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Woman as Machine: Representation of Female Clerical Workers in Interwar
Magazines
Jane Marcellus
Ph.D. Candidate
School of Journalism and Communication
1275 University of Oregon
Eugene, Oregon 97403-1275
541-687-1511
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Woman as Machine: Representation of Female Clerical Workers in Interwar
Magazines
Abstract
This critical, qualitative paper looks at depictions of female clerical
workers and telephone operators in magazines during the interwar period--an
important time for employed women and expanding media influence. It seeks
to identify common images and patterns of representation, exploring how
femininity and machinery were interconnected in three mainstream
magazines--The American Magazine, Ladies' Home Journal and Forbes. It uses
critical textual and visual analysis, plus historical research, to explore
editorial copy and advertisements.
Woman as Machine: Representation of Female Clerical Workers in Interwar
Magazines
Abstract
While media images of women's domestic roles have been thoroughly explored,
the employed woman's media portrayal has largely been ignored. This
critical, qualitative paper looks at representation of female clerical
workers and telephone operators in magazines during the interwar period--an
important time for employed women and expanding media influence. It seeks
to identify common images and patterns of representation, exploring how
femininity and machinery were interconnected in three mainstream
magazines--The American Magazine, Ladies' Home Journal and Forbes (a
general circulation magazine, the leading women's magazine, and a business
magazine). It uses critical textual and visual analysis, plus historical
research, to explore editorial copy and advertisements. Roland Marchand's
work on interwar-era advertising is used for comparison, and the work is
discussed, to a lesser degree, in terms of Barbara Welter's feminist theory
of the Cult of True Womanhood.
Woman as Machine: Representation of Female Clerical Workers in Interwar
Magazines
.
Woman as Machine: Representation of Female Clerical Workers in Interwar
Magazines
One Girl and a Rotospeed will do the work of 50 Typists
--advertisement in The American Magazine, 1920
Complicated nothing! Why, our own girls put in this system
--advertisement in Forbes, 1929[1]
Between 1870 and 1930, the number of female clerical workers in the United
States grew from a mere 1,910 to almost two million.[2] Hired primarily as
stenographers and typists in the increasingly complex, newly automated
office of the post-Civil War era, women found that their chances for upward
mobility were far fewer than they had been for the quill-laden scriveners,
such as Herman Melville's "Bartleby," who had preceeded them. By the 1930s,
office work, particularly typing and stenography, had become unmistakably
feminized. "Woman's place," it seemed, was as inevitably at the typewriter
as it was at the kitchen sink.[3] Even today, it usually goes without
saying that secretaries are female.
This critical, qualitative paper looks at depictions of female clerical
workers and telephone operators in magazines between the two world wars. It
seeks to identify common images and patterns of representation, exploring
how femininity and machinery were interconnected in media images during
this time. This is done with the ultimate hope of comparing, in a
subsequent work, the findings here with images and representations of
employed women in later media. How, for example, were these stereotypes
recycled in depictions of Della Street, Mary Richards, Murphy Brown, Ally
McBeal? This paper lays the groundwork for such studies.
This work is important for a number of reasons. First, while media images
of women's domestic roles have been thoroughly explored, the employed
woman's media portrayal has largely been ignored. Focusing on the interwar
as a starting point for this work is appropriate, for the 1920s and 1930s
were a critical time in women's history. The first decade, notable for its
opulence, was marked by the post-war, post-suffrage confidence of women who
continued to stream into the workplace. The second decade, in contrast, was
marked not only by the poverty of the Great Depression but by the
controversy over married women working. Often overshadowed by the media
depictions of World War II's "Rosie the Riveter," the employed woman of the
interwar era is often forgotten, even by feminist historians. It is
important to remember her, for as Ruth Schwartz Cowan argues, the "feminine
mystique" and its ideology of compulsory domesticity is rooted in the
interwar years, not the 1950s.[4] Looking at the employed woman, not just
the housewife, is important to a thorough understanding of this critical
transition in the cultural history of women in twentieth-century America.
The interwar years were also an era of expanding media influence as
American magazines grew in popularity and influence, thanks to the rise of
advertising and mass production that made them less expensive to buy.
Circulation climbed during the 1920s as marketing became more
sophisticated,[5] and magazine sales rose overall during these two
decades.[6] During the Depression, magazines presented an idealized way of
life that people could still dream about, even if it was beyond their
reach. Moreover, as Carolyn Kitch has said, the early decades of the
twentieth century were the era when "media became 'mass' and when the
initial media stereotypes of American womanhood emerged in response to the
'first wave' of the American women's rights movement."[7] In articles, in
depictions on magazine covers, and in advertisements, magazines were
providing "ideological symbols transmitting broader prescriptions for
personal and national identity based on spending power and personal
lifestyle"[8] for middle-class as well as upper-class readers. Women's
magazines, in particular, were providing models of femininity. As historian
Joan Jacobs Brumberg has noted, the 1920s were the era when
women--especially young women and adolescent girls--first looked to
magazine articles and advertisements to tell them how to handle issues,
such as menstruation, which had previously been handled privately.[9] In
other words, magazines expanded their role in telling people, especially
women, who, and how, to be.
