Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 136.djvu/157

 THE AT'LLANTIC MONTHLY

AUGUST, 19256

A WOMAN IN WALL STREET

BY ONE

My husband had refused to listen when I suggested that I might help to restore a margin that had been wiped out; and as I had never had a day’s business experience in my life, and was not of the type recognizably commercial, I knew it would be hopeless, even if he listened, to try to convince him that I could earn enough to be of any use. So it was with an ostensible object quite different from the real one that I left home and began my search in New York for a job.

What were my assets? Several years of college and wuniversity training, many years past; a novel published; a good deal of experience in public speaking, though only as an amateur; wide travel, but entirely for pleasure. An unimpressive list to present to the hard-headed business man. However, I had developed a taste for tackling the thing that looked impossible, and peo- ple had been, wherever I found them, my field of observation. In some way or other this last should make me of use. Just how, I had little idea. I was ignorant of the very existence of such a thing as an employment department and had never heard of welfare work. Perhaps it was as well for me that I did not know there was nothing the —NO. 8

Go gle

average business man believes in less than a ‘knowledge of people.’

Wall Street!

The name at once electrified and frightened me. I knew no one in the company to which I was going to offer my services, and the fact that it was ranked as one of the greatest banking investment houses in the world did nothing to quiet my beating heart as I entered its vast marble entrance hall, white and cold and inhospitable as a morgue.

A burly man in uniform stepped for- ward and, when I told him I was in- terested in selling bonds, conducted me to the desk, one of many, of a young man with a mop of long curly hair, turning gray, a brainy long-nosed face, and a good-natured though rapid-fire manner which I found rather dis- concerting. This keen young man, I found later, was an assistant sales- manager. After a brief talk, he asked me to step into an adjoining chamber which, from its dark paneled walls and august portraits, appeared to be the Board room.

Presently a middle-aged gentleman arrived. I had no idea of his rank. His ruddy face, topped with sandy hair, was amiable, and he talked in a very