History of the Typewriter

—10 — of this demand, that as the call for manual handwriting decreases, the requirement for a better, more legible, and superior penmanship increases. The eyes, grown accus- tomed to the clearly marked characters of the typewriter, will no longer tolerate schoolboy scrawl, and, coincidentally with mechanical beauty, manual elegance will obtain a fresh lease of life, and the demand for a good handwriting become stronger and stronger. Establishments for the sale of typewriters constantly increase in numbers. These, for the most part, are under the superintendence of educated and accomplished gentle- men, trained to a degree of expertness hardly to be matched in any other calling. The fitting up of typewriting offices is carried to a pitch of elegance and refinement in vividly marked contrast to that to be observed in many other quarters. The heads of these offices are generally willing to train any competent stenographer in the use of their machines, free of charge, or at the utmost for a purely nominal fee. They have reason for so doing, as it is fre- quently found that the greatest difficulty in selling type- writers is the delay which is often experienced in getting competent operators to work them. Hence it happens that the smart typist, whose shorthand is perfect, and whose general ability in other directions is sufficient to warrant him or her being placed in a position, can readily have the choice of good and remunerative employment. The wages earned by typewriter operators, or typists, as it has become the fashion to call them, will necessarily be found to vary considerably, according to the amount of experience the typist possesses, to the extent of qualifi- cations, and the generosity of the employers. A few firms offer very low wages indeed, but they do not expect, and do not get, the best hands. Taking it all round, one will not be wrong in asserting that the average remuneration of the shorthand typist is in excess of what the same person would receive, with a like amount of experience, in any other calling. It may be regarded, therefore, that, reckoning the highly paid along with the under paid, the typewriter, in addition to employing half a million persons, puts into the pocket of each an average of two pounds per week, so that the weekly paybill of the typists falls little, if anything, short of a million pounds per week, or say £50,000,000 sterling per annum. S In the land of its birth^or rather,‘let us say, in America, the typewriter shows up in even brighter colours. The Remington Company have made and sold at least a half