s! They know exactly how much they
can get out of us, and they get it. They are cleverer than us and more
powerful than us; and we have to submit to their discipline. But--" And
afar off I could hear: "What are you going to wear to-night?" "Will you
dine with me to-night?" "I want two seats." "Very well, thanks, and how
is Mrs....?" "When can I see you to-morrow?" "I'll take your offer for
those bonds." ... And I could see the interiors of innumerable offices
and drawing-rooms.... But of course I could hear and see nothing really
except the intent drone and quick gesturing of those completely absorbed
young creatures in the dim radiance, on stools precisely similar.

I understood why the telephone service was so efficient. I understood
not merely from the demeanor of the long row of young women, but from
everything else I had seen in the exact and diabolically ingenious
ordering of the whole establishment.

We were silent for a time, as though we had entered a church. We were,
perhaps unconsciously, abashed by the intensity of the absorption of
these neat young women. After a while one of the guides, one of the
inscrutable beings who had helped to invent and construct the astounding
organism, began in a low voice on the forlorn hope of making me
comprehend the mechanism of a telephone-call and its response. And I
began on the forlorn hope of persuading him by intelligent acting that I
did comprehend. We each made a little progress. I could not tell him
that, though I genuinely and humbly admired his particular variety of
genius, what interested me in the affair was not the mechanics, but the
human equation. As a professional reader of faces, I glanced as well as
I could sideways at those bent girls' faces to see if they were happy.
An absurd inquiry! Do _I_ look happy when I'm at work, I wonder! Did
they then look reasonably content? Well, I came to the conclusion that
they looked like most other faces--neither one thing nor the other.
Still, in a great establishment, I would sooner search for sociological
information in the faces of the employed than in the managerial rules.

"What do they earn?" I asked, when we emerged from the ten-atmosphere
pressure of that intense absorption. (Of course I knew that no young
women could possibly for any length of time be as intensely absorbed as
these appeared to be. But the illusion was there, and it was effective.)

I learned that even the lowest beginner earned five dollars a