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Show . happy" m TOWN. The Women Have Got Into it and Now Think it is as Ilice as it Can ba. ACCOMPLISHED F0BEIGN LADIES. A Sketch of Garfield's Daughter-Other Botes of Interest to Every-Odo, Every-Odo, ISKeloirnTof tnTiggt streets nowadays, now-adays, and at least one person out of very four or five yon meet ia a woman, aost of thwn without a man for company. com-pany. Ton y4cs ago women conld go through Fulton street to and from the ferry without attracting attention, but that was about the only street where men wouldn't stop to look at a passing woman as though she wore a wild animal. ani-mal. Thero was no room for women down town then. The offices were not fit to receive a lady in, and sho couldn't get anything to eat below Fulton street, or above it for a ways except at the Astor house. Some of the restaurants had rooms nominally for ladies, but women without an escort were not dosirod nor catered to, even in those places. Things used to be rather free and easy in all the office district then. The clerks didn't pay much attention at-tention to how they dressed while they were at work, shirt sleeves were the proper caper all summer, the office boys and porters were dirty, and the whole look of an office building gave it away for a place where there was nobody but men around. It's differont nowadays. . A great change has come over tho appearance ap-pearance of the lower part of tho city during the past few years, and the women wo-men and girls are, to a large extent, responsible re-sponsible for it. It is literally true that within ton years it haa boon a question serious enough to be discussed extensively exten-sively in the papers whether it was proper for a woman to enter a down town restaurant alone. Now there is carcely a restaurant below Chambers street that does not have lots of women among its regular cuctomers, and they attract no more attention than thoy would in a restaurant on Fourteenth street. Tables are especially reserved for them in many restaurants, but often they walk right in and take their chances with the men without any remark being occasioned. The necessity of catering to this class of custom has been one inducement induce-ment to load restaurant keepers to fix ip their places more attractively. Formerly For-merly most of the down town restaurants were feeding pens, in which the arrangements arrange-ments were designed solely for the getting get-ting of as much food as possible down the greatest possible number of months in the shortest possible time. The typewriter was a sort of entering wedge in the introduction of women to down town New York, but not half, probably not a quarter, of the girls and women seen down town are typewriter girls. They have gradually been getting foothold in all sorts of clerical work, and, besides that, women other than working women-rmj come tothink a call down town to the office of husband, brother or other male relative a most matter of fact proceeding. Wives and sisters got to coming down to the offlce to take husbands or' brothers home to dinner, out to Innch, or even to the matinee or to Coney Island. All this lias led to a great change in the general fitting up and appearance of down town offices. , Another large element in the feminine part of down town is made up of women who are in business for themselves. Besides Be-sides women operators in Wall street, there are women advertising agents. eal estate women, women printers and stationers, sta-tioners, women reetaunuit keepers and women in a score of other down town businesses formerly given up entirely to men. Any one who wants to see for himself the extent to which women have invaded the office buildings has but to stand at the doors of any of the large ones between be-tween 5 and 8 o'clock in the evening, when the clerks and assistants are all going home. The Potter building might be mistaken for a normal college, the Equitable building pours out a feminine 'torrent and all the other buildings in that neighborhood send out girls by the score. In and below Wall streot the offices of-fices usually closo an hour or so earlier and the feminine crowd is not so noticeable notice-able because there are more men about. Interview in New York Sun. |