As a tribute to Women’s History Month, this story was provided by the Sherman Room of the Mansfield/Richland County Public Library and originally published by the Mansfield News on Aug. 21, 1921 on Page 3 of the Social Section. Those interested in more history should check out the Sherman Room at the Mansfield/Richland Public Library or visit this link.
MANSFIELD — The old slogan, “It pays to advertise” is perhaps particularly demonstrated in the case of Mabel Gass Torrence, public stenographer.
At least it made a decidedly good impression on one small girl who confided in her mother thusly, “Mother, when I grow up I want to be a business woman and have my name in a big sign like that — that Mabel-Gass-Torrence.”
Even the smallest of womankind recognize the success that has attended this active woman of business.
Today Mrs. Torrence can look back over her years of work, with gladness, back to the time when she first started in and every one predicted an instantaneous failure or at least a hard climb. Mrs. Torrence’s answer to the small girl’s mother, gives you a fair guess as to just what hard work she has had.
“You tell your daughter,” she said, “that she is courting a great deal of very hard work. On the other hand, she is letting herself in for a great deal of interesting work.”
There perhaps you have her secret. She has been able to work and work hard, throughout not just a few months, but years, that she might stand where she is today, and at the same time has engaged in a business that is so interesting that hard work has never become monotonous.
“While I have succeeded, I suppose,” is Mrs. Torrence’s message, “yet success has not come in just a day or a week or a month. It has taken years. It means sacrificing my own pleasures and my wishes to my work.
“For, unlike a private stenog in a big factory or office, my work is not cut out day after day. I never know what is coming from one day to the next. Sometimes, after regular working hours are over, then I must get through a rush job. Or even a half holiday may be taken up with work. Most of my jobs are rush jobs.
“Of course, I have some routine work. For instance, there are certain letters which must be out certain days in every week, but the most of my work comes in just willy-nilly.”
When Mrs. Torrence first started it is very probably that she did not have enough work to keep even herself busy all the time. Today she employs always an extra stenographer and many, many times from three to five girls are kept busy.
It is probably that very few other jobs have required the initiative and plain common sense “nerve” that has the job of this public servant. To start out with nothing but У our typewriter, desk-room, and at least outward seeming self-confidence and to gradually work up a business such as this is just plain, not luck, but grit. It is a wise woman who will build on the foundation that has inspired men and women to come back again and yet again for more work.
Mrs. Torrence tells you of this in her characteristic way.
“I have always tried to deliver the goods, to do my very best, and to send out a finished job, knowing that it is the best, is a mighty big satisfaction. And I have never revealed a confidence. When any one leans over and says, ‘Now, this must be confidential.’ I ask them how long they think I would be in a job like this if I hadn’t kept things in confidence. Why, my head is full of secrets.”
Again, the question of health has a great deal to do with Mrs. Torrence’s career.
“You’ll be surprised,” she said, “when I tell you what I wanted to be when about eighteen. I was crazy to be a dancing teacher, but that requires a great deal of physical energy and my health would not permit. Several times in my life have I had seemingly excellent chances and always had to refuse because of poor health.” We wonder, though, whether when Mrs. Torrence is such a ripping good stenog, this city at least wouldn’t have lost a good bit by her being a dancer.
To say that she loves her work is saying little. “Do you know,” she confided, “when I was married, several years ago many folks came to me and wondered why I did not give up work. They never stopped to think that after taking years to build up a successful business it isn’t so easy to just quit at a moment’s notice. It would be just like giving up my own personality. And just because women are married is no reason why they should do that.”
