1929: They Talk Man’s Language

I should be doing my taxes. But instead, I’m procrastinating by digging through some of my books. I’m reading up on women in business and working gals to help answer an inquiry that came to me last week (business, taxes — it’s all related, right?). While doing so, I found this fabulous little excerpt that I thought you would enjoy. It’s from Pots, Pans, and Millions: A Study of Woman’s Right to Be in Business: Her Proclivities and Capacity for Success, written by Edith Mae Cummings (Washington, D.C.: National School for Business Science for Women, 1929):

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The avenues of progress are now open to the average woman, all educational institutions welcome her, and after she establishes her financial independence she will not look upon man as a shelter in the time of storm, but as a companion.

The Nineteenth Amendment will never be repealed. Woman are in business to stay. They are no longer wall-flowers, but they have become such an important part of our economic arrangement that business could not get on without them. They have become citizens and have a voice in the government; they talk man’s language, particularly when they become exasperated. They work with men and exchange ideas as well as cigarettes.

Woman drives her own car through crowded streets, and when the fight of the century is staged you will find her in the ringside seat. She runs for office and gets elected. She goes on the public platform and expresses her opinions, and people pay to hear what she has to say. . . .

Man and woman go to the same theatre, to the same university, to the same football game, and last but not least, to the same barber-shop.

Never have the women of a nation achieved so high a standard of living as the American woman enjoys today, yet never have they felt the press of so many new desires and so many new ambitions.

Woman has the vision to understand great problems, the courage to undertake them and the ability to conquer them. No man knows so deeply the horrors of war or is so capable of making sacrifice as woman. She has been the humanitarian for ages; she has been organizer of the home ~ the one who has made the dreams of civilization come true.
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Thank you, Edith ~ you’ve certainly inspired me to try to understand the great problem of “Cost Basis” and how it relates to me and my dear friend Turbo Tax.