Part 2

The course of instruction, in most of the institutions where telegraphy is taught, covers a period of six months. It is said, on good authority, that practising four or five hours a day for a period of six months, will enable a young woman to master the art. Probably telegraphy is, in this respect, very much like phonography--a person may learn the principles of the latter science in a comparatively short space of time, but to avail himself really of its advantages, a great deal of practice is required. The principles of telegraphy are far simpler than those of phonography, but the necessity for practice is equally important. Young girls learn easier than women over the age of thirty, and yet there are several instances of women past the age of forty, who have quickly qualified themselves to become operators.

The salary of lady telegraphers ranges from $25 to $65 per month. In the office of the Western Union Telegraph Company they commence with a salary of $25 per month; the highest wages paid being $60 a month, unless in some special cases, where they take full charge of important offices, when they are given $75 a month.

What is called a "good" position may be either in the city or the country. In fact, the term good, used in this connection, is a purely relative term. For instance, the salary may be larger in a city, but the expense of living will be greater, and the work more arduous than it will be in some small country town, where the wages will be lower. But, as a rule, the positions in the city seem to be preferred, probably on the general principle that most young people prefer the excitement and gayety of metropolitan life to the more quiet and healthful enjoyments of country towns. During the summer months positions at the various watering-places are particularly sought after, the pay of the operator being $30 a month and her board. In the large city hotels, where business is quite brisk and important, the salary is from $40 to $50 a month. Operators in the country towns and villages receive from $30 to $40 a month. But, as was stated above, the brokers' offices supply the positions most sought after by telegraph operators. There are very few of these positions. The salary paid an operator in such a situation is from $75 to $90 a month. The hours of work are light, being from 9.30 A.M. to 3 P.M. A woman, however, to hold a position of this kind must be thoroughly competent, and not only rapid, but accurate in her work. She must, too, be a woman in whom the utmost confidence can be placed, and possessed of that rare womanly gift--the ability to keep a secret; for she is, in reality, a sort of confidential clerk.

A gentleman occupying a high position in one of the leading telegraph companies in New York says, that telegraphy is a good occupation for a young woman, and, provided she has no talent to do any thing better, it will furnish her a reasonably pleasant, profitable, and sure means of employment. But the opportunities of eventually getting a large salary, or of obtaining an enviable position, do not exist in this field of work. Women, he says, do not make good managers. They do not seem to possess the ability, so common even with many ordinary men, of grasping the varied details of a large business, and conducting it with system and regularity. In the company alluded to, there are ladies who have been employed for the last twenty years, but they are receiving no more pay now than they received ten years ago, and ten years from now their salary will be no higher than it is at the present time, if, indeed, it is as much.

It might be thought by some, that from the comparative ease with which this art is acquired, many might take it up as a temporary means of subsistence, and leave it, either for some better employment, or to assume matrimonial relations. But this is not the fact. The occupation seems to be one in which few die, and none resign. It should be added, however, that with the growing use of the telegraph by private individuals, and the starting of new telegraph companies, good operators may be reasonably sure of obtaining positions.

Telegraphy is generally learned at some business college, or some school which makes a specialty of teaching it. The lady who desires to become an operator should be very careful in making her selection among institutions of this kind. The Cooper Institute School is not included in this remark, but attention is called to the many firms throughout the country, who advertise largely in the weekly papers, to teach telegraphy in an astonishingly short space of time, and, it may be added, at astonishingly high rates of tuition. Some of these schools are good, but many of them cannot be recommended. Before entering any one of them, the would-be pupil should get the honest advice of some man or woman who is engaged in the business, and who knows something of the character of the institution she proposes to enter.

FEATHER CURLING.

Fashion has, of late years, made feather curling a good trade for women, and fashion, at almost any moment, may make it a very poor business. For the last thirty years feathers have been used every year, but, until within a very short time, their use has been confined to the fall and winter season. During the past four or five years they have been in great demand during the spring and early summer, taking the place of flowers for ornamental purposes. As a consequence, the occupation of feather curling has offered unusual good opportunities for girls and women to earn a living,--that is to say, as female workers are paid in the trades.

