acting as assistant to the editor. Fully half the girls who have led a life of leisure, after leaving boarding-school or a fashionable finishing-school, and who meet with sudden financial reverses, think they would succeed best as assistant editors.
"I have always read the best literature, and kept up in current magazines. I write a good hand, and I never grow tired of books. I understand that all editors have assistants who read things for them."
This is a sample letter, and a representative sample. Generally the writer adds that she "understands that editorial hours are short and editorial offices elegant and refined."
Who, oh, who is responsible for any such "understanding"? True, editors and publishers have large staffs of assistants, but each is a worker, and each must have some preparation for the work. The girl who has never seen the inside of a publishing house and who has never written a line for publication must have remarkable ideas regarding the needs of the editor who will pay her salary. And she, too, must serve an apprenticeship.
She will need a letter of introduction to some one well up in the firm, and this must be backed by a willingness to begin at the bottom. If she is very fortunate, she will be given an humble elerical position, that of manuscript clerk. This means, in a large concern, that all incoming manuscripts will be brought to her table or office. Perhaps a boy will open them; perhaps she may be expected to do this herself; and they will pour in, hundreds in each mail delivery.
These manuscripts she will glance over, enter the name of the article, the title of the story, the date of its receipt and its disposition in a large book, not unlike a ledger. Then she will take a fresh envelope bearing the firm's name, place the manuscript in this, address it to the writer, and in the upper right-hand corner where the stamp should go she will write the amount of postage enclosed with the article by the sender. Then this manuscript and all its fellows she will toss into a big receptacle to be sent to the first manuscript reader. The stamps she turns in to the cashier. By and by, each manuscript or a report upon it will come back to her desk, and she must complete her record, writing in the record book whether the script was accepted or returned, and if returned on what date.
This is purely clerical, mechanical work, and it must be done accurately and regularly, for every time a writer reports a manuscript as lost, this girl must prove that the loss occurred after the article was turned over to Uncle Sam for its homeward journey to the writer.
How long the girl must do this purely mechanical work depends upon herself. In a large and important office, she serves a stern apprenticeship. Gradually, however, the first manuscript reader, who may have been watching her work, will suggest that she take time to look over the scripts. Her instructions will be something like this:
"Do not send me any stories of more than 7,000 words or less than 1,700. We do not use them in this magazine. Do not send me any poetry or articles on cookery or the care of children. Do not send me any serials."
Here is her first opportunity to demonstrate her literary ability, her power of selection. From that day she takes special pains not to burden the manuscript reader with unavailable scripts. By and by she reads most of the articles and attaches to them little comments which save the first reader time and trouble. The latter goes on his or her vacation and suggests to the editor that Miss Blank, who keeps the manuscript record, is perfectly capable of doing the first reading. During that memorable fortnight Miss Blank works as she never worked before and probably never wili again. She must read the scripts and pass them on to the various editors, who, in turn, must pass upon their availability. And she must not send manuscripts to the wrong editors. She must display literary judgment and discretion.
If she makes a good record as a substitute, in time, when the first reader becomes an assistant editor, Miss Blank is promoted to the vacant place. Later she, too, becomes an assistant editor and is admitted to the councils of the great. But, you see, she serves her apprenticeship here, as in any line of work that leads to real success. It does not represent hard manual work, but it represents concentration on the small things before she may be entrusted with the larger duties.