f its outfit had been made for other
uses. In Chicago all calls came in to one boy, who bawled them up a
speaking-tube to the operators. In another city a boy received the
calls, wrote them on white alleys, and rolled them to the boys at the
switchboard. There was no number system. Every one was called by name.
Even as late as 1880, when New York boasted fifteen hundred telephones,
names were still in use. And as the first telephones were used both as
transmitters and receivers, there was usually posted up a rule that was
highly important: "Don't Talk with your Ear or Listen with your Mouth."

To describe one of those early telephone exchanges in the silence of
a printed page is a wholly impossible thing. Nothing but a language
of noise could convey the proper impression. An editor who visited the
Chicago exchange in 1879 said of it: "The racket is almost deafening.
Boys are rushing madly hither and thither, while others are putting in
or taking out pegs from a central framework as if they were lunatics
engaged in a game of fox and geese." In the same year E. J. Hall wrote
from Buffalo that his exchange with twelve boys had become "a perfect
Bedlam." By the clumsy methods of those days, from two to six boys were
needed to handle each call. And as there was usually more or less of
a cat-and-dog squabble between the boys and the public, with every one
yelling at the top of his voice, it may be imagined that a telephone
exchange was a loud and frantic place.

Boys, as operators, proved to be most complete and consistent failures.
Their sins of omission and commission would fill a book. What with
whittling the switchboards, swearing at subscribers, playing tricks with
the wires, and roaring on all occasions like young bulls of Bashan,
the boys in the first exchanges did their full share in adding to the
troubles of the business. Nothing could be done with them. They were
immune to all schemes of discipline. Like the MYSTERIOUS NOISES they
could not be controlled, and by general consent they were abolished.
In place of the noisy and obstreperous boy came the docile, soft-voiced
girl.

If ever the rush of women into the business world was an unmixed
blessing, it was when the boys of the telephone exchanges were
superseded by girls. Here at its best was shown the influence of the
feminine touch. The quiet voice, pitched high, the deft fingers, the
patient courtesy and attentiveness--these qualities were precisely what
the g