Literature Review
A number of feminist writers have explored women and office work. In
Woman's Place is at the Typewriter, Margery W. Davies argues that the
feminization of office work "is historically specific rather than ordained
by nature."[10] Before the Civil War, the common office worker was "an
aspiring businessman, apprenticed to the petite bourgeoisie or the
capitalist class."[11] Davies credits a combination of patriarchy and
political economy for working together to naturalize new gender roles. With
the invention of the typewriter and expansion of business, offices grew
more automated and bureaucatic.[12] The division of office labor meant that
more people were needed for routine clerical procedures. At the same time,
women were finishing school in greater numbers, and many were looking for
ways to make an independent living as the Victorian era drew to a
close.[13] Office work, particularly stenography and typing, offered new
opportunities. "By 1930 office workers were no longer apprentice
capitalists," she writes.[14] Interwar-era depictions, then, reflect the
cultural assumptions in place at the end of this decades-long process of
change.[15]
Meanwhile, a similar change had taken place at office switchboards and the
telephone company. In Hello, Central?, Canadian historian Michele Martin
looks at "the social conditions within which the telephone system expanded"
in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.[16] Her chapter "The
Making of the Perfect Operator" explores how patriarchy, ideas about
femininity, the qualities of women's voices, and emerging ideas about
perfect telephone manners worked together to feminize the telephone
operator's job during the late nineteenth century.[17] (Boys and young men
had been hired earlier, but they were far too undisciplined, given to
wrestling on the floor between calls and cursing at customers. In contrast,
women were deemed more sensitive and patient, and their voices were
clearer.)[18] The process brought together new technology with ideas about
morality. An operator's relationship with her equipment, Martin argues, was
"dialectical," i.e. "the operator was becoming more and more of a machine,
and the machine was increasingly considered 'feminine' because of the
indispensable mediation of the operator, which involved moral values."[19]
Operators were, according to one, "women who have put their femininity to
the service of the community."[20]
In another work focusing on technology, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter,
German theorist Friedrich A. Kittler argues that the invention of the
typewriter not only led to "the convergence of a profession, a machine, and
a sex"[21] but changed both men's and women's relationship to writing
itself. Before the typewriter, men controlled all stages of the writing
process, particularly that of literature. "Prior to the invention of the
typewriter, all poets, secretaries, and typesetters were of the same sex. .
. . One's own or dictated script was processed by male typesetters,
binders, publishers, and so on. . . ."[22] Writing was produced in a
"closed feedback loop." Women were excluded, but in the sexual division of
hand-based work, they used their hands to weave fabric.[23]
Industrialization "nullified handwriting and hand-based work,"
desexualizing writing. "When men are deprived of the quill and women of the
needle, all hands are up for grabs--as employable as employees."[24] The
male clerks of the nineteenth century clung to their hard-won handwriting
skills, ignoring "keystrokes, spacing, and the automatics of discrete block
letters."[25] Many women, deprived of the education needed for more
intellectual work, discovered they could get work as "typewriters."
The fact that 'the female clerk could all-too-easily degrade into a mere
typewriter'
made her an asset. From the working class, the middle-class, and the
bourgeoisie,
out of ambition, economic hardship, or the pure desire for emancipation
emerged
millions of secretaries. It was precisely their marginal position in the
power system
of script that forced women to develop their manual dexterity, which
surpassed the
prideful handwriting aesthetics of male secretaries in the media system.[26]
Similarly, Lana F. Rakow argues that "As typists, stenographers,
receptionists, file clerks, phone answerers, and photocopiers, women have
been used to complete the communication systems of men in the public
sphere. These communication systems are designed so that men can talk to
men while women are part of the technological 'equipment' for accomplishing
this."[27]
Method
Understanding how office work came to be women's work, however, does not
tell us how those women were portrayed in the media. To explore that
question, this paper explores three mainstream magazines of the era: The
American Magazine, Ladies' Home Journal and Forbes--a general circulation
magazine, the leading women's magazine, and a business magazine.[28]
While a number of general-circulation monthlies might have been
chosen, including Cosmopolitan (then published for both genders), Atlantic
Monthly or Harper's, The American was chosen because of its contents and
circulation. In 1925, The American's circulation topped all other
mainstream general-circulation monthlies, with 2,215,026 issues sold. Even
though that figure dipped to 1,872,489 by 1935, American remained one of
the most popular monthlies.[29] Ladies' Home Journal was chosen because it
is widely considered to have been the prototype for modern women's
magazines. Helen Damon-Moore has claimed that it was LHJ's publishers who
"presided over the union of reading, consuming, and advertising with
gendered assumptions about middle-class women," furthering print media's
"institutionalization of gender difference in popular American culture."
Similarly, Jennifer Scanlon argues that the LHJ prototype "increasingly
came to define womanhood for the early twentieth century and beyond and for
the middle class and beyond."[30] Finally, Forbes--founded in 1917 by
Bertie Charles Forbes, father of Malcolm Forbes--provides a glimpse into
the way employed women were represented in a magazine intended solely for
business leaders, most of them men.
Within each magazine, critical textual and visual analysis, coupled with
historical research methods, are used. All issues of each magazines were
examined, with articles, fiction, and ads that feature clerical workers or
telephone operators selected for study. The most common types of depictions
are explored, with representation in advertisements compared with that in
editorial copy, as well as in magazines intended for different audiences.
Roland Marchand's work on interwar-era advertising is used for comparison,
and the work is discussed, to a lesser degree, in terms of Barbara Welter's
feminist theory of the Cult of True Womanhood.[31]
Depictions of Clerical Workers in Interwar Magazines
"The Eleven Masked Typewriters . . . and the Mystery of No. 11," reads the
headline of a 1936 Underwood typewriter advertisement.[32] In the adjacent
photograph, eleven women are seated in a row, their hands at keyboards that
emerge from a long black curtain, their eyes fixed on papers that have been
pinned to the curtain in front of their eyes. Two men stand over them. One
is positioned at the end of the row to observe their work; the other stands
behind them, taking notes on a pad of paper. According to the ad copy,
these women were "typists recruited at random" to operate the "mystery
typewriters" and vote on their quality. The consistent winner: Number 11,
the Underwood Standard Typewriter. In a small inset photo, a middle-aged
man in a suit pulls back the curtain to gaze lovingly--almost sexually--at
the Underwood Standard.
In a 1924 ad for Burroughs office machines, four small photographs show
groups of women in offices. Each is seated at a machine, her hands at the
keyboard and her eyes on her work. Although they are seated in groups, they
do not seem to interact with one another. Nor do they interact with the
reader, for they are turned away, their backs facing us so that we only see
a quarter or less of their profiles. Similarly, a 1927 ad for National Cash
Register shows only the backs of women hunched over their machines. Similar
groups of women are shown in a 1937 ad for General Electric light bulbs, a
1937 ad for Comptometer accounting equipment, and in many other
advertisements for office machines during the interwar years.[33]
A third common depiction shows a woman alone at the typewriter or other
machine. Like the women in the 1924 Burroughs ad, the lone woman is often
positioned so that we see her back as she works at office machinery. In a
Remington Rand ad that appeared in 1931, for example, we look down across
her left shoulder to see her working at an accounting machine. Her eyes are
fixed on the multiple layers of paper in the machine and her hands are
fixed on the keyboard.[34] In several variations of International Business
Machines ads, a woman stands next to a large piece of equipment, her back
to us. In these ads, the copy reads simply, "A Business Machine." Given the
woman's position and the copy, it is almost as if the woman and machine are
one.[35] Even in ads where women are not seen from the back, their eyes are
averted away from the reader-- usually fixed on their work or a male boss.