There are several processes used in preparing the feathers before they are ready for sale. Some of this work is done by men, but the larger part of it is done by girls and women. When the feathers arrive from abroad, they are of a dull brown color, and the first process consists in washing them thoroughly with a peculiar kind of chemical soap. Then they are wrung through an ordinary clothes-wringer, and tied on to lines and hung out in the hot sun to dry, or put in a drying room if the weather is not favorable. The work of washing and wringing is done by men; the tying on to the lines by little girls. After this men put them in big vats where they are dyed, black, blue, red, yellow, or any other color that may be desired, and again dried. Then comes the work of the women, who first scrape the rib of the feather to make it soft and pliant. This is done with a piece of glass. Then they are curled with a blunt knife. After this they are packed in boxes and are ready to go from the wholesaler to the jobber, from the jobber to the retailer, and from the retailer pass to the purchasers whose hats they are meant to adorn.

Except in rare cases, the people employed at this business are paid by the piece, and all ages are represented in the different branches of the industry. There are girls as young as fourteen, and women as old as forty. The little girls tie the feathers on to the lines, and make from $2 to $5 a week. The work of preparing and curling the feathers pays the best, and women who devote themselves to this branch make from $10 to $40 a week. This last sum is large pay; but it must be stated that those who make it do so in the busiest season, and they work hard, not only during the day, but at night, or, may be, they have some one at their homes to whom a portion of the work is sent from the shop, and in that way they are assisted to receive such large pay. Nevertheless, if a woman thoroughly understands the trade, she can always be sure of making good wages. Some exceptionally proficient women will average $30 a week the year round. Take a hundred expert workers, and each of them will average $15 to $20 a week during the twelve months. The little girls never earn very much, because the work they can do is limited to "stringing" the feathers, which is the technical term for tying the feathers on a line.

When a girl enters the establishment, she generally works the first two weeks for nothing, then the superintendent is able to see what she can do, and she makes $2, $3, or $4 a week, as the case may be; in six or eight months she ought to be quite expert at the business. To be successful she must have good taste. She should be able to "lay" the feather out nicely, so that it will have a graceful appearance when it is finished. And then she must have good judgment in putting the feathers together, for it may not be known, but it is the fact, that the plume which appears on the hat to be a single feather is made up of a number of small pieces; this good judgment, then, consists, as one manufacturer frankly stated, in not being wasteful in selecting,--in short, in being careful not to pick out too many good pieces. Though there are a great number of girls in this business, there are very few who possess all these qualifications. That class of help is of course a great saving to the employer, and consequently is always sure of employment. One man said that on account of high rent alone he wanted to hire all such women. "We have to economize our room," he remarked, "and one such woman would be worth to us half a dozen poor workers, who would take up just six times as much space and waste a lot of material in the bargain. Such expert workers will make three or four times as much as other women, doing the same kind of work."

The trade is a healthy one, or, to speak more accurately, there are no special features about it to make it unhealthy. Probably the worst feature about it is the crowding together of so many girls and women in one large room. They sit on benches, or stools, without backs, working at a long, low table that runs the length of the apartment. On damp days the windows have to be shut, making the atmosphere of the place close and unwholesome. But the rooms are generally large, with high ceilings. Five hundred girls are employed in the largest establishment of the kind in New York. The nominal hours of work are from eight in the morning until six in the evening, though very often, in the busy season, the girls are required to work at night as late as half-past seven or eight o'clock.

There are a few women in New York who profess to teach feather curling; I say "profess," for I have it on good authority that some of them have no practical knowledge of the business, and aim only at securing a generous tuition-fee from the pupil. Now and then, however, a teacher can be found who is able to impart the necessary knowledge. It has been charged by women that those who learn privately in this way are not able to secure good positions in any of the feather curling establishments, the allegation being that the proprietors of the same have formed a "ring" to exclude such help. From such investigation as I have made in regard to this matter, I do not believe that this statement is correct. Doubtless many such pupils, after working for a short time in such establishments, have been discharged, but I think the real reason has been that they were not competent to do the work. And it can readily be imagined that the facilities for learning a trade like this would be far better in a large house, where several hundred girls were employed, or even fifty or seventy-five girls, than they would be in a class of half a dozen pupils, who had probably between them about as many feathers upon which to work. It would be much pleasanter to learn the trade from a teacher; but there are many practical objections against the feasibility of so doing. If the girl has not worked herself up from the very foot of the business, and does not have a knowledge of its preparatory stages, she will be likely to find that if a feather has been misplaced, or is out of order in any way, she could not put it in proper shape as well as one who had commenced at the beginning of the business.

