Helen M. Winslow

“ I have had the printer’s “devil” stand at my elbow to seize every fresh sheet that flew out from under my pencil, almost before it was done, the hot presses upstairs crying, with the horse-leech’s daughters, “Give, give.” I have crawled from my bed in the morning only to fall back across it in a dead faint, and then have gotten up and gone out to another regular day’s work. ”

“ She will be met everywhere by the argument that if she goes into men’s offices to do men’s work, she must take men as they are in actual life, not as they appear in drawing-rooms. The sensible woman who can take this philosophically, without becoming herself “one of the boys,” will find that she is cordially liked by the men in her office. ”

“ I saw the successor of my editor, and he was exceedingly polite; but he regretted that he could not employ two of us, and as the other woman was poor he felt obliged to let her keep the position she needed more than I seemed to. I could not tell him that I had nothing but the clothes I wore, and that beyond the paltry fifteen dollars I knew not how I should live. I have always believed in the gospel of clothes. If a woman goes to seek employment in well-fitting, tasteful, “lady-like”’ attire, she will usually get what she wants far more quickly and surely than if she is shabby ”

“ There will always be a chance for them as editorial, fashion, household, society, and critical writers, but the time is soon coming when the reporters' ranks will be filled from the men's schools instead of from the girls'. Meanwhile the young woman of literary proclivities will work her way, either from the editor's desk, or from the quiet of her own particular corner at home,—as I should have done. Look around you and see if the women who have really succeeded with the pen have not been those who have kept off the newspaper staff. ”

“ But the blue pencil habit has killed all ability to do fine writing. Condensation is valuable in a newspaper; in a novel it does not help to adorn the page nor point a moral. Human nature is no longer interesting to me; how can I make it so to others? I have seen too much of it. I used to know a man journalist who said, “The newspaper will use you as long as there is any freshness in you ”

“ The college-educated girl with a taste for literary work may find here a pleasant way of beginning her literary career. These places came to me only after many years of the hardest kind of newspaper work. There has been a great influx of women into newspaper offices within the last decade, but I believe they will never be so numerous as reporters again. The life is too hard and too hardening. Women are not fitted for the rush-at-all-hours a reporter's life demands. ”

“ It all comes to this: ask any newspaper woman who has worked hard and long at her profession, even her who has achieved an enviable record in it, if she would put her own young daughter into a daily newspaper office to work her way up. ”

“ The proudest moment of my life was when I received a check from the Atlantic Monthly for four dollars to pay for a screed in the “Contributors’ Club,”—the only one, alas! I wondered whether I would not attain my heart’s desire sooner by staying in the country and working steadily, slowly, surely on until I made a name among writers of good poetry and fiction. ”

“ The first thing they will learn is that the newspaper office is not a drawing-room. Men will treat them as they would another man,—or the office boy. They will not take the trouble to remove their pipes because a woman happens to sit in the same room with them ”

“ A man in my place on the weekly paper would have been paid twice my salary. On the Saturday paper he would have received three or four times what I got. I am not prepared to say that he would have done these things any better than I, but I can safely admit that if I had not done so much I could have given much better “stuff,” to use a technical newspaper term. When I opened my department on the Saturday paper, it covered a new field, one about which the managing editor felt doubtful. He insisted that I sign my name ”

“ There is a time, at the very first, when she is flattered by invitations to select club-gatherings and exclusive weddings; but she soon learns, sometimes by humiliating experience, that she is tolerated for the sake of the paper she represents. ”

“ She will meet with some true and beautiful women who will never let it be seen that they appreciate any difference in station or education. But she will meet more who are polite only when they have something to gain by good manners. Women will try to bribe her into writing favorable reviews of their books or flowery descriptions of their gowns ”

“ It will not take long for her to discover that not only her particular doll, but all the dolls in the world, are stuffed with sawdust. Distinguished actresses will send for her, give her tickets, ask her to their dressing-rooms or to go autoing. ”

“ The girl who goes to an opposite extreme and tries to make herself popular by smoking cigarettes, swinging her feet from the table, and betting on the races, will not achieve unbounded popularity, since it is necessary to stand well with the managing editor ”