Los Angeles herald., 1892-04-03
THE TELEPHONE GIRL
AN IDEA OF THE WORK THE NET
! ROPOLITAN "CENTRAl" DOES.

The Conscience of the Main Office "A
Still, Small Voice at Twelve Dollars a
Week to Guard the Operators Manners
and the Subscribers Secrecy.
The peg with which the new telephone
girl had been playing cribbage on the
big perforated switchboard on the top
floor of the Cortlandt street exchange
dropped from her hand and wave of
crimson spread from beneath the ruch-
ing about her slender neck upward over
her cheeks until it lost itself in the roots
of her fluffy yellow hair.
Then the transmitter swinging in front
of the new telephone girls puckering
lips received and forwarded sob.
The conscience-the still small voice
of the telephone-had spoken to the new
girl. 1t had said:
"Your manner is a trifle pert"
Then the new telephone girl succeed
ed in connecting the subscriber whose
irascibility had provoked the reprimand-
ed pertness, and went on with her crib
bage game.
That night at the 81" station she
asked the old telephone girl who sat
next to her whose voice it was that had
cut in SO abruptly upon her conversation
with the irascible subscriber. II thought
at first he'd changed his voice to torment
me- she said, 'but no, it was another
person, and woman"
"Gracious, gooseyr' said the old tele-
phone girl, ''that's the monitor. You
know who she is, don't you?-the girl
who sits at a desk in the middle of the
floor behind us. She watches you every
minute, and if she sees by your manner
that anything unusual is going on, if
some crank gets you stirred up, as you
were, or if she thinks you're listening to
messages or having private talks OF do
ing anything against the rules, she just
connects with you and listens to all
you've got to say. Then she lectures
you or advises you, or if you are very
bad report you
Mercy" gasped the new telephone
girl, "its as bad as having a mind
reader about
''Oh, no." said her experienced sister:
"she won't bother you much after you
get into the harness. She keeps a close
eye on you now because you're new"
The telephone pays its conscience
twelve dollars week, which. as womens
pay goes, shows the high value the tele-
phone puts upon its conscience, and its
duties are of the delicate and important
kind. 1t keeps watch over the manners
of the girls, seeing that they return the
soft answer which turneth away the
wrath of the impatient subscriber who
thinks that fourteen seconds-the aver
age time for making a connection-is
minute and half. 1t keeps watch
over their affections lest they be led
astray unto the making of matinee
dates by the susceptible young men who
fall in love with the telephone voice. -
which is gentle and low, an excellent
thing in woman. 1t keeps watch over
the Metropolitan company's invaluable
time, seeing that the fourteen seconds be
not unduly spread out, and it guards the
secrecy Of the subscribers.
For the secrecy is undoubtedly guard
ed. Not like telegraph Office, where
the idle operator can read by the ear
every word that comes clicking in over
his busy neighbors' instruments, is a
telephone exchange. There is something
fascinating about the secrecy, in fact.
There sit 100 presumably naturally
curious women before the perforated
board which lines the pothook shaped
room. The board itself is throbbing
with the secrets of 4,200 people. Cory
don is setting tryst with some one else 5
Phyllis. Taurus is ordering his broker
to buy in the block of stock which he
dumped and thereby broke the market
last week. 1t may be the voice OF
Rachel for her children crying which
the telephone girl pours into a sympa-
thetic ear when she puts the peg in the
cribbage board, or it may be an order
for coal. She cannot know and in a
very short time she ceases to care. The
switchboard separates her, in fact, from
u prodigious babble.
Prodigious is almost a mild word for
it, in fact. Sixty thousand voices poul
their wants and woes and hopes and
fears as to the daily concerns of life
through that switchboard every twenty
four hours. That is to say, the 1900 sub
scribers make something like fifteen de
mands each for talk with some other
subscriber who may be on the Cortlandt
street circuit or on that of any one OF
the eight other exchanges in the city.
The average duration of a talk is tive
minutes. Suppose the talk goes on al
the moderate rate of fifty words min
ute and you have total of 5000, 0Ol
words per day gathered into the switch
board.
What a sea of babble! All the YER
naculars of all the states of the Union
are in it-all the languages of the civil
lied globe in polyglot New York. Such
flood would sweep in and drown the
telephone girls in their seats as effectu
ally as that other flood at Johnstowr
swept in and drowned those brave WON
en- telegraph operators were it not fol
the protection of the switchboard.
But this sea of words is less than hall
the total ocean that ebbs and flows
through the switchboards of all the eX
changes. The number of talks" pei
day in the whole city is 125,0OO. Tha1
is 250, 900 minutes per day spent by 9,OO'
people, the number of subscribers to the
Metropolitan Telephone company in con
versation by wire. That is a total O
12,5O0, 900 words a day that the trans
mitters have to take beneath their var
nished exteriors and send flying abou
town on their various errands of bust
ness and pleasure.
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