Telephone Company (and
the same thing is true in the other branches of the telephone service,
especially in big cities where there are large groups to work with) are
carefully selected by an employment bureau and sent to a school where
they are thoroughly grounded in the mechanical part of their work and
the ideals for which the company stands. They are not placed on a
regular switchboard until they have proved themselves efficient on the
dummy switchboard, and then it is with instructions to be courteous
though the heavens fall (though they do not express it exactly that
way). "It is the best place in the world to learn self-control," one of
the operators declares, and any one who has ever watched them at work
will add, "Concentration, also." One of the most remarkable sights in
New York is a central exchange where a hundred or more girls are working
at lightning speed, undisturbed by the low murmur around them, intent
only on the switchboard in front of them, making something like five
hundred connections a minute.

They are a wonderfully level-headed group, these telephone girls,
wonderfully unlike their clinging-vine Victorian grandmothers. They do
not know how to cling. If a man telephones that he has been shot, the
girl who receives the call does not faint. She sends him a doctor
instead and takes the next call almost without the loss of a second. If
a woman wants a policeman to get some burglars out of the house, she
sends her one; if some one telephones that a house is burning, she calls
out the fire department--and goes straight on with her work. Now and
then something spectacular happens to bring the splendid courage of the
girls at the switchboards to the attention of the public, such as the
magnificent service they gave from the exchange located a few feet from
Wall Street on the day of the explosion, but ordinarily it passes, like
most of the other good things in life, without comment.

The New York Telephone Company tries to keep its girls healthy and
happy. At regular intervals they are given rest periods. Attractive
rooms are prepared for them, tastefully furnished, well-lighted, and
filled with comfortable chairs, good books, and magazines. Substantial
meals are supplied in the middle of the day at a nominal charge. Special
entertainments are planned from time to time, and best of all, the play
time is kept absolutely distinct from the work time, a condition which
makes for happiness as well as useful