Businesswoman

“ Any decent woman who has saved a little money thinks herself qualified to open a shop and carry on business without preliminary training. The usual result of such experiments is that capital dwindles away before profits have begun to make their appearance. Women do not always realise that the management of even a small business requires knowledge, resource, and an unwearied attention to details.
Trade as a Career.—It is to be regretted that the daughters of shopkeepers, particularly of the wealthier sort, do not more often devote themselves to trade. ”

“ And, to do that wisely and well, they must be more or less women of business; and to be women of business, they must know something of the meaning of the words capital, profit, price, value, labour, wages, and of the relation between those two last. In a word, they must know a little political economy. Nay, I sometimes think that the mistress of every household might find, not only thrift of money, but thrift of brain ”

“ All good and well-founded industries take care of themselves in time, but until the merchant finds them out, and interposes the wedge of personal profit between things and their market—inciting and encouraging both—it seems to be the business of women in every lot of life to help each other. ”

“ The girl at work can usefully make a study of these headings since they, or others of the same character, are used by women in business who desire to lead normal, generous and helpful lives. The business woman just mentioned says that the money she has for her income would give her no satisfaction if she had not people of her own to love and if she were not helping to take care of them. ”

“ Examples of the wise judgment of women in business are found in every large community. A girl who makes good marmalade for home consumption began to make and sell this product in a small way. She is now part owner of a large business. A woman who went into a factory as an office helper proved to have a gift for designing dresses. After spending a number of years in the employ of the firm with which she began work, she has gone into partnership with a woman dressmaker in a small specialized factory. ”

“ She can manage a shop, keep accounts, take an interest in markets, and in all questions of commercial enterprise she is the confidante, and often the adviser, of her husband. Your English woman of the same class prides herself rather on her total ignorance of business. It is probable that in twenty years of married life she has not once visited the warehouse or the office where her husband earns the income which she spends. ”

“ In commercial dealings there is a good deal of work to be done which could not, at any rate in our present very imperfect state of civilisation, be properly undertaken by women. There are, however, branches of mercantile and quasi-mercantile business, including that [Pg 91] profession of modern growth which has been called ‘management,’—in which wise arrangements, carefully made, are all that is required to make them suitable. In almost every kind of business, wholesale and retail, the book-keeping and the correspondence might be very fitly carried on by competent women. ”

“ The number of women in this business is legion. With many it is a suitable and successful employment. Those whose means will not permit them to engage in any more extensive business—who have a room well located in town, and not too much competition—can, with a small capital, commence a safe and light business. It requires but little effort, and, with enough customers, will well repay time and capital. ”

“ I have seen and heard enough of the lives of these female workers, as well in their homes as in their work-shops, to thank God that so great a number of women here, are able, by means of a good and inexpensive branch of industry, to provide for themselves, and acquire an independence—which may lead to great good; and many beautiful examples can be given of these young female workers, applying their earnings to the support of their aged parents, or for the education of younger sisters or relatives. ”

“ But when women were trained to the comprehension of mercantile operations, and were taught how to dispose of money, their whole character underwent a change, and with this accession of business talent, came the respect from men for those who had a capacity for the conducting of business affairs. ”

“ From the women who begged for monopolies which if granted must have involved much worry and labour if they were to be made profitable, we pass naturally to women who actually owned and managed businesses requiring a considerable amount of capital. ”

“ It will be seen that the woman in business needs to study the fundamental elements of political economy even more than the housewife. Books and magazines are filled with superficial, obvious advice as to the way in which women as employees should conduct themselves toward their employers and fellow workers, but rarely is there a hint given of the actual rights and obligations of these relations, upon which the proper conduct is based.
Employment is a business contract between employer and employee, in which there is no legal or moral obligation for either party to exceed the terms. ”

“ Business enterprises that women can successfully engage in are very scarce, but as this business is so easily conducted in the home, any woman with a fair amount of ambition, who wants to earn her own living, or who desires to assist with family expenses, in spare time, or who wishes to increase her spending allowance and does not wish to leave home in doing so ”

“ When he comes back, this new woman looking into his eyes with the level glance, he will find is a woman who has earned money—in a new world that has been made over for her so that she can. You see all those lines of women in industry and commerce and the professions? ”

“ To name the various kinds of business in which women are found making for themselves a sustenance would be to give a list of the many lines of retail trade; but the shopwoman of the earlier part of the nineteenth century is quite a different person from the tradeswoman of the latter half. Instead of a small, obscure shop, conducted in a hesitating, apologetic manner, to-day women are as aggressive advertisers, make as fine displays in their shops, and sustain the same business relations with the wholesale dealers, as do the retail dealers of the other sex. ”

“ To direct this work into a channel, where the maker and not the employer would receive the profit, was what the originator of the exchange proposed to do for women pressed by poverty into the ranks of the bread-winners. ”

