Page:The Girl Who Earns Her Own Living (1909).djvu/224

 the key to business success and an assured income. It cannot give the essential and practical experience obtained in an office, composing-room or factory; but it can make first experiences in the workaday world much easier. The college-bred lad who decides to become a proof-reader must serve his apprenticeship, his diploma notwithstanding. Why should a student expect a diploma or certificate from a correspondence school to do away with this apprenticeship or nullify the rules and regulations of one of the strongest unions in the labor world?

The home-student may take her correspondence course if she lacks the courage to enter upon an apprenticeship without theoretical training, but she must not expect the course to open the door to easy work, short hours and big pay. These are the reward of an apprenticeship covering four years or more.

Neither is proof-reading a trade for the girl or woman who wants home work. It is bound to take her into the "shop," as the composing-room is commonly called. Why should publishers send work to the home of refined or delicate or sensitive women who need the wages, when hundreds of strong, skilled and willing women are knocking at the doors of their composing-rooms for work on the premises?

The foreman of the shop connected with a publishing house of national fame told me that