In a 1919 Burroughs ad, for example, a woman at a calculating machine faces
the reader, but her head is bent over her work and her hands are at the
keys. That she is a "machine" rather than a thinking individual is
reinforced by the copy, which reads, "One girl with a Calculator can easily
do the work of three or four pen-and-brain clerks."[36]
These common motifs used in interwar advertisements for office equipment
naturalize two assumptions about female office workers.[37] The first is
that they are machine operatives. In fact, they seem to be "as one" with
their office machines, as if the woman herself is part of the machine. Her
back to us, her gaze fixed on her work or her typewriter, she has no
identity as an individual--only as a "typewriter"--a word that connoted
both the machine and its operator.[38] The second assumption is that these
women are subordinate to men, who are, just as naturally, in charge. Women
are almost always seated at typewriters. Men stand, are in the foreground,
are in focus while the woman is blurred, or indicate by their expression
or gesture that they are in charge. Women gaze either up at the men or at
their machines. If more than one man is present, the men often look at and
appear to communicate with one another. Again, women almost never
communicate with other women; if they do, it is about the machinery.[39]
Their depictions are very consistent with Welter's theory of the Cult of
True Womanhood, in which the ideal woman displays the virtues of piety,
purity, submissiveness, and domesticity.
Given women's idealized subservience, it seems only natural that men would
be men and girls would be girls. A 1921 ad for the Dictaphone illustrates
media use of "men" and "girl."[40] The ad's dominant copy reads, from top
to bottom, "The Man, The Girl, The Business, The Dictaphone." At the top,
"The Man" is E. J. Delfriasse, company head. Below him, "The Girl" is Miss
Adele L. Kane, a secretary who appears to be in her late 20s or early 30s.
At the bottom of the page is a coupon for one of two free publications. For
"business and professional people" there is "The Man at the Desk" while
"For girls there is a special magazine, '9 to 5'--for and about ambitious
girls who have made their way rapidly through the help of the Dictaphone."
To be a "girl" is to be outside the class of "business and professional
people." Segregated, "girls" need a "special magazine."
Some female workers were "women," however. The distinction between women
and girls is vivid in a 1925 Forbes article, "The Woman Who Manages Girls
Speaks Her Mind."[41] In this article, which discusses management
techniques for handling female office workers, "girls" are both
problematized and described en masse. The photograph illustrating the
article shows three young women with bobbed hair and 1920s fashions,
standing in a row in front of a blank wall.
The cutline explains that these particular girls are not office workers,
but were selected from an American Legion beauty contest. Nevetheless, they
are "quite typical" of office girls "whose work creates an office
managerial problem of enormous magnitude."[42] As described here, "girls"
are not only problematic, but interchangeable. In contrast, the "woman"
manager is the single capable female who emerges from a mass of girls. She
is "imbued with a serious purpose in life" but "still she is full of fun."
Moreover, "she must be wholesome and have character."[43] One such woman
"knows the species 'girl' as few psychologists know them." She is a
successful manager because she classifies girls into types: the baby, the
show-off, the sensitive, and the plodder. In this Forbes article, "girls"
are a threat, and it is only ability to manage the threat according to the
needs of upper management that one is raised to the status of "woman." In
another example, "girls" are assumed to be incompetent. An ad for Acme
Visible Records, an indexing system, carries the bold headline,
"Complicated nothing! Why, our own girls put in this system." [44]
Moreover, assumptions about women's sexuality are embedded in many
depictions of clerical workers. As Davies points out, the female clerical
worker had a "decorative function" and was sometimes referred to as an
"office wife."[45] She cites a 1931 Saturday Evening Post article:
A man chooses his secretary much as he chooses his wife, and for much the same
reasons. She looks good to him. He sees a slim, engaging young woman with a
frank smile and readiness to approve of him. . . . The alliance--shall we
say business
love at first sight?--works about as marriages do.[46]
This pattern is illustrated in a series of Royal typewriter ads from the
late 1920s. The "Debutantates of Modern Business" series is illustrated
with formal portraits of young women. Neatly coiffed, wearing pearls and
little make-up, the young women appear as they might in newspaper
announcements of the current season's debutantes. The portraits are framed
in soft pastels. "Accomplished and valuable they take their places. . ."
reads the copy in one of these ads. "Yet to them, business is but a passing
career. Sooner or later they will leave the office for new interests in
homes of their own."[47] Work as the operator of a clerical machine is thus
portrayed as the place where one formally comes out to find a husband.
Images of women as machine operatives can be better understood by comparing
two of Roland Marchand's advertising tableaux from the interwar period.[48]
The first deals with windows; the second, with technology as objects of
worship.
According to Marchand, the typical American "man-on-the-make" was one of
the most stereotypical tableaux of the 1920s. Pictured in an office, he was
often shown in conference with other men, surrounded by practical items
such as a newspaper or an ashtray. However, Marchand argues, it was the
panoramic view of the city from his upper-story window that suggested his
"high status" and "that ineffable sense of domain gained from looking out
and down over broad expanses." [49] In the early 1920s, the view from the
window was often a factory; by the mid-1920s, it was a cityscape of
highrise buildings, Marchand says. Skyscrapers were shorthand for "modern."
Excluding women from window views, he argues, helped "reinforce the notion
of an exclusive male prerogative to view broad horizons, to experience a
sense of control over large domains, to feel like masters of all they
surveyed." The window tableau thus "reaffirmed which of the sexes was truly
instrumental in making the world modern."[50]
Advertising depictions of "woman as machine" confirm Marchand's
interpretation. Moreover, women's placement in relation to windows either
illustrates their submissive role or emphasizes the man's importance. For
example, a 1936 ad for General Electric light meters show a businessman
seated by the window, which illuminates his desk. Although he faces inward,
he is in charge. This is illustrated by his higher position, the fact that
he is in focus, and his use of the telephone--another symbol of power,
according to Marchand.[51] The woman is in the foreground, but she is
positioned lower on the page than he is, and out of focus. Not only is she
far from the window, but her work is placed so that sunlight does not reach
it. The man controls the sunlight that reaches her. The copy advocates that
he use his power by buying a product to help her. "Her desk is just nine
feet from yours. . . but she is lucky if she has a fifth as much light as
she needs for the accurate, competent work you expect of her," the copy
reads.[52] (That they might simply move her desk closer to the window is
apparently not considered.)
