The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-07-14

with a confused idea of the workings of telephone exchange, but conscious of the mighty force of motors, of the unseen power that sets in motion tn ose currents through which you many hear and almost feel the pulse of the world.
 The third floor Is devoted to the re- creation rooms, the luncheon room and the sleeping apartments.
 The fourth floor is vacant and is in tended for future growth and your im- agination pictures the Birmingham with a million. More steps lead you into the fifth floor, and some one tells you about the telegraph service. the leased wires and the long distance op- erating room.
 On the sixth floor Is the office of MT, Turnbull, the manager, and the ac- counting department
 But all the paths through the big build ing seem to lead to the local operating room, and interest centers in the working day of the young telephone woman.
 The daily routine of the young women who pass in and out of the operating room means first eight hours of work. The nature of the work requires a con- stant tension of nerves, an alertness Of mind, a quickness of eye and hearing, d steady hand. Few lines of work require more steadiness of nerve. closer concern tration, more eomposure, more poise. The day begins at the touch of her hand upon the wires. It never ends as long as there is a silent little figure at the switchboard.
 The operating room of d telephone eX- change is one of the quietest places in the world. The telephone girl almost whis- pers. She takes her place at the switch- board silently. The young woman whom she has relieved goes out without a sound. The thousands of lights shining along the switchboard are hardly less quiet than the atmosphere of the room. 1t is these lights that are the silent cues for the telephone girl. She sits at the switchboard in the big operating room, the telephone "headpiece" adjusted to her ear, her eye ever fastened on the little round lights that Illuminate the key board
 A thousand times a day she asks "What number?" whenever the small round lights shine steadily on her switchboard, some one blocks away miles away per haps is waiting to hear the familiar What number?" Throngs of passers- oy never think for moment of the thou sands of connections" made in a single day, of the vast System" of a telephone exchange. People wait in the handsome booths downstairs. talk to persons hun dreds of miles away but they are not concerned about the tremendous motor power only a few feet away, or the hun dred or more young women whose nerves are at the highest tension from the mo- ment they begin making connections until their eight-hour days is over.
 These hours are not long in comparison with other lines of work Everything is done to make the work less laborious, to lessen the nervous strain.
 Removed to a great degree from the noise and din of traffic secure from the dstracting influences of crowded thor oughfares and public offices, the young women employed in the telephone eX- change are still Tn integral part of the days workings, so inseparable from them that it is dizzy mental height from which they control to a great degree the hourly destinies of people and commerce..