Show WOMEN TELEPHONISTS Their Superiority to Men Is a Question Ques-tion of Vocal Chor sIn s-In Its decision to employ girls as telephone operators the British post ofllce has submitted to the Inevitable If ever nature created a monopoly I In a profession she did so whon she I endowed girls with the voices they possess I I In lands as diverse In custom aa I 1 I Roumanla and America Italy and I I England men yield place to women as I telephonists Even In the land of the i Geisha this natural advantage reveals I itself and the rapidlygrowing telephone I tele-phone service of Japan is staffed entirely en-tirely by women Germany has rejected re-jected women as telegraphists hut ad r mils their superiority over men as tele I phonists The proprietorship of the profession Is dependent mainly upon one anatomical anatomi-cal character viz the length of the vocal chords This prime character Is supported and reinforced by n number of subsidiary qualities but It constitutes consti-tutes in Itself the Indisputable claim I which women have to superiority over I men as telephonists The vocal chords of a woman arc i considerably shorten than those of a man As a result the voice has a higher pitch The telephone diaphragm I responds more accurately to the high erpitched voice the magnetic disturbances dis-turbances are more rapid and therefore there-fore moue potent and the currents transmitted to the remote station lose less In transmission Until some method is revised for equalizing the value of the sonorous waves set up by tho longer slower vibrating chords of men and the shorter more rapidly vibrating vi-brating chords of women this primary character renders womens position secure se-cure lit the profession of telephonist But there aie other less important characteristics which aid In securing her supremacy If you listen to an average woman speaking attd compare com-pare her with an average man of her own class you will notice the following follow-ing among other tblngs Her enunciation enuncia-tion of tho words Is better There la a lessor tendency to cut the ends of words or to drop the voice and nnitn ble the terminations than Is displayed by her male companion Her choice of words too Is better and there Is a natural purity of diction that Is distinctive dis-tinctive She will use a larger percentage per-centage of the short crisp homely AngloSaxon words and show an avoidance of abstract Latinderived words All this helps In conversation upon a telephone In telephone exchanges too the nervous ner-vous organization of women helps them They arc more patient set telephone tele-phone subscribers gay what they will and less likely to suffer from prolonged pro-longed monotonous work They arc not so readily responsive to the effects of nervous strain Perhaps It would be better to say they do not feel a nervous strain under circumstance where the more highly strung male becomes be-comes nervous and restive These are a few of the causes that contribute to the superiority of women as telephonists and It will be obvious that they arenoC likely to bo ousted i unless soino new and Important modification modi-fication of the telephone Is invented The Postal union has In It Cort seven sev-en administrations and of this number thirtylive employ women as telephon ists In addition to this all the large telephone companies In Europe and America employ women London Mall |