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Show scriber. But before she plugs into the multiple jack, she places the plug on the rim of the jack, which is a little metal-rimmed metal-rimmed hole. If the line is busy, she hears a click and so reports "the line is busy" The test takes but the frac-of frac-of a second. From the operator's opera-tor's viewpoint it is much more advantagous to complete a call than to be obliged to report the line busy, because in most cases the calling party will ask for the number again and continue con-tinue until the call is completed, thus entailing far more work upon the operator than would have been the case had the call been completed the first time. Sometimes a) subscriber's line is reported busy, and the called subscriber afterward declares that he or she was within hearing hear-ing distance of the telephone all the time. The explanation of that is. that the called suh. scriber is on a party line which is being used by some other subscriber on the line. In spite of unavoidable interferences, inter-ferences, the fact remains that the proportion of calls completed complet-ed promptly is overwhelmingly greater than the delayed or lost calls, and this must be so if a telephone company is to do a profitable business, because beside be-side the inconvenience and annoyance an-noyance to its patrons, incompleted incom-pleted calls represent lost business busi-ness and expense for which it receives no return. I "LINE BUSY" Eugene H. Jenkins, the newly new-ly appointed manager of the Telephone Co. in the following article describes some of the "truths" in connection with the operation of a switch-board when a line is reported "Busy." When a switchboard operator, opera-tor, in answer to a subscriber's call, reports "the line is busy," it naturally causes some annoyance an-noyance and sometimes the calling call-ing subscriber feels that a proper prop-er effort has not been made by the operator. A simple explanation of the work involved in completing a connection will help to disabuse anyone's mind of the fallacy that the operator can save herself her-self any time or labor by reporting re-porting a line as busy without finding out whether it is or not. The operator, in completing a call, uses a pair of flexible cords terminating in metal tips. One of these she inserts in an answering an-swering jack which connects her with the calling subscriber, and the other she inserts in the multiple jack of the called sub- |