“ Many of the businesses owned and managed successfully by women are connected with food, clothing, health, physical, mental and moral training, and personal well-being. The woman's advantage in business has to do most frequently with perfection in detail, personal supervision, knowledge of the highest home standards, and with making her commodity a little the best on the market. The best women in business excel in making conditions for their employees ideal. They plan to give their workers opportunities for education and training, and sometimes help them to start in business for themselves. ”

“ The activities of American businesswomen have experienced a dramatic transition and expansion in recent years. More and more women are participating in every aspect of business-as owners, executives, professionals, support staff and production workers. ”

“ For the first time in this country woman’s labor had a money value. She had become not only an earner and a producer, but also a spender of money, a recognized factor in the political economy of her time. And thus a long upward step in our material civilization was taken; woman had begun to earn and hold her own money, and through its aid had learned to think and to act for herself. ”

“ Weaving and Spinning as a Woman’s Trade.—The employments carried on by women in the household may have yielded money occasionally, as we have seen from some of the foregoing quotations, but the work appears in these excerpts to have been carried on rather as a bye-industry, as a means of utilising surplus produce, than as a recognised trade for gain or profit. Did women carry on the manufacture of woollen goods definitely as a craft or trade? ”

“ Speaker, since I was first elected in 1992, I have had great pleasure in witnessing the tremendous growth of women in business. Women now are starting businesses at twice the rate of men and employing more than all of the Fortune 500 companies worldwide. ”

“ In administration also, it is obvious that, though on a different scale, the same sagacity, prudence, and foresight which would make a woman successful in business, would conduce to the economical management of domestic concerns. ”

“ It is all the more a duty now, both to herself, her class, and to society, that the woman who works should contend to the last cent for her part of the wealth that is created by the business in which she is engaged. Where her work is equal to a man's, she should contend for wages equal to his ”

“ The first lesson a woman must learn in making her own way financially is to appreciate the fact that the office, the shop, whatever be her place of employment, is no place for superfluous courtesies. The cultivation of a cool, matter-of-fact, unsentimental way of looking at the work in hand, is the only path to honorable achievement. ”

“ In taking women's business out of the home you haven't freed her from the need to see after the business. The need is greater than ever it was. Why, eighty-two per cent of the women of this country are wage-earning women! ”

“ However, they must not have clinging to them the odor of their humble beginnings, if they rose from lowly walks of life. The real test applied to them is not the test of breeding, which relates to the past, but of gentility, which is the measure of the present life.
Besides the women who managed large business interests in their own names, the nineteenth century witnessed the advent of the business woman in numerous lines of small trade. ”

“ The increasing specialization in industry, drawing more and more of the household arts out of the home and into factory, mill and shops, and the following of the jobs by women into the mills and factories, thus freeing woman from economic dependence on man, has already colored every branch of our social fabric. ”

“ It is conceivable that a married woman with capital might be successful as an employer herself, with the power to delegate her business supervision to others when necessary; but I doubt whether she has ever done so with much success, except in cases, as in France, where the wife has generally been the assistant of her husband, or assisted by him. ”

“ We know the practical business experience possessed by French women, and so are prepared to learn that many a big commercial enterprise, the owner having gone to the front, is now directed by his capable wife. ”

“ From a condition, as many of you can remember, in which no woman thought of earning her bread by any other means than sewing, teaching, cooking or factory work, in these later years the way has been opened to every avenue of industry, to every profession, whereby woman to-day stands almost the peer of man in her opportunities for financial independence. ”

“ I am often asked by women who are interested in domestic manufactures, how one should go to work to build up a profitable [126] neighbourhood industry. To do this one must know the place and people, for anxious as most country women are to earn something outside of farm profits, [127] they are both timid and cautious, and will not follow advice from unpractical people or from strangers. ”

“ I’m honored to be here, and really looking forward to hearing from each of you who serve as tremendous role models for me and so many other business leaders. (Inaudible) our countries can lend some tremendously valuable perspective as we think about the unique challenges that entrepreneurs, women in the workforce, female small-business owners are confronted with each and every day. And as we think about how we level the playing field for this generation and for the next. ”

“ We never lose sight of a woman that shows any business capacity, but of course that’s only as a rule in heads of departments. A saleswoman gets about the same right along. Two thirds of the girls here are public-school girls and live at home. ”

“ The economic position held by women depended upon whether the business was carried on at home or elsewhere, and upon the possession of a small amount of capital. The wives of men who worked as journeymen on their masters’ premises could not share their husbands’ trade, and their choice of independent occupations was very limited. ”

“ Instances of women who have been successful in business enterprises may be quoted which do not seem to conform to the requirements specified. But if they are examined, these instances will show that the women in question have fulfilled the conditions of success almost exactly as described. A woman has succeeded, for instance, in managing her own country inn. She was in a totally different employment before she started this successful enterprise. ”

“ Nevertheless, from the woman’s point of view retailing deserves separate consideration, because, whether as a branch of Family Industry or as a trade in itself, the employment of selling was so singularly adapted to the circumstances of women, that among their resources it may almost take rank with agriculture and spinning. ”