A 1924 ad for Royal Typewriters shows a large, elegant window in a
well-appointed office.[53] Near the window is a large desk illuminated by
sunlight, apparently belonging to the well-dressed businessman just hanging
up his overcoat and fedora. He looks down at his secretary, who faces away
from the window. Were she not looking up at the man, she would naturally
face into the interior of the office and toward her typewriter. The copy
reads, "What a jewel of a secretary! But she couldn't do it without a
Royal." Though a "jewel," she is a mere machine "operator" who does not get
to gaze out into that urban vista of opportunity. His desk does not face
outward, either; however, to look out, he merely has to turn around. Were
she to turn around, she would find his gaze and his authority between her
and the vista of success.
An ad that uses a window to reinforce a secretary's sexual role is a 1924
ad for the Valet Auto-Strop Razor. Here a businessman seated at a desk in
the foreground.[54] He is in focus, while an out-of-focus woman gazes at
him from a desk in the background. Although she is closer to the window,
she faces inward, fixated on him. Not only does her gaze lead our eye to
the important feature--his clean-shaven face--but we realize that she is
between him and the window--between his chance to be a modern master of all
he surveys. The woman (and, by implication, her sexual approval) lie
between him and the ability to look out on that vista of success.
Another visual cliche is the product as liturgical icon. Although
advertisers did not peddle religious goods, Marchand writes that
"Advertisements were secular sermons, exhortations to seek fulfillment
through the consumption of material goods and mundane services." They did
so by identifying their products with "life enhancing moments" and
"numinosity."[55] One of the most common iconic images, Marchand writes,
was the refrigerator. Clean and pure, the refrigerator was a modern
cornucopia around which women or couples (never men alone) gathered to
admire it. "Sometimes the expressions on the faces of the women suggested
that they had glimpsed through the open refrigerator door a secular
revelation as spellbinding as any religious vision," Marchand writes. Ads
for other home appliances inspired similar worship. Of the "annunciation"
of the model 725 Hoover vacuum cleaner, Marchand writes, "Few
representations of the Christ child ever depicted a more rapt or focused
attention to the assembled worshipers. The new Hoover lacked only a nimbus
to complete the divine aura."[56]
Just as refrigerators and vacuum cleaners were the supposed objects of
worship for the woman at home, so the typewriter was depicted as the icon
of the employed woman. This is no more clear than in a 1935 Underwood
advertisement in which four women gather in a circle to gaze adoringly at
the new Underwood Special, with its clean-cut letters, cushioned typing to
reduce shock, and smooth keys to preserve a manicure. The women's dresses
feature high-cut necklines and heavy collars. If not blatantly suggestive
of choir robes, their clothes are, at least, chaste enough for church. The
copy directs our attention to the adoration taking place: "Girls," said the
Head Steno, "this is a TYPEWRITER."[57] Similarly, a 1924 Remington
typewriter ad shows a crowd gathered to adore a woman typing with the new
Remington Quiet 12. The crowd is mostly women, who smile as lovingly at the
new wonder as they might at a newborn child.[58]
One of the most consistent and intriguing characteristics of ads portraying
typists is the focus on their backs. In ad after ad, women are turned away
from the reader, their backs or only a portion of their profiles showing.
In most, the women are seated, and the view is often that of a person
standing. This gives the reader the perspective of a manager looking down
at them as they work at their machines.[59] In a 1919 ad for the Sundstrand
Adding Machine, for example, the viewer sees nothing of the woman's face
but all of the top and back of her head, including the part in her hair.
Also common is the view seen in, for example, a 1928 ad for the Stenotype
shorthand machine.[60] Here, we see the woman's profile as she works at the
machine and most of her back.[61] In the series of IBM ads mentioned
earlier, the woman standing at a large office machine has her back almost
completely to the reader.[62]
Showing people from the back, of course, takes away a commonly understood
signifier of human individuality--the face. It is depersonalizing. Showing
groups of women from the back suggests that women, lacking individuality,
are interchangeable--mere parts in the machinery of the office. It also
reflects management practices of the time, designed to ensure control.
Davies writes that according to these practices, desks were placed back to
back so that clerical workers could not see or talk to one another. This
destroyed "cliques," according to management expert Floyd W. Parsons, who
advised this arrangement. "Cliques destroy team-work and waste time
gossiping. Clannish workers should be separated and placed in different
parts of the office or in different departments."[63] Another arrrangement
not only separated women but placed them with their backs to the door; this
way, visitors could not interact with the women. Supervisors' desks were
behind the women, so that they might be watched without knowing it.[64]
The depictions of female clerical workers as machines are most common in
Forbes, a magazine aimed for men. Depictions intended primarily for female
readers (i.e. in LHJ) relied less on the "machine" role. Two articles that
appeared within a month of each other in 1920 vividly illustrate the
contrast in discourses used in the way clerical work was depicted for
managers and for the workers themselves. Juxtaposing the two shows two very
different ways of understanding their identity, status, and options in the
office. The articles are Helen Ormsbee's "A Stenographer Should Know," from
LHJ, and "Pays to Test Your Stenographer," by Sherwin Cody in Forbes.[65]
Ormsbee addresses the stenographer directly ("If you are a stenographer")
and compares the "profession" of stenographer to architecture. Both the
good architect and the good stenographer want to go beyond the basic skills
that form the "substructure" of their respective professions. To do so, a
stenographer must bring to work not only accurate typing and spelling
skills, but imagination, general knowledge and understanding of the
business. This can be obtained by reading everything from news to
literature, and by reviewing one's school history notes to remember
"Benjamin Franklin, Roger Williams, Peter Stuyvesant, Davy Crockett, John
Smith, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Washington and Lincoln . . . ."
