New-York tribune., 1907-09-07
nossible consequences of Hamid's accession and
his subsequent defiance of the powers
L4BOR SAVING IMPOLITENESS.

The greatest labor saving invention IN the
world is impoliteness. If you don't beheVe 1t
read the order of the Philadelphia Ielephohe
Company to its operators, and IT'S request ~
its patrons to omit the word please IN COM
n,unications between central and subscriber.
According TO the cOmpanys manager fhlId-
dephia's four hundred and fifty hello girls
say please" to the patrons 9o0oOo times ever!
twenty-four hours. At half a second word
800 minutes. or 125 hours, a day are spent
in improbable courtesy. If we could only fol-
low these statistics further and figure out now
many times the operators have to say busy
inst because of the 125 hours the wires are
cIOCged with 'pleases," and how many times
angry subscribers are kept calling up over ana
over again for a busy" number whose "busl-
ness is due to please should understand
the havoc wrought by still surviving courtesy
in n hurried Industrial world Could stronger
case be made out for labor saving discourteSy!
The Philadelphia Telephone Company has
done mankind a great service in collecting
figures showing the economic reason for the
decay of manners" Four hundred and fifty
Young women in Philadelphia drop please
from their vocabulary and 1t saves the tele-
phone company 125 hours Suppose we still
had some such elaborate courtesy as prevails
among the japanese. and central, when called
up instead Of saying Number, please! or.
as now in Philadelphia, just Number should
saw "Will the honorable subscriber please give
tho honorable number he wishes" life would
be full of charm. but should not yet have
got out of the sixteenth century, so many hours
and davs and weeks and years and centuries
would have been lost the mere junction or
intercourse. Our grandfathers and grand
mothers had many pretty ways and speecheS
with which they Carnishcd their way through
life but these went out with the coming OF the
age of speed. They bowed to each other in pro
found and sweeping manner, stopping IN thelf
walk to execute an elaborate Obeisance A bow
was an event in itself, a splendid personal ac-
complishment. and not to be marred by
an attempt to do anything else at the same
time We Jerk our heads just perCeptibly with
out interrupting our rush for the train. They
said Il am delighted to see you, sir, on TINS
fine morning" We say. "MOrnn, or some
thing that sounds like 1t. They subscribed
themselves in tkeir letters. 81 have the honor,
sir TO remain your most humble and obedlent
servant" We subscribe, Yours. with one
adverb. or, deploraby, just Yours" Courtesy
began handsomely in sentences. was abbrevi-
ated to phrases. dwinded to words, degen-
Grated into grunt. and are trying TO
abolish the Cr1lnt as a sheer waste of time
and energy!
We wish some record had been preserved of
the time saved by changing from the old
fashioned profound inclination of the head tow
ard the earth-perhaps itself a labOr-saving
Improvement on an earlier ceremonial of greet
Ing in which the forehead was brought, Ori-
entail fashion in actual contact with the floor
to the modern brisk nod. We wish there were
statistics to show how much time mankind has
gained in cutting courtesy down from para
graphs to gr1nts We doubt whether all the
vaunted economies of labor-savlnc machinery
have equalled those of laborsaying impolite-
ness