ABSTRACT
Julia Lathrop returned to the family home after graduation without a clear idea of what she wanted to do with her life. Her choices for the next ten years reflected the limited options available to women, but she stretched the boundaries of what was considered acceptable work for women. Business expansion generated more jobs for men in law and insurance as well as sales. As office work expanded, so too did the need for office assistants; by the end of the nineteenth century the vast majority of office assistant jobs was women's work. Office employment required literacy and some mathematics; by the early decades of the twentieth century women were preparing for the jobs by attending commercial schools or high schools. Lathrop was far more educated than most office assistants. At a time when the social problems of working-class families were so high on the national agenda, women activists emphasized the special contribution they could make in tackling these problems.
