GIRLS KNOW SECRETS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 August 1939, Page 6

GIRLS KNOW SECRETS

J. BRITAIN’S MILLIONAIRES. ’ CONFIDENTIAL POSTS. 3 Thirty girls aged 19 years upwards. ' know most of the money secrets of ’ Britain’s millionaires. They hold conI fidential posts in the Branch 5 of the Special Commissioners of InI come Tax at Turnstile House. W.C.. , London. Although the smallest incomes they > deal with are more than £2.000 a « year, none of the girls earns more than I £420 a year and most earn £2OO or • less. They all rank as "executive offiI cers.” ; Their coming to the Special Com- . missioners' office is a recent move and i the latest triumph for the army of women civil servants, who now number 105 000. AGAINST MEN. ; > The “surtax” girls have won their ■ appointments in competition with men in the annual examination for execueive posts, one of the highgrade Civil Service examinations. They generally excell in elementary mathematics, but nearly always fight shy of higher mathematics. Elementary mathematics, however, includes pure and co-ordinate geometry, differentiation from definition, the gradient and area of a graph, graphs of trigonometric functions, composition and resolution of velocities and acceleration in one plane and the conservation of linear momentum. Many of the girls gain high marks ■for Latin and Greek, and all have to be proficient in English and ordinary arithmetic. Some choose physics and chemistry. TAX-GATHERERS. It has been discovered that women make good tax-gatherers. They are said to be more tenacious than men. more suspicious of possible tax dodges, and to have a keener appetite for extracting the last shilling. But women civil servant organisations prefer to be modest about their members’ qualities. To quote Miss Morris secretary of the National Association of Women Civil Servants: "We don't claim that women are belter in these jobs than men. We claim they are as good. “But because they are comparative newcomers to lhe Civil Service, women always have to do their work a little better than men in order to convince their bosses that they are as good as men.” LAST STRONGHOLD. So confident arc women civil servants of their powers —the road is now open to them for £2,400 a year jobs as Permanent Under-Secretaries of State; one woman in the Treasury already earns about £l,soo—that they are making an assault on the last Civil Service stronghold for mon only. All administrative and executive posts in the Defence Ministries are still barred to women.

Meanwhile, the demand for civil servants. chiefly because of the rearmament programme swells. Last year 2(10 executive posts were advertised as vacant. By the time the examination was completed it was found necessary to place 317 of the candidates.