sit and answer the language of the switchboard lights. Now and then, fifteen thousand conversations had been made possible in sixty minutes. red spot on each cheek, she is taken off and given a recess until she These telephone girls are the human part of a great communication exchange--a quiet, tense place, in which several score of young ladies train; they did not waste time in retaliatory conversation; they were more careful; and they were much more likely to give "the soft answer others flung the flying shuttles of talk until, in a single exchange During the panic of 1907 there was one mad hour when almost every not often, the signal lamps flash too quickly for these expert phonists. patient courtesy and attentiveness--these qualities were precisely what feminine touch. The quiet voice, pitched high, the deft fingers, the that turneth away wrath." There are always girls in reserve for such explosive occasions, and when Instead of the incessant tangle and tumult, there came a new species of If ever the rush of women into the business world was an unmixed superseded by girls. Here at its best was shown the influence of the recovers her poise. speculator. The switchboards were ablaze with lights. A few girls lost the gentle telephone required in its attendants. Girls were easier to A telephone call under the boy regime meant Bedlam and five minutes; afterwards, under the girl regime, it meant silence and twenty seconds. telephone in Wall Street region was being rung up by some desperate their heads. One fainted and was carried to the rest-room. But the blessing, it was when the boys of the telephone exchanges were machine. They are weaving a web of talk that changes into a new pattern the hands of any operator are seen to tremble, and she has a warning