The tone of this article is upbeat and encouraging. The diction is
fairly high, with words like "substructure," suggesting that the author and
LHJ editors considered female readers intelligent. Allusions to historical
and literary figures (Stowe and Robert Louis Stevenson) and architecture
help put stenography in a discursive field shared by the liberal arts and
prestigious professions. The stenographer is assured that her job offers
high status and that she will be valued for her intelligence and
initiative. For example, the article tells women that if an employer says,
"By the way, Miss Jones, I want to get this letter out to the men who are
going to serve on the committee for what-you-may- call-it," then Miss Jones
will do well to know from her newspaper reading that "what-you-may-call-it"
means a particular group, who the committee members are, and how to write
the letter on her own. The reward for hard work and initiative is not only
a better job, the article assures women, but "the growth of intelligence
and character." Although this article doe not question that stenographers
are female, bosses are male, and that a woman's job is to quietly fill in
for a man's shortcomings while he gets higher pay and status, it
nevertheless provides a relatively positive image of the stenographer's
job. The illustration, showing a mature woman seated at a desk, writing on
a pad and looking as if she is thinking, is consistent with the article's
characterization of this "profession." The woman is flanked by smaller
pictures showing old books and the "midnight oil" that she will go home
and burn, further helping to put stenography in a discursive field with
history and literature.
Cody also addresses the reader in second person (you). However, the
reader here is the male employer. The focus is on how to evaluate the
"girl" that he hires as a stenographer or typist using a speed and accuracy
test developed by the Underwood Typewriter Company. Before getting to the
Underwood test, however, Cody lists basic characteristics that a "girl"
should have; these do not include historical knowledge or self-reliance.
Instead, the criteria have to do with the mechanics of the job, such as "Is
she accurate in typing (striking the letters right) so that her work looks
clean and neat?" Speed is emphasized: "Can she write shortand as fast as
you can dictate?" and "Is she very slow, or can she get a lot of work done
in a day?" The tone is cynical: "Can she get the letter out so it will be
fit to mail?" and "Does she know anything at all about paragraphing?" The
implication seems to be that you can't expect much from "girls."
But the criteria list is not all about job skills. The female
clerical worker was not just a machine; she was a sexual machine. It is
very clear in this article that sexuality was part of competence in at
least some depictions of female clerical workers. "Is she a
pleasant-looking girl?" Cody would have employers ask. "Has she a cheerful
disposition?" Will she be "faithful and loyal?" And finally, "Is she
morally of the kind you wish to have about?"--although he is careful not to
specify what kind that is. Morals can be decided simply by looking at the
girl, Cody says. However, he warns, "You can't afford in these days to let
an efficient-looking girl go because she is not good-looking; ability
should offset looks to a certain extent."[66]
The rest of the article describes the Underwood test and its
application. The discourse here is mechanical and scientistic. It discusses
"strokes" and "uniform speed measurement" and "secret parallel tests" given
to some women. Speed is emphasized a great deal; content and knowledge are
not mentioned at all. It does not seem to matter here if the woman has read
Harriet Beecher Stowe or the morning paper. The "girl" is valued for her
ability to function as a machine-- particularly if she has the "right"
morals, loyalty, and good looks.
In short, the dominant image of the female clerical worker during this
period was that of a sexualized machine. Her hands at the keyboard, her
eyes fixed either on her typing or her boss, she was physically bound up in
a system that incorporated and nullified her individuality and her
femininity, recasting her as an interchangeable, though sexual, female
office part.
The telephone operator deserves special consideration in a discussion of
"woman as machine," for perhaps even more than the typist, she and her
equipment were as one. "The telephone operator antedates the cyborg, a
plastically gendered creature formed of electrical wiring and the organic
body," writes John Durham Peters.[67] As one instructor in an early
training school for operators put it, "The operator must now be made as
nearly as possible a paragon of perfection, a kind of human machine, the
exponent of speed and courtesy; a creature spirited enough to move like
chain lightning, and with perfect accuracy; docile enough to deny herself
the sweet privilege of the last word."[68] Lana Rakow points out that
telephone operators were depicted as "All American Girls." Young, single,
and attractive, such women "may have provided an important bridge in the
increasing gap between public and private spheres" during
industrialization.[69]
These young women were to be both innocent and efficient, desirable yet
unattainable, businesslike but adept at soothing the harried and demanding
captain
of industry of the public sphere as well as the stereotypically portrayed
petty and
demanding matron of the private sphere.[70]
In descriptions overtly reminiscent of the Cult of True Womanhood, Martin
writes that, "Apparently, . . . the woman's upbringing in Victorian society
gave her all the necessary qualities to be a perfect operator 'gifted' with
'courtesy,' 'patience,' and 'skillful hands.' In addition, she possessed a
'good voice,' and a 'quick ear,' and was 'alert,' 'active,'
'even-tempered,' 'adaptable,' and 'amenable.'"[71] Over time, Martin
writes, the operator herself became "more and more of a machine, and the
machine was increasingly considered 'feminine' because of the indispensable
mediation of the operator, which involved moral values."[72] This feminine
machine was rigidly supervised, with strict rules and constant surveillance
by managers patrolling the switchboard room and listening in, at any time,
to the her work. This military-like discipline, Martin writes, was "highly
mechanized and scientifically managed" by 1920.[73]
The operators pictured in ads for the Bell System of American Telephone and
Telegraph during the interwar era are consistent with these descriptions,
though in ways that change over the course of the period. All are pictured
with headsets and mouthpieces, making their "cyborg" qualities apparent. In
early interwar ads, the operator's skill is emphasized. A 1919 ad draws on
patriotic discourse to describe the female operator's war effort. "Applied
Patriotism" is the headline for this ad, and the copy reads, "Woman has
made herself indispensable to the Nation's war activities. . . . The
telephone operator takes her place in the front ranks of our 'national
army' of women."[74] A 1920 ad shows a woman with a headset standing in
front of a map, connecting the East and West coasts with telephone
wires.[75] A 1923 ad whose bold headline reads, "Crossroads of Converation"
tells of the special "information operators" who are "selected for their
task because of quickness and accuracy, courtesy and intelligence."[76]
Another ad is headlined "At Your Service." It tells of the "courteous girl
at the switchboard" who is "[p]residing day and night at the busy
intersections of speech. . . . " The ad goes on, ". . . little is known of
the switchboard girl--of her training and supervision under careful
teachers, and of her swift and skillful work."[77]
During the 1930s, operators were depicted in a way that appeared more
personal. "Friend and Neighbor," the operator is called in a 1933 ad, which
shows a single operator sitting inside a window in small-town America. "In
the truest sense, she is both friend and neighbor," the copy reads. "Ties
of kinship and association bind her to those whose voices come across the
wires."[78] By 1939 and 1940, operators are comely visions of cyborg
virtue. In a 1940 ad, a young woman in operator's headgear emerges from a
mist of clouds and stars to look benevolently over the United States, which
she unites with outstretched arms like a cyborg fairy godmother.[79] An ad
in November 1941 prefigures the impending war and echoes the 1919 ad.
