The Best Man For The Job ...
On May 2, 1877, a woman in Oakland, Calif. 
, wrote to an eastern friend:
"Do look charitably on this writing, for I have a refractory thumb
The translation is, "Please don't mind the sloppy handwriting—I've been writing all day and my thumb hurts."
What occasioned this stint of sore-thumbness ? "I am a deputy in the Assessor’s office," she explained, "the only lady who ever held such a position here, and the only one in the Court House." A woman on the job was still novel in 1877, and writing was not her major challenge:
"Some of the Supervisors were much opposed to me and the under clerks in the Court House, who wanted the position, were quite exercised over the appointment ..."
Translation —"All the man bosses, and all the guys who wanted the job I got, were very upset when I got hired." She added, "They have all subsided now."
What was a shocking innovation to Alameda County officials would not have been to Wells Fargo. That same year, 1877 Wells Fargo employed Mrs. Emmet E. Rice in the Auditing Department. Ten years later, the company replaced eight men with six women, who audited more "quietly and accurately."
Wells Fargo & Co.'s position was quite in contrast to others. James C. Fargo, William’s younger brother, ruled American Express autocratically from 1881 to 1914, and he would not have female employees. In 1896, for instance, the younger Fargo bluntly stated, "If the company's business can only be carried on by employment of women, close the agency."
Wells Fargo’s first known female agent came aboard in 1873. Wells Fargo has prospered very nicely since then, thank you.
