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In fact, her “girls” increasingly agreed about very little. And the conflicts among club members became harder for Dodge and the growing number of her imitators to ignore. The better-attired, better-spoken women resented the presence of the immigrant girls Dodge had deliberately sought out and invited. Periodic attempts at unification ended in mild chaos, chair rattling, factions marching out as the “other side” spoke. One famous mêlée broke out over Dodge’s suggestion that club members wear badges. One young woman is reported to have shouted above the others: “Why should we want to tell everyone who rides in the streetcar with us that we are nothing more than ragged working girls who spend their entire evenings in a club hearing a lecture that is good for us?…Is it necessary to…advertise our status as working girls when that status…is as quickly recognized as that of the wealthy one?”

The clubs split up, despite Dodge’s insistence that girls, together, had so much to learn! Factory girls increasingly had their own very serious concerns—unionization, strike coordination, and the ongoing campaigns for workplace improvements. Shop girls continued, in the words of Mary Gay Humphreys, to “come in at night, nervous and tired, to be confronted by the problem of food, clothes, rent…of forever providing for bare material necessities.” But the shop girls, better dressed, more articulate, had at least a few options.

Store life was not as it would be in the movies: a fun, ducky universe populated by adorable girls like Louise Brooks and Clara Bow, whose signature film, It (1927), among many others, was set in a big store (a fishbowl universe perfect for the stationary camera). But real-life shoppies, like their movieland counterparts, had a pretty good chance of finding the exit. That most often meant marriage—but not always. Many girls, supporting themselves, sending money home, would continue to work and live singly. And the more intelligent and ambitious among them might land a very different kind of job.

Some of these young women, often much to their surprise, became teachers. Public education had been compulsory since the 1860s, and as urban life overtook rural, more families, less in need of farmhands, complied with the law. At the turn of the century there were more schools than ever before, more students, and a constant demand for young teachers. Although very few young working women had secondary degrees, many had high school diplomas. (In fact, 60 percent of all high school graduates in 1880 were women.) Because they’d finished high school, and because teaching was associated with child care, many who’d never even contemplated teaching got the job. As early as 1910, 98 percent of all teachers, at all levels of the public-school system, were women.

But many, many more headed into what was known, with a slight hint of exotica, as “the world of business.”

True, there was never the slightest trace of exotica once you got there. But it was better. Better pay. Better people to mix it up with. “Aren’t we all women in business now and more of us as the years pass?” asked film star Mary Pickford in a 1911 movie magazine. Without mentioning her salary, she exulted, “We are all working girls, and I am ever so proud to be among you!”

I AM A TYPEWRITER

In the original single work schematic, office work was about as good as it got. The pay could start as high as ten dollars per week. The work did not require hours of militaristic standing, and the men did not seem as ungentlemanly as they had back in ladies’ shoes. Even the jobs themselves sounded better: sorting “clerk” or file “chief,” positions requiring some rushing around, some work seated at one’s own desk. There was the “typewriter,” the original name for both the machine and its operator. Above them all, to be had through promotion, was the secretary, and best of all, the personal secretary. The boss chose her above all others, allowing her to move freely within the inner sanctum of the business (except at luncheons),