ge. Any hour will do. Any
day in the week. There are no nights, nor Sundays, nor holidays in a
telephone exchange. The city could not get along for one single minute
in one single hour of the twenty-four without the telephone girl. Her
hands move quickly over the face of the switch board, picking up long,
silk-wound wires, reaching high, plugging one after another the holes of
the switch board. The wires cross and recross, until the switch board is
like a spider web, and in the tangle of lines under the hands of the
telephone girl are enmeshed the business affairs of a city.

What would happen if this army of women was suddenly withdrawn from the
telephone exchanges? Men could not take their places. That experiment
has been tried more than once, and it has always failed.

Having seen how well women serve industry, go back to the department
store and see how they dominate it also.

The department store apparently exists for women. The architect who
designed the building studied her necessities. The makers of store
furniture planned counters, shelves, and seats to suit her stature.
Buyers of goods know that their jobs are forfeit unless they can guess
what her taste in gowns and hats is going to be six months hence.

WOMEN'S DEMAND ON INDUSTRY Woman dominates the department store for the
plain reason that she supports it. Whoever earns the income, and that
point has been somewhat in question lately, there is no doubt at all as
to who spends it. She does. Hence, she is able to control the conditions
under which this business is conducted.

You can see for yourself that this is so. Walk through any large
department store and observe how much valuable space is devoted to
making women customers comfortable. There is always a drawing-room with
easy-chairs and couches; plenty of little desks with handsome stationery
where the customer may write notes; here, and in the retiring-room
adjoining, are uniformed maids to offer service. But these things are
not all that the women who support industry demand of the men in power.
They demand that industry be carried on under conditions favorable to
the health and comfort of the workers.

Not until the development of the department store were women able to
observe at close range the conduct of modern business. Not unnaturally
it was in the department store that they began one of the most ambitious
of their present-day activities,--that of humanizing industry.

It was just twenty y