Rather than have any girl or woman hastily decide to learn this trade, I will, at the risk of repetition, briefly recapitulate: the earnings are good if you are thoroughly competent; and this may be said to be true of the future, although there is a prospect, probably a very strong prospect, that feathers may not be in such demand as they have been, and as they are now. You will have to work hard to make good pay. The work is tolerably cleanly, but your associates, if you are particularly nice in your ideas of companionship, may not always please you. If you are competent you may be able to take work home, but the facilities for doing it, and the want of that spirit of competition which prevails, to a great extent, in a large work-room, may not enable you to do so much work.

PHOTOGRAPHY.

It is a little singular that in a great city like New York, there should be but one lady photographer, while in the western part of our country there are quite a number. The photographers I speak of do all the work of making a picture,--posing the sitter, preparing the chemicals, and operating the camera. One reason why there are so few ladies in this business is the fact, that up to within a short time it has been a very disagreeable occupation on account of the nature of some of the chemicals that were used--they would soil the hands very easily, and the stains could not be removed. But recent improvements in the art have removed this objection, and prominent male photographers predict that it will not be long before their business will be largely carried on by women.

A contributor to a London magazine, writing some years ago, on the subject of the employment of women in photography, said: "I have pleasure in bearing testimony to the fact, that in photography there is room for a larger amount of female labor; that it is a field exactly suited to even the conventional notions of woman's capacity; and further, that it is a field unsurrounded with traditional rules, with apprenticeship, and with vested rights, and it is one in which there is no sexual hostility to their employment." These remarks may, with perfect safety and propriety, be applied to photography in this country.

There are several branches of the art in which women and girls have always been engaged, viz., the mounting of photographs, the retouching of negatives, and the coloring of photographs.

The mounting of photographs is apparently a very simple kind of work, consisting simply in trimming the photograph and pasting it upon the card-board. But, simple though it seems, it requires great neatness and considerable skill, if the work is to be done fast, and rapidity of execution is a prerequisite to employment in nearly all the large galleries. As an illustration that it is not a very simple accomplishment, it may be mentioned that out of forty young ladies who came to work on trial for a prominent photographer, he could find only nine who were suitable to fill positions. The pay for this work is not very munificent, ranging from $6 to $10 per week.

The retouching, or taking out the marks or spots on negatives, is a much more difficult branch of work. The pay, however, does not seem to be as large as it should be, considering the amount of skill required. Young women receive from $8 to $12 a week. A man doing the same kind of work, and working the same number of hours, would be paid $16 a week. There have been cases where ladies have received larger salaries than the sums just mentioned, but such instances are rare.

The coloring of photographs is the most important, or rather the highest paid, of the three branches of work that have been mentioned. It is said that to be successful at this calling one must have some taste for drawing, and what is commonly called a good eye for color. Very few photographers employ colorists on a salary, for the reason that they do not have enough work to keep them constantly employed. There are probably but eight or ten galleries in New York where colorists are employed all the year round. The truth is, that it is not alone necessary to be a good colorist--one must be very good; and if very good, she can have her studio and take work from the galleries as well as from private parties. Photograph coloring has come to be considered as important as portraiture. Another qualification for success in the work, therefore, should be the rare ability not only to preserve, but sometimes to make, a likeness.

There is one branch of the picture-making business that has grown to large proportions within the past fifteen years; it is what is called the "copying" business. There are many establishments in various cities of the Union that constantly advertise for agents to collect pictures. The agent goes through the rural districts, visiting each dwelling, and inquiring of the inmates if there are any old pictures of living or deceased friends that they would like to have copied, enlarged, and colored. In nearly every farm-house there are such pictures--old daguerreotypes of long-lost aunts, uncles, and grandfathers, "old-fashioned photographs" of mother, together with newer photographs of the living taken by the perambulating picture-taker, and taken so badly with the use of bad chemicals that they are fast fading away. Out of this motley group the family will be pretty sure to select one or two pictures which they will deem it worth their while to have copied and enlarged.

