, 1892-03-19
THE TELEPHONE GIRL
AN IDEA OF THE WORK THE MET
RoPouTAN central" DOES.

~
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 a 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 pickering
lips received and forwarded a sob
The conference.-the still small voice
of the telephone-had spoken to the new
girl. 1t had said:
your 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 "L" 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. 81 thought
at first he'd changed his voice to torment
me-" she said, ''but no, it was another
person, and a woman"
Gracious, gooseyf" said the old tele-
phone girl, ''thaG'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, n 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 or 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, ''it's 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 Oh you now because you're new"
The telephone pays its conscience
twelve dollars a week, which, as women's
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
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 connections a
minute and a half. 1t keeps a 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 yunppon If Eaanc match avar
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 a telegraph office, where
the idle operator can read by the ear
every word that m 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 1900 people. Cory
don is setting tryst with some one else's
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
a prodigious babble.
Prodigious is almost a mild word for
it, in fact. Sixty thousand voices pour
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 a "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 two
minutes. Suppose the talk goes on at
the moderate rate of fifty words a min
ute and you have a total Of 5000, 0O0
words per day gathered into the switch
board.
What a sea of babblel All the yer.
naculars of all the states of the Union
are in tall the languages Of the civil
lied globe in polyglot New York. Such
a flood would sweep in and drown the
telephone girls in their seats as effectu-
ally as that other food at Johnstown
swept in and drowned those brave wom-
en- telegraph operators were it not for
the protection of the switchboard.
But this sea of words is less than half
the total ocean hat GIBBS and flows
through the switchboards of all the ex-
changes. The number of talks" per
day in the whole city is 125, 900. That
is $50, 900 minutes per day spent by 1900
people, the number of subscribers to the
Metropolitan Telephone company in con.
~versation by wire. That is a total of
12, 500, 900 words a day that the trans
mitters have to take beneath their var
nished exteriors and send flying about
town on their various errands Of bust.
ness and pleasure.
Business errands Of a humdrum kind
are most of those on which the IL, 800.
900 words travel. Though the subscrib.
ers average but fifteen calls per day az
a whole, some of them run up to 500.
These are oftenest the big retail grocers,
who have special batteries to keep their
phones working. Their phones" If