Show kathleen norris says 0 help middle aged women learn to earn bell syndicate service Servi ceJ ai aoah g P 5 alft 4 ti 6 aa ea r an elderly woman who is now rich because of a certain pickle she ih olson put on the market look a cooks job ft at 35 a month seventeen years ago at 43 3 she he went humbly into a younger womans comans household and experimented in canning and nd pich eichling pichling pic Ming ling by KATHLEEN NORRIS HY someone WHY W open a school for mid dle aged women women who want to earn money or who are forced by circumstances to support themselves and have no idea how to go about it in any sizable city such a school probably would enroll 11 students on the first day classes would be e in simple bookkeeping and budgeting cooking cookin g housekeeping personal appearance and cleanliness order sewing selling in shops serving in tea rooms and beauty shops and dentists offices and a score of other lines that would help women to become useful and self supporting and incidentally infinitely happier citizens hard test of character but women of 40 and older essay ing real work for the first time after 20 or more years of belne being their own stresses mistresses mi and arranging their own hours are not often ready to take jobs on terms equal to those girls get girls are brisk smart modern clean yes clean A woman employer of hundreds of women told me that one great trouble with older women Is that they dont observe personal hygiene which in plain english is that they dont bathe daily their clothing fresh and dainty then they are apt to be sensitive suspicious and resentful to be ordered about at 55 by a girl exactly half ones age Is a hard bard test of charac character tei but many a woman if she could have met that test with sweetness and amiability would be in a good job today complaining at great length of the change in her fortunes and going over the head of the office manager with complaints to the higher boss are only two of the things that make the employment of older women risky higher bosses time today to listen while the widow of some old friend coming smilingly into the office proceeds to tear the entire organization of the mall mail order department to pieces A pickle made her ra rich ch one woman who is now rich because of a certain P pickle ickle she put on the market took a cooks job at 35 a month 17 years ago at 43 0 she went humbly into a younger woman comans household experimented in canning and pickling tor for the benefit of the family sold a few jars of this and that to friends found her market and won success she says that she went to work to save a devoted son and his bis burdened wife and smell family the extra care of ma 1 it la is a satisfaction to her now cow to be putting the two older sons of that son through college and there are hun hundreds dreas of such women re velling in modest successes glorying in their work forgetting that they are getting old and that hat the children have flown away to live their own lives one woman developed from one 45 cent apron a great factory that makes hundreds 0 of f a aprons every year scores of women have learned how to manage roadside eating places and have prospered because of the simple truth that we in america eat nearly meals a day many man of the finest saleswomen of the best shops are gray headed beaded in oil the big hotels dignified elderly THEY CAN BE USEFUL they can be useful and being useful they can be happy happ 1 they tire are usually more reliah reliable e 1 than younger girls whose minds are still on the jun fun they are going to have after working hours they often make fine no saleswomen tearoom managers and one woman who visits the patients in a large hospital is so valuable that she has been unable to resign although she now has an independent income yes middle aged women can work and do it well BUT they must be willing to take orders from a younger woman do a lot of things they hired to do and never complain women are in charge ol of linen rooms managing the staffs 01 ol of the dining rooms and bedr bedrooms oomA ore one woman I 1 know was an adored and pampered wife until she was 51 now tor for 10 years she has been in a big hospital she is the visitor who comes into your room every day 2 asks a question or brings you a piece of good news cant be replaced ive been wanting to stop for two years ive inherited a little money and I 1 could so go out to santa barbara and be near jane and the children this woman said to me recently but they cant find anyone to take my place I 1 mean someone who wont depress the patients with her own troubles and who is willing occasionally to carry a tray or answer a telephone last year she further confided the night cook was UI ill she was off for a month I 1 used to get the girls something to eat about midnight clam chowder or club sandwiches I 1 loved to do it and they were so el sometimes I 1 help them with their charts anything to have things work smoothly that Is the answer to success in any job opening a door filing a letter running out lor for stamps wil wiping tea cups brushing crumbs filling in tor for the absent cook or nurse or elevator boy or telephone girl anything to have things r run smoothly but that the answer that most middle aged women find end they want to know what their duties are and to those duties they will adhere 1 I am not supposed to I 1 understand der stand that I 1 was expected to when you engaged me you say anything about my doing things like that they say possibly the employer makes no protest he knows it would be no use but he presently says say to miss bright we might get rid ol of that mrs smith she seem to catch on she just told me that she know she was expected to hang up their coats tor for the other young ladles ladies and when she wanted that window pushed up the rang tor for the boy to come in and open tt it perhaps in a school lor for the middle aged the motto might be simply work Is work work a chance to complain review the happier past sit idly at a desk a lew few hours a day and draw a pay envelope every saturday work Is doing tor for someone sommone else something that thai may be hard boring humiliating tiring something perhaps diametrically opposed to what you yott want wand io do but it has its compensations its delicious rewards and the happl happi est persons in the world indeed the ONLY happy per persons solis in the world ire are those with a job |