Study for Self-Effacement
By OPHELIA DANE FROM the ground floor a merry pounding of typewriters to the tune of the " Twelfth Street Rag " is wafted into the street to enliven the steps of passers-by. From above rises a chanting of voices reading back a " piece of speed " about the report and accounts, about a complaint that the roof needs repair- ing, even, if they are lucky, a Wild West thriller. Next door a dozen or so pencils labour—or, if more practised, skim—across the paper, and yet again a roomful of young women is painstakingly copying pothooks and curves with little dots and dashes beside them, in search of the initial principles of this mysterious unaesthetic and apparently highly illogical language of shorthand. A gong sounds. The empty staircases winding up and up four or five- flights fill suddenly and obstructively with the occupants of half a dozen classrooms, all requiring to get to quite different classrooms via the bottleneck on the sixty-odd stairs. In the cloakrooms their voices, well-bred and not so well-bred, arise in comment on " What Mummy thinks about my new coat," " Why I didn't get my seventy in shorthand," " What Daddy said about the Election," " What is wrong with my typewriter " and " What fun it was at that dance."
Most of them are very young, many still in their teens ; to scarcely any is even the year 1925 anything but a date in history. The recent war to them is something which affected only their school-days. Their faces are blooming, their coats fashionable, their hair clipped short, and they wear set after set of jumpers and skirts—many of them bought from the same shop. They live, as a rule, with their parents, or in hostels in which they think nostalgically of their parents and homes. The war-time generation, with its torturing, restless independence, is far removed in years and outlook, excessively senior.
Why are they here ? Some are straight from school ; some— very few—fresh from taking university degrees, hoping thus to supplement that qualification so inadequate for the world of employment. A number come from trying something quite different and of much wider horizons—a musical career they proved not good enough to begin, a university course they could not finish, a study of dramatic art which Father did not want them to continue. And so they fall back on that paradoxically feminine stand-by, a secretarial course, and day after day they plod at their typewriters, learning how to tabulate unspeakable columns of figures, dashing down their little curves and pothooks, memorising phrases of com- mercial French or Spanish.
In general, everybody seems to tell everybody else that a secre- tarial course is purgatory undreamed of by the uninitiated, six or eight months of dullness and frustration never rivalled in experience. Or else that it argues on the parrlof its students a defeatism to be spoken of in shocked whispers, My dear, you learning shorthand Mid typing ? " Perhaps everybody is right. Though there are, one May observe, at present few traces of either dullness or defeatism on the faces in this particular college or, doubtless, in any other ; still, since we expect opinions to have reasons, we may hope with a little search to find a reason for this one.
When the course begins it appears, after all, perfectly fascinating. Enjoyment of learning for 'its own sake takes hold ; and the mechanism of typewriting has a certain satisfaction -when a neat, correct piece is achieved, although at times perfection seems beyond hope, when 8s and question-marks appear mysteriously throughout, thanks to memory and shift-lock losing track of each other. The new language of shorthand, too, gives satisfaction as it begins to be mastered. One has as more and more is learned, an entirely spurious feeling of great progress. It becomes possible to take down a 'piece of incredibly slow, meaningless dictation and learn with- pride that this was read at no less than twenty words a minute. Working up to fifty, one takes a test, becomes better still, faster and faster. And comes to a stop—somewhere—anywhere. Every- one does, sooner or later.
It is now that the nagging, awkward little thought, which unaccountably intruded itself often enough even during the earlier intent enthusiasm, sticks up its head very firmly. Where is all this leading you ?, it asks, pettishly. Why all this work, this zeal, this feeling of achievement ? The most you can ever gain by it is to be able to type at sixty words a minute and take shorthand at 120 or thereabouts, and then one day you will come in and say, " Goodbye, I'm starting at such a nice job with a firm of accountants in the city." Even those who entered the school with the avowed intent of becoming journalists or pillars of newspapers and maga- zines (for ambition is very enlivening) or at the least private secretaries to publishers or M.P.s or authors—even they cannot be immune• to the insidious, undermining whisper. Where will it get you ? What is the point ?
What, in fact, will be the fate of these attractive, fresh young creatures who so enjoy life from day to aay ? As they flood in and out of the door, are they a miniature of that much greater flood which eventually they will join, of secretaries, typists and clerks pouring in and out of London buildings, women of all ages, from the extensively to the semi-educated, from the intelligent to the dull, from the smart and attractive to the dowdy and plain 7 Considered in a mass, humanity may at times be alarming and depressing, but office workers seen as a whole are perhaps more depressing than any. The job is to many girls admittedly a refuge and a last resort. If they don't want to, or cannot, go to a university, don't want to teach or nurse, or show no outstanding creative talent in rnything that would make use of either aesthetic sense or trained hands—there is an alternative: a job as shorthand typist, which requires intelligence, and has a certain standing for those with the necessary qualifications. And they are sure of a job, too—that is to ssay, an occupation from 9 till 5.30 every day, for which they are rewarded by a certain amount of money at the end of every week ; until they get married, as most of them naturally will, and can hope to leave the office atmosphere thank- fully behind them.
Here they are, not because they are too stupid to do more actively constructive jobs. They are not less intelligent than any other group of young women. They are, doubtless, less academic, or less cut out for an obvious career, than some, but that is not the point. The point is that they are, deliberately or unconsciously, allowing themselves• to be trained for a type of job in which a chief requirement is that they should be self-effacing and quietly efficient ; in which few of them will be expected or allowed to express their own personalities ; and in 'which their days, like so many others', will move forward to the attainment of their end— time to go home—and their weeks to the attainment, of their week- ends. They are to join the ranks of the monstrous regiment whose unfailing answer to enquiries is, "Oh, it's not too bad really. Quite interesting at times. . . . Might be worse."
What brings them here ? At a guess, one might say, the fact that they haie for the moment at least, surrendered their initiative. They are playing safe. And since they all. seem, now, to be so gay and alive, one an assume only that they are unaware of what they are 'allowing r happen.
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