Evening star., 1916-11-09
THOUSANDSASK
WHO'S ELECTED?'
Telephone Bells in The Star
Office Ring MerriIy Day
and Night.
ALL CALLS GET RESPONSE
Everybody telephones!

Everybody telephones!
All day and all night they telephone:
from every section of Washington and
from West Virginia. Virginia and all
parts Of Maryland the people telephone
in to The Star Office to find out who is
elected The unprecedented election
situation is giving the telephone wires
and instruments of the city the live
Hest Workout" in their history. 1t is
even confdentially predicted that the
stream of talk, unless one or the other
of the candidates for the presidency is
soon declared elected. will wear the
wires SO thin that English sparrows
will be without roosting places.
The telephone exchanges of the city
and private exchanges in newspaper
offices during these excited hours of
the greatest "hoss race" in the history
of American politics are presenting
some of the busiest scenes in the Ma
tional Capital. officers of the telephone
company say they were unprepared
yesterday morning for the great vol
ume of business suddenly thrust upon
them.
Forces Rearranged.
A rearrangement of forces, however,
soon enabled the hello girls" to handle
the thousads of calls of thousands of
residents of the city who called The
Star Office and other newspaper offices
to get the latest" on the election re-
turna
'Tingle-ingle-ingle" go the tele-
phones in The Star office, minute after
minute. announcing calls to find out the
election results. 1t began Tuesday
evening at o'clock, and since then
there has not been an hour that liter
ally hundreds of calls have not come
into the office. Those deputized to an
saying things like this:
be leading"
Our reports at this hour would seem
In the lead"
Is elected. but 1t would SEEM
Who was elected in the umpty-
ump.n district of-wait minute"
President tomorrow, but we don't
know who will be President after
M1fch at least not yet. Yes, If you
call up within an hour or SO maybe
We VIII be able to tell you all about
No Diminution Today.
So the calls went all day yesterday,
g..
this morning showed no diminution of
interest Queries came into The Star
ONCE by the hundreds before 8 o'clock.
1t seemed that folks woke up, rolled
over and grabbed the telephone to fnd
cut who's elected"
ray telephones around the city have
been overfiowing with nickels during
the last twenty-four hours. The tele-
phone company reports an unprece-
dented amount of business. The re-
quests coming for election returns
reached such huge proportions yester-
day afternoon and evening that the
telephone exchange found 1t impossi-
BILE to put everybody who called The
star Into" the building. and many who
called The Star found themselves ask
ing other local newspapers for informa-
tion az 10 the election. and vice versa.
Camping on a telephone all day to
answer the same question thousands
OF times offers an exceptional oppor-
tunity for the study of human nature,
and becomes a regular little univer-
sity" in itself to those who are an
swering the calls.
All ouestioners Good-Tempered.
Almost without exception those tele-
phontng The Star for election returns
have been cheerful and good-natured.
and dead-in-earnest to find out how
things are going" This information
The Star has furnished day and night,
based upon authoritative reports from
all sections of the country. In no
cases have any but authenticated re-
ports been furnished the public.
The one big pun of the .eiephone
service has been when some one called
up and asked:
Who's e!ected?"
Hughes elected? Not vet"