"Devotion to Duty is a Telephone Tradition," reads the bold copy. This ad
pictures a softly focused young woman in a headset and mouthpiece looking
directly at the reader. The copy continues: "High morale, devotion to duty,
ingenuity in meeting new circumstances and the ability and the will to work
with each other and with the public are traditional characteristics of
telephone employees." The traits are considered important in "[t]imes like
these."[80]
In articles and short stories in which they are the main subject, telephone
operators (unlike typists) are at the center of power. Their machinery
connects and disconnects people, and they can listen in on conversations
(though they must do so discreetly). These powers enhance their feminine
intuition and working-class plainspokenness. In "The Girl at the
Switchboard," a short story the February 1920 American, the first-person
narrator is an operator in the "Fitz-Harlton" Hotel. "I've only been a year
at the Fitz-Harlton, but in that time I've told a million people that the
wires was busy-- from well-to-do millionaires which tried to kid me, to
gents' furnishin' clerks which slipped me a quarter tip."[81] Similarly,
the anonymous first-person narrator in a 1923 non-fiction article "How the
Hotel Telephone Girl Sizes You Up," says: "I've been a telephone operator
for ten years in New York hotels; and we don't learn much literary style at
the switchboard. But believe me, that's all we don't learn! What I don't
know about you people isn't worth knowing."[82] However, a slightly more
sophisticated operator is found in a 1934 short story from The American,
"Person-to-Person."Milicent Baker has "everything that went with a tower
suite, including the manner, the wide-apart eyes, the long, slim legs, and
just the right way of saying, 'No, thank you.'"[83] The implication is that
she is too cosmopolitan for a working-class job; however, night after
night, she joins the others, "in deft manipulation of the controls."[84]
In each of the short stories, the telephone operator discreetly listens in
on conversations and uses her feminine insights to intervene between a man
at the hotel and his angry employer. She then marries the man whose career
she has saved, assuring his place as an up-and-coming businessman. Class
plays a role in the love stories. The narrator in "The Girl at the
Switchboard" intervenes for DuKane Vandergrift when she hears what his
boss, Phineas Smith, says to him. "'Hmph!' I says. 'If my name was
Vandergrift, I'd never work for no man named Smith, I'll tell the
world.'"[85] In "Person to Person," sophisticate Milicent Baker helps a
young man from Nebraska sell his idea for marketing soda ash to a wealthy
industrial magnate in the penthouse.
In the non-fiction "How the Hotel Telephone Girl Sizes You Up," the
anonymous author tells how operators categorize clients. "A telephone
operator divides all you people into four classes: those that are cranky,
those that are nice, those we can understand when they talk over the
'phone, and those we can't." City people are crankier than country people,
she says, and women are crankier than men. "Not the business women, though!
They're more quiet and reasonable than the man."[86] She dislikes helpless
people, who don't know how to place a call. She also dislikes some men: "I
wish I had a dollar for every man that has told me he was lonesome. . . .
There's a flash from some room. I plug in and a voice begins, 'Say! I'm
lonesome. Won't you take pity on a fellow and go have a nice little
dinner?' I've heard that so many times that I know it by heart. . . . So I
tell Mr. Lonesome to run along and have a nice little dinner by himself."[87]
Similarly, the power to connect (and the discretion not to) is at the
center of a 1935 "Interesting People" profile in The American. The article,
"Number, Please?" profiles a White House operator. "She could write
American history before it happens. But doesn't. Louise Hackmeister, chief
of the White House telephone switchboard, can listen in on state secrets
any time she pleases. Holds job by keeping her mouth shut," the copy reads.
She can "locate anybody anywhere. . . . In a few minutes she finds them,
puts them on the Presidential wire."[88]
Discussion
During the interwar era when stereotypes of employed women were still in
the process of being established, clerical workers and telephone operators
were portrayed as feminine machines. Because femininity and machinery had
become so interconnected, it may be difficult, even now, for some readers
not to think of "the operator" or "the secretary" as female. While the
operator had the power to connect people, thanks to her connection with
technology, the secretary's power was far more limited. The idealized
secretary represented the perfect picture of the Cult of True Womanhood,
brought forward into the twentieth century. Her piety was directed toward
her typewriter or her male boss; her purity (or lack thereof) was a
requisite job skill; her domestic skills were adapted to the role of
"office wife," and her submissiveness was apparent in her unquestioning
deference. The next question to ask is: Have these depictions been
perpetuated in media representation of employed women since that time, and
are they still apparent in media images of employed women today?
[1] Advertisement for Rotospeed duplicating machine. Capitalization sic.
The American Magazine. October 1920: 105. Advertisement for Acme Visible
Records. Forbes. April 1, 1929: 1.
[2] In 1870, women were 2.3 percent of all clerical workers; by 1930, they
made up 49.4 percent. The exact figure for 1930 is 1,986,830. See Alba M.
Edwards. Comparative Occupational Statistics for the United States, 1870 to
1940. Part of the Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940 (Washington:
Government Printing Office, 1943). Cited in Margery W. Davies. Woman's
Place is at the Typewriter: Office Work and Office Workers, 1870-1930.
(Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1982). 182-183.
[3] Davies, 4.
