Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 106, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 September 1899 — ETHICS FOR TYPEWRITER GIRLS [ARTICLE]

ETHICS FOR TYPEWRITER GIRLS

Religioaa Journal Hold* Right for Her to Help Her Employer Lie. The New York Christian Advocate, the Eastern organ of the Methodist Episcopal church, has created a sensation in religious circles here by advice it recently gave to an Inquirer. “Suppose,” wrote the applicant for Information, “that a young woman employed as a stenographer has to write what she knows to be flat contradictions of truth, what she knows is meant to deceive and the object of the deception is to take pecuniary advantage of others. Also that sometimes profane language and languageof questionable character on other moral grounds is dictated, should she write it or modestly decline to do so?” To this query the Advocate makes answer: “We know an instance of a young woman who declined to write profane language and lost her situation in consequence. We highly approve her course. She may be a machine in a certain sense, but if she professes to be a Christian or a modest woman she ought not to write anything which no one having arfy respect for Christianity or modesty would utter in the presence of a modest woman. But on the question of flat, contradictions of truth in the way of business statements, it is quite possible that a stenographer may be altogether too sensitive. > How does she know what view her employer may take of what seems to be a flat contradiction of truth? Is he to explain to her all his business affairs and make known to her all elements involved in every transaction in which profit and loss are concerned. With regard to his business dealings she !s but a machine, and her ears are not pointed by statements of fact or otherwise. Her mind should be sufficiently under control not to reason about anything that be dictates, except to direct his attention to verbal or other mistakes in composition. But no stenographer, male or female, should write things, which, passing through their ears into their minds, and to the machine through their fingers, could, not but defile. The stenographer need not make an issue. If a man happens to use profane language let her furnish the copy without the profane language. Then if an issue is made it will be by the man’s insisting upon it, and if he does insist upon it she 'win do. well to take her departure, trusting in the ’Fewer that make th for righteousness.’ ” In the Wee Hour*. He—Great Scott! for making a. racket this child is a regular tort in action. She (sweetly)—Would you mind bedding the tort tor a little while, George?” Phri Cure for Consumption has been a godsend to me.—Wm. B. McClellan, Chester,* Ela., Sept. 17. 1805. —-- The contented man is never poor;