ness.

The girls are not perfect, they are not infallible. And they are only a
third part of a telephone call. They work under difficulties at a task
which is not an easy one, and their efficiency does not rest with them
alone but with the people whom they serve as well.

A telephone call begins with the subscriber. Very few people understand
the intricate system of cable and dynamos, vacuum tubes, coil racks,
storage batteries, transmitters and generators which enable them to talk
from a distance, and a good many could not understand them even if they
were explained. Fortunately it is not necessary that they should. The
subscriber's part is very simple.

He should first make sure that he is calling the right number. In New
York City alone, forty-eight thousand wrong numbers are asked for every
day by subscribers who have not consulted the telephone directory first,
or who have unconsciously transposed the digits in a number. For
example, a number such as 6454 can easily be changed to 6544. The
telephone directory is a safe guide, much more so than an old letter or
bill head or an uncertain memory. Information may be called if the
number is not in the directory, but one should be definite even with
her. She cannot supply the number of Mr. What-you-may-call-it or of Mr.
Thing-um-a-bob or of Mr. Smith who lives down near the railroad station,
and she cannot give the telephone number of a house which has no
telephone in it. She has no right to answer irrelevant questions; is, in
fact, prohibited from doing so. Her business is to furnish numbers and
she cannot do it efficiently if she is expected also to explain why a
cat has whiskers, how to preserve string beans by drying them, what time
it is, what time the train leaves for Wakefield, or what kind of
connection can be made at Jones's Junction.

In calling a number the name of the exchange should be given first. The
number itself should be called with a slight pause between the hundreds
and the tens, thus, "Watkins--pause--five, nine--pause--hundred" for
"Watkins 5900" or "Murray Hill--pause--four, two--pause--six, three" for
"Murray Hill 4263." The reason for this is that the switchboard before
which the operator sits is honeycombed with tiny holes arranged in
sections of one hundred each. Each section is numbered and each of the
holes within it is the termination of a subscriber's line. In locating
"Watkins 5900" the girl first finds the section labelled "59" and the