[4] Ruth Schwartz Cowan. "Two Washes in the Morning and a Bridge Party at
Night: The American Housewife Between the Wars." Women's Studies 3 (1976):
147-172. Reprinted in Decades of Discontent: The Women's Movement,
1920-1940. Ed Lois Scharf and Joan M. Jensen. (Boston: Northeastern UP,
1987), 177-196. Passim.
[5] Theodore Peterson. Magazines in the Twentieth Century. (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1964), 30.
[6] Mary Ellen Zuckerman. A History of Popular Women's Magazines in the
United States, 1792-1995. (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1998),
103. Zuckerman notes that despite the Depression, "By the early 1940s, 41
percent more magazines were being sold than in 1929, and the average family
read about seventy issues per year, up from 1919 when families had read
just under twelve issues yearly."
[7] Carolyn Kitch. The Girl on the Magazine Cover: Gender, Class, and the
Emergence of Visual Stereotypes in American Mass Media, 1895-1930. (Ph.D.
diss., Temple University, 1998) iv, her italics.
[8] Kitch, 1998, iv-v.
[9] Joan Jacobs Brumberg. The Body Project: An Intimate History of American
Girls. (New York: Vintage, 1997), 46-47.
[10] Davies, 6.
[11] Davies, 5.
[12] The typewriter, though invented earlier, came into widespread use in
the 1890s. See Alice Kessler-Harris. Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning
Women in the United States. (Oxford and New York: Oxford UP, 1982), 148.
See also Davies, 58-59.
[13] According to Davies, the female high school graduates outnumbered men
beginning in 1890. Men achieving this level of education, she argues, were
more likely to go on to professional positions, leaving more clerical
opportunities for women. See Davies 57-58.
[14] Davies, 5.
[15] Occasionally, articles during this era still advised young men who
wanted to move up in business to take clerical jobs. For example, see J. P.
McEvoy. "Young Man, Get Your Toe in the Door." Forbes. March 15, 1941:
18-19. "Take a few months to learn shorthand and typing," the article
advises men. "Then pick out the business you would like to run or the
profession you'd like to star in and get yourself a job in it as a
secretary, stenographer or typist. Now you're on the inside and you've got
the tools with which you can chew your way right up to the top." The
article neither mentions that a woman might choose the same strategy nor
suggests that a man would be demeaned by taking a "woman's job."
[16] Michele Martin. "Hello, Central?" Gender, Technology, and Culture in
the Formation of Telephone Systems. (Montreal and Kingston, London,
Buffalo: McGill-Queen's UP), 11.
[17] Martin, 50-81.
[18] Martin. 55.
[19] Martin, 74-75.
[20] Martin, 58.
[21] Friedrich A. Kittler. Gramophone, Film, Typewriter. Originally
published in German as Grammophon Film Typewriter (Berlin: Brinkmann and
Bose, 1986). Translated by Geoffrey Winthrop-Young and Michael Wutz.
(Stanford, California: Stanford UP, 1999), 183.
[22] Kittler, 184.
[23] Kittler, 184-186.
[24] Kittler, 186-187.
[25] Kittler, 193.
[26] Kittler, 194.
[27] Lana F. Rakow. "Gendered Technology, Gendered Practice." Critical
Studies in Mass Communication 5 (1988), 57-70, p. 65.
[28] The American and Ladies' Home Journal were published monthly. Forbes
was published semi-monthly. Saturday Evening Post might have been a likely
candidate for this study, given its popularity and the fact that its
circulation was slightly higher than American's. (SEP's circulation was
2,330,088 in 1925). However, SEP was, like LHJ, a Curtis publication, and I
did not want to make this study top-heavy with the products of one company,
particularly since Helen Damon-Moore has already compared these two
magazines. See Helen Damon-Moore. Magazines for the Millions: Gender and
Commerce in the Ladies' Home Journal and Saturday Evening Post. (Albany:
SUNY Press, 1994.) Finally, I am choosing articles from the other magazines
by going through indices for all issues. While that is manageable in a
monthly or even semi-monthly, it would be unwieldy in a weekly publication.
[29] Circulation figures are from N.W. Ayer and Sons. American Newspaper
Annual and Directory. (Philadelphia: N.W. Ayer and Sons, published
annually). Ayer's cites ABC circulation audit figures as its source for
most magazines, including those listed here. I looked at circulation
figures for 1925 and 1935.
[30] Helen Damon-Moore. Magazines for the Millions: Gender and Commerce in
the Ladies' Home Journal and the Saturday Evening Post, 1880-1910. (Albany:
State University of New York, 1994), 27. Jennifer Scanlon. Inarticulate
Longings: The Ladies' Home Journal and the Promises of Consumer Culture.
(New York and London: Routledge, 1995), 7.
[31] Barbara Welter identifies the four virtues of the "true woman" as
piety, purity, domesticity, and submission. While it may seem odd to apply
a theory of nineteenth-century femininity to the 1920s and 1930s, we must
remember that the so-called "long nineteenth century" ended in 1918, making
the previous century culturally relevant. See Barbara Welter. "The Cult of
True Womanhood: 1820-1860." American Quarterly XVIII (Summer 1966):
151-174. Reprinted in The Underside of American History: Other Readings.
Vol. 1: to 1877. Ed. Thomas Frazier. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich,
Inc. 1974.
[32] Advertisement for Underwood Standard Typewriter. Forbes. September 15,
1936: 27.
[33] Advertisement for Burroughs office machinery. The American Magazine.
October 1924: 83. Advertisement for National Cash Register Company.
Forbes. September 1, 1927: 34. Advertisement for Edison Mazda Lamps by
General Electric. Forbes. February 1, 1937: 7. Advertisement for
Comptometer. Forbes. April 1, 1937: 23.
[34] Advertisement for Remington Rand Business Service. Forbes. July 15,
1931: back cover.
[35] Advertisement for International Business Machines. Forbes. December
15, 1939: 27. I did find one ad in which the person pictured was male, but
in most, a woman was shown. For another example of this motif, see
"Electrified Accounting," an advertisement for Remington Rand Business
Service on the back cover of Forbes, July 15, 1931.
[36] Advertisement for Burroughs calculators. The American Magazine. March
1919: 62-63. Capitalization sic.
[37] Since most of these ads ran in Forbes, we can assume that "woman as
machine" was primarily a depiction aimed at men, who were Forbes' intended
readers and who were, presumably, in charge of final decisions on the
purchase of equipment.
