Page:Women Wanted.djvu/238

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WOMEN WANTED

on the high stools that have been specially made to their size, are doing pretty well anyhow. There are 73,000 more of them in government offices, the lower clerkships in the civil service having been opened to them since the war. And no less than 42,000 more women have replaced men in finance and banking.

Really, it was like taking the last trench in the Great Push when the women's battalions arrived at Lombard and Threadneedle streets. That bulwark of the conservatism of the ages, the Bank of England, even, capitulates. And the woman movement has swept directly past the resplendent functionary in the red coat and bright brass buttons who walks up and down before its outer portals like something the receding centuries forgot and left behind on the scene. He still has the habit of challenging so much as a woman visitor. It is a hold-over perhaps from the strenuous days of that other woman movement when every government institution had to be barricaded against the suffragettes, and your hand bag was always searched to see if you carried a bomb. But the bright red gentleman is more likely to let you by now than before 1914.

Inside, as you penetrate the innermost recesses, you will go past glass partitioned doors through which are to be seen girls' heads bending over the high desks. And you will meet girl clerks with ledgers under their arms hurrying across court yards and in and out and up and down all curious, winding, musty passage ways. I know of nowhere in the