When the agent has collected a sufficient number of pictures in this way, he sends them by express to the home office, where the work is done. Some years ago I chanced to know a gentleman who was in this business; in fact, he claimed to have originated it, and, as he was a shrewd, smart Yankee, born and brought up in the State of New Hampshire, I never had the temerity to question his statement. He had a good-sized brick building in a pleasant little New England city, and employed a countless number of agents, who travelled in all parts of the country, and, if I remember right, he had nearly a score of ladies, whose business it was to color the pictures and to touch some of them up into something resembling life, after they had been copied and enlarged. I use these statements with due deliberation, and say that the effort was made to give them the appearance of something resembling life, for often they looked like mere blurs. Here and there a nose would be gone, or an eye would be missing, the lower part of the face would be entirely absent, but would be counterbalanced, or, rather, overbalanced, by a heavy head of straight, black hair. These, of course, were very bad specimens, but they came to the office in the regular course of business, and had, to use the Yankee expression of the proprietor, to be "fixed up." These worst specimens were given to a middle-aged single lady, who really had a genius for making something out of nothing,--at least in the matter of pictures. It should be mentioned, however, that the worst of them were generally accompanied with some written description of the subject. But we may well believe that such crude data were of but little service to the artist. The salaries of these colorists were from $13 to $25 per week. The lady I have just mentioned received the latter sum, and often made a few more dollars weekly by doing extra work. At present, she and another lady from the same establishment, conduct an art school in a city near New York, and are very prosperous.

There are now opportunities for doing this same kind of work, but there is not so much of it to do,--thousands of "active" agents having very thoroughly worked in the best districts of the country. Still, there is something to do, and the salaries paid, though not so high as I have mentioned, are fair.

As I have written above, few photographers in New York employ a colorist on a regular salary. The largest sum paid to a woman is $25 a week, and that is given by probably the most prominent photographer in the city. Others receive from $20 down to $12 a week. But there are quite a number of ladies who have studios, and who work on their own account, among them a firm of two sisters, who employ a dozen young women as assistants. Without a doubt, this plan, provided the woman is competent in the art, and has good business qualifications, is the best and most lucrative course to pursue.

There has been lately introduced a new process of coloring pictures for which very strong claims are made. It is said that the "secret" can be learned in one lesson; the cost of the instruction is but $5. The method consists in the application of water colors to any kind of picture on paper. Some photographers say there is nothing new in the method, and that the pictures will not stand the light of the sun; others claim that it is a good process, and say that the pictures are both brilliant and effective. The teacher of the art asserts that he can, in half a day, paint a picture, and give all the necessary effects. With the usual method, he says, a colorist would require two days and a half. The process has not yet been introduced among photographers, but several ladies are soliciting work at private houses, receiving, it is said, $4 and $5 for painting a panel picture, and making a good living at the work. For obvious reasons I do not enter into the particulars of this method, or even mention the name by which it is known. That, however, can easily be learned from almost any photographer, and the searcher for information can then satisfy herself as to whether the business is worth a trial.

PROFESSIONAL NURSING.

It may not be known to many that, of late years, nursing has come to be a regular profession. Women are trained to become nurses by going through a regular course of study in what are called training schools, and they receive on their graduation a diploma signed by an Examining Board and a Committee of a Board of Managers. For some women this is an excellent occupation. The work is rather hard, but the pay is exceptionally good.

At the present time there are seventeen of these training schools in the United States. There is one in each of the following cities: New Haven (Conn.), Chicago, New Orleans, St. Louis, Syracuse (N. Y.), Washington (D. C.), Burlington (Vt.), and there are three in Boston, two in Brooklyn (N. Y.), three in New York City, and two in Philadelphia.

In order to gain admission to any of these institutions certain conditions of admission have to be complied with. First of all, the woman must have good health, she must be unmarried or a widow, she must furnish satisfactory references as to moral character, and have a fair common-school education. All these are essential prerequisites. Her age must not be under twenty or over forty-five. In the Boston schools the rule is between twenty-one and thirty-five; in Brooklyn, twenty-one to forty; in New York City, twenty-five to thirty-five; in Philadelphia, twenty-one to forty-five, and in Washington City, the same as it is in Brooklyn.

Aside from these qualifications, the woman who would enter upon this employment must have considerable "nerve," for she will be obliged to witness some very painful sights, and often be called upon to render assistance in some very dangerous surgical operations. And yet, at the same time, while possessing the necessary amount of self-control to go through her duties properly, she must be possessed of that gentleness, forbearance, and good temper, without which the most scientific nursing will be of little avail. She may shudder at the first operation in the hospital, even faint, but that is no sign that she will not be able to overcome her want of self-control. Some of the best surgeons have confessed to the same weakness at the beginning of their professional experience. The nurse will soon get used to seeing such unpleasant sights, and, as it was the case with the grave-digger in Hamlet, custom will make her business "a property of easiness." She, too, will learn that "the hand of little employment hath the daintier sense."