| Show TEE TELEPHONE I 1 AN IDEA OF THE WORK THE metropolitan CENTRAL DOES the conscience of the vain office A stul still small voice at twelve am i week to guard the tb operators manners manner bad and the subscribers secrecy Be fie crecy the peg with which the new telephone girl had been playing cribbage crib base on the big perforated switchboard on the top I 1 floor coor of the cortlandt street exchange dropped from her hand and a wave of brunson crimson aspre spread ad from beneath the in about her slender neck upward over her cheeks until it lost itself in th the e roots of her fluffy yellow hir then the transmitter swinging in front of the new telephone girls puckering lips received and forwarded a sob the conscience the still small voice of the telephone had spoken to the new girl it had said your manner is a trifle pert then the new telephone girl succeeded d in connecting the subscriber whose irascibility had provoked the reprimand nc I 1 rd d pertness and went on with her cribbage e gal game n e that ni night b t at the L station she asked the old telephone girl who sat next to her whose voice it was that had cut in so abruptly upon her convers conversation aaion with the irascible subscriber 1 I thought at first hed changed his voice to torment me she said lid but no DO it was another person and a woman gracious goo seyl said the old telephone girl the monitor you yon know who she is dont you boutho yo utho girl who sits at a desk in the middle of tho the floor behind us she watches you every minute and if she sees by your manner that anything unusual is going on if some crank gets geta you stirred up as you yon were or if she thinks youre listening to messages or having private talks or doing anything against the rules she just connects with you yon and listens to all youve got to F my esy then she lectures you or advises yon or if you are very bad report you mercy gasped the now new telephone girl its as bad as having a mind reader about oh no said her experienced sister she wont bother you much after you get into the harness sho she keeps a blosa eye on you now because youre new the telephone pays its conscience twelve dollars a week which as ply pay goes gae s shows the high value the telephone puts upon it its q conscience and its ita duties aro are of the delicate and important kind it keeps watch over the manners of the girls girla seeing that they return the soft loft answer which burneth away the wrath of the impatient subscriber who thinks that fourteen seconds the average time for making a connection is a minute and a half haf it keeps a watch over their affections lest they be led astray unto tho making of matinee dates by the susceptible young men who fall in love with the telephone voice which is gentle and low an excellent thin thing in woman it keeps watch over the metropolitan companas comp anys invaluable time seeing that the four fourteen teen seconds bo be riot not unduly spread out and it guards the secrecy 0 of f the subscribers for the secrecy is undoubtedly guarded not like a telegraph office where the idle idla operator can read by the ear every word that comes click clicking ift in over his busy reigh neighbors bors instruments is a telephone exchange there is something fascinating about the seer secrecy cyla ia fact thero there sit presumably naturally curious women before the perforated board which lines the pothook shaped room the board itself is throbbing with the secrets of 42 people cor corydon y is setting tryst with some one elsos phyllis phyla taurus is ordering his broker to buy in the block of stock which he ha dumped and thereby broke the market last week it may be the voice ol of rachel for her children crying which the telephone girl pours into a sympathetic ear when she ehe puts the peg in the cribbage board or it may be an order for coal she cannot know and in a very short time she ceases to care tho the switchboard separates her in fact front from a prodigious babble prodigious is almost a mild word for it in fact sixty thousand voices their wants and boes woes and hopes and fears as to the daily concerns concemi of life through that switchboard every awen twenty ty four hours that is to say the subscribers bers make something like fifteen demands each for a talk with some other subscriber who may be on the cortlandt street circuit or on that of anyone any one of the eight other exchanges in the city tho the ave average rao duration of a talk is twi tw minutes suppose the talk goes on at tho the moderate rate of fifty words a trim minute and you have a total of words per day gathered into the switchboard I 1 what a sea of babbled all the chever ver nac lare ulars of all the states of the union are in if it all tho the languages of the civilized globe in polyglot new york such i a flood would sweep in and drown the telephone girls girla in their seats as effectually as that other flood at johnstown swept in and drowned those brave women telegraph operators were it not for the protection of the switchboard but this sea of words is ia less than hall the total ocean that ebbs and flows through the switchboards of all the exchanges the number of talks per da day y in the whole city is that is minutes per day spent by people e the number of subscribers to the kempl the metropolitan 1 tr i tan telephone company in conversation by wire anat is a total of words a daythan day that the transmitters have to take beneath their varnished exteriors and send flying about aboul town on t their heir various errands of business and pleasure business errands of a humdrum kind are most of those on which the words travel though the subscribers average but fifteen balls per day at a whole some of thern them run up to I 1 these are oft enest the big retail grocers who have hava special batteries to keep their phones work working lug their phones is said advisedly some have these in in a single room so BO that the invisible lines 1 of customers at the other end of the wires may not be kept waiting new york herald |
