Business Openings for Girls.
Turn-of-the-century Jobs for Women
[Labor] White, Sallie Joy. Business Opening for Girls. New York: The Werner Company, 1899.
8vo.; decoratively stamped cloth.
First edition of this guide to employment for girls, including chapters on opportunities as cashiers, sales women, newspaper workers, dressmakers, secretarial work, preserving and pickling, real estate brokers, careers in insurance and advertising, and piano and organ tuning. With an early ownership signature of a woman noting the book as her “business property.”
White was the first woman journalist in Boston, working for the Boston Post starting in 1870 and tasked with covering Woman Suffrage Conventions and other related women’s rights activities, while maintaining her advice column under the pseudonym Penelope Penfeather. One can imagine her chagrin at the mandate to cover as well society, fashion, and household issues. In the present volume, although promoting the advancement of women as workers, she also recommends the prospective worker maintain her “womanly ways,” avoid mannish dress, and retain her “sweet true womanliness.”
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