The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1917-08-07
Dorothy Da1 Says
BY DOROTHY DIX
Worlds Highest Paid Woman Writer


A young man asks me to write a
few feeling words about the telephone
pest, and more especially about the
female of the species who is more
deadly than the male. Also there are
more of her, which makes her a nro-
poruonateiy greater menace to the
peace and happiness of the COM
munity.
Says this young man: IT know a
very nice girl of whom 1 used to think
good deal In fact, | was on the
verge OF falling in love with her until
discovered that she was a victim of
the telephone maitland, believe me.
ia about as soon marry a woman
with the morphine habit
am beginning to dislike and
dread TINS girl because she makes my
life burden to me by teIephoning
me- There is never a minute of the
day or night that am safe from her.
she calls me up at my business office
and she insists that every evening at
s O'Clock l shall call her up. no mat
ter where 1 am. It's a COMPOUNDED
nuisance. 1 see this girl two or three
times a week and we've got nothing
on earth to say to each other over the
telephone, but there 1 am held up on
the end of wire to chatter like an
idiotic monkey about nothing
why oh why, do girls annoy men
by ceaselessly calling them up on the
phone? Why haven't they got
enough sense to know that nothing
gets on mans nerves SO quickly as
to be interrupted in business hours,
and that there is absolutely no other
one thing on earth that a girl could
possibly do that so surely makes him
feel that she is an old woman of the
sea tied around his neck with a wire
ways be on his track with the
'phone?"
That's what one young man says,
girls, and take it from me. he's no
peculiar old crouch. 1t is what every
young man would like to say to every
girl he knows, If he had the courage.
Indeed, so great have been their suf-
ferings in the matter that I have
heard more than one youth express
the fervent wish that Mr.. Bell had
died with his great invention unin-
vented.
Whom the gods would destroy they
first make mad" says the old adage.
A modern feminine version of this
ancient bit of wisdom might be, the
girl who would make herself unpopu-
lar with men gets busy with the tele-
phone"
Certainly there is no way in which
a young woman can queer herself
quicker or more completely. 1t dis
pels every scrap of illusion about her
1t shows her up badly, and coldly, as
of timid dear that the man must
pursue at the risk of his life to cap
ture 1t puts her in the light of a
sleuth forever logging his steps. Ana
it drives a man to frenzy by inter-
rupting him in the great game of
business.
TRY to look at the subject from
the mans point of view, girls, and you
will see how idiotic thing you do
every time you take up telephone
receiver and call up a man.
Suppose the man is in business for
himself He is a merchant or broker,
or lawyer or doctor. 1t is in b Isiness
hours He has a. customer that he
has been working over for couple OF
hours to get him up to the buying
point. Another minute and the trade
would be clinched. Ting-a-ling ling,
goes the telephone. He picks it up. A
voice at the other end of the wire
says: This is Mabel. Didn't we have
a perfectly lovely time last night at
the party? Wasn't Sally Jones dress
just perfectly sweet, and wasn't Tom
Smith mad" etc, etc, and so on, and
SO on.
The man grinds his teeth in helpless
rage. He can't beat girl over the
telephone, tho he would like to, and
by the time he has choked Mabel off
the customer has had a sober second
thought and backs out of the bar
gain.
Or, if the man is a lawyer, he NAV
be just on the point of catching sub
tile point in a perplexed case that he's
been studying over for hours, when
the fool ring of some fool girl knocks
the elusive idea out of his head. Or,
if he is a doctor. he may be interrupt
ed in a consultation that was all i'm
portant to him and where every min
ute was more precious than geld.
If the man works for somebody else
it is nothing less than criminal for
girl to call him up in business hours,
because every time she does it she
jeopardize his job. Telephone Johnnie
who has to be dropping his work a
dozen times a day to run to the tele-
phone booth. lasts as long in an office
as snowflake does on the equator.
Think of these things, girls, and
try to decide how much of a hit you
make with a man by calling him up
on the telephone in business hours.
Most of tn girls who call men UP
do it to make dates. They say, won't
you come up to the house tonight ?'
And if man says, No" they say,
What are you going to do tomorrow
night?. Or the night after? Or the
night after that? Or the next night
following? And so on until they bad
ger the poor, harried creature into
naming some day for which he can
think of no adequate excuse to re-
fuse. Do you imagine for an instant,
girls, that that kind of a holdup bust
ness gets you a husband? Never on
earth None of us like to be coerced
into doing the things we don't want
to do, and the most unwilling person.
in the world is the unwilling guest.
Personally / am convinced that the
telephone has had more to do with
the falling off in the marriage rate
and the increase in bachelor girls
than any other one thing in the world.
1t shows a woman's hand too COM
pletely when she starts out husband
hunting. When she importunes man
to come to see her who doesn't desire
to go tt, see her, when she tries to nag
him into coming when he doesn't
come, and reproaches him over the
phone for not coming, it simply rouses
the stubborn donkey that is in every
man and makes him put his back up
and say that he'll be hanged if he'll