[38] The second OED definition of "typewriter" is "One who does
typewriting, esp. as a regular occupation." (A third, slang definition is
"a machine gun or sub- machine-gun.") The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd
edition. (1989), Online. s.v. "typewriter."
Accessed 19 January 2003.
[39] See, for example, the advertisement for Underwood typewriters in
Forbes. September 1, 1937: 3 or the advertisement for Royal typewriters in
Forbes. October 15, 1935: 19.
[40] Advertisement for The Dictaphone. Forbes. March 5, 1921: 395.
[41] Philip H. Welch. "The Woman Who Manages Girls Speaks Her Mind."
Forbes. March 1, 1925: 687-688.
[42] Welch, 1925, 687.
[43] Welch, 1925, 687. Despite the headline, several "women" managers are
described or interviewed for this article.
[44] Advertisement for Acme Visible Records. Forbes. April 1, 1929: 1.
[45] Davies, 153.
[46] Elizabeth Hilliard Ragan. "One Secretary as per Specifications."
Saturday Evening Post 204 (December 12, 1931), 11. Cited in Davies, 154.
[47] Advertisement for Royal typewriter. The American Magazine. July 1928: 103.
[48] Roland Marchand. Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for
Modernity, 1920-1940. (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of
California Press, 1985), 235-284.
[49] Marchand, 238-239.
[50] Marchand, 239-241, 244-245.
[51] Marchand, 238.
[52] Advertisement for General Electric. Forbes. March 1, 1936: 7.
[53] Advertisement for Royal Typewriters. The American. March 1924: 116.
[54] Advertisement for Valet Auto-Strop Razor. The American. October 1924: 123.
[55] Marchand, 264-265.
[56] Marchand, 272.
[57] Advertisement for Underwood typewriters. Forbes. March 15, 1935: 23.
Emphasis in original.
[58] Advertisement for Remington Quiet 12 typewriter. Forbes. October 1,
1924: 7. Men also admire typewriters, but their focus is more practical
than iconographic. In a 1921Royal ad, two men stand over a seated typist,
examining some papers. The copy reads, "to Judge Typewriters, 'Compare the
Work'". See The American. March 21, 1921: 122. A 1935 Underwood ad shows
two men looking at each other knowingly. "I want UNDERWOODS..because they
can Take It!" the copy reads. See Forbes. September 15, 1935: 21. Emphasis
in original. Ellipses sic.
[59] For examples, see advertisement for The National Cash Register
Company. Forbes. September 1, 1927: 34-35; advertisement for Remington
typewriters. The American Magazine. March 1927: 129; advertisement for
Underwood Standard Typewriter. Forbes. September 15, 1936: 27.
[60] Advertisement for the Sundstrand Adding Machine. The American
Magazine. March 1919: 146.
[61] Advertisement for the Stenotype shorthand machine. The American
Magazine. July 1928: 105.
[62] Variations of this ad appeared frequently in Forbes. See, for example,
December 15, 1939: 27.
[63] Floyd W. Parsons. "Ways to Cut Business Costs." World's Work 45
(1923): 395, cited in Davies, 123. For another view of wasting time, it is
interesting to compare a 1922 article in The American Magazine titled
"Things I Wish My Employer Would Not Do." Written anonymously "By a Private
Secretary," this article includes notes from an office conference in which
men discuss golf, cigars, Prohibition and tell jokes before getting to the
business at hand. "I do not mean to insinuate that all time spent in
business conferences is wasted. But my observation has been that most
conferences could be concluded in about one third of the time if everybody
went immediately to work the minutes the door was closed." (The writer also
notes that she is tired of being called "little girl" and would like to be
treated "just a little bit more like a business partner.") See The American
Magazine. September 1922: 28-19 and 112.
[64] Davies, 123.
[65] Helen Ormsbee. "A Stenographer Should Know." Ladies' Home Journal
(April 1920), 145. Sherwin Cody. "Pays to Test Your Stenographer." Forbes
(May 29, 1920), 137-138. Stuart Ewen notes that Sherwin Cody operated a
"School of English" that advertised for students by appealing to their fear
of social ostracism if they used language improperly. See Stuart Ewen
Captains of Consciousness. 1976 (New York: Basic Books, 2001) 43-44
[66] Cody 137.
[67] John Durham Peters. Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of
Communication. (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1999),
196.
[68] Cited in Martin., 73, and in Peters, 196.
[69] Lana F. Rakow. "Women and the Telephone: The Gendering of a
Communications Technology." Technology and Women's Voices: Keeping in
Touch. Ed. Cheris Kramarae. (New York and London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1988), 213
[70] Rakow, 214.
[71] Martin, 58. She cites Bell Telephone archival material.
[72] Martin, 74.
[73] Martin 72.
[74] Advertisement for American Telephone and Telegraph. The American
Magazine. January 1919: 99.
[75] Advertisement for American Telephone and Telegraph. Forbes. August 7,
1920: 308.
[76] Advertisement for American Telephone and Telegraph. Forbes. November
10, 1923: 181.
[77] Advertisement for American Telephone and Telegraph. Forbes. April 1,
1925: 806.
[78] Advertisement for American Telephone and Telegraph. The American
Magazine. September 1933: 3.
[79] Advertisement for American Telephone and Telegraph. Forbes. January
15, 1940: 7. Her expression is very reminiscent of Glenda the Good Witch in
The Wizard of Oz, which had come out the year before.
[80] Ad for American Telephone and Telegraph. Forbes. November 1, 1941: 6.
[81] H.C. Witwer. "The Girl at the Switchboard." The American Magazine.
February 1920: 44-47, 176, 179, 182, 184.
[82] "How the Hotel Telephone Girl Sizes You Up." The American Magazine.
August 1923: 23, 70, 72.
[83] Stanley Paul. "Person to Person." The American Magazine. May 1934:
24-26 and 182-183.
[84] Paul, 24.
[85] Witwer, 45.
[86] "How the Hotel Telephone Girl Sizes You Up," 23.
[87] "How the Hotel Telephone Girl Sizes You Up," 70.
[88] "Number, Please?" The American Magazine. September 1935: 40