As early as 1848, Berlin commercial clerks voiced loud protest over the increasing employment of female retail clerks. According to the business census, in 1875 there were 40,132 female retail clerks in the German Reich as opposed to 197,909 male ones. [ . . . ] As a consequence a rather irritable tone prevails between the sexes. [ . . . ] “A female accountant keeping the general ledger will and always must cause annoyance! The same holds true for a female clerk who keeps any books or carries out office work!” “It is not women’s vocation to take away men’s daily bread at the office,” was also the opinion of one Austrian participant in the congress. More understandable is Hiller’s objection to women as traveling commercial clerks; but he also does not like the female shop assistants and office workers; in fact he believes that they stand in their own way because, due to the competition they represent to their male colleagues, they block their own road to marriage. By contrast, the Social Democrat Auerbach congratulates them wholeheartedly on their commercial occupation, not without a bit of malice.
The competitive threat of the female commercial clerk lies of course not in her performance but in her modest wage demands. In order to avoid becoming a servant, a girl who depends on an occupational income will make do with the most unprofitable commercial position. Many of them remain at their parents’ home and do not have any other expenses than for clothing. Others depend on support from their admirers. All of them have attained regular pay after a short period of apprenticeship. [ . . . ]
Alongside the proliferation of shop girls, the commercial apprenticeship system is another, hardly less significant, matter of grievance. This entails two complaints: inadequate apprenticeship, and “breeding” of apprentices on a massive scale for motives of material gain; both things are connected and result in stiffer competition for the retail clerk. [ . . . ]
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