The High Price of 'Hello'
Medical experts warn that the grueling labor and public abuse faced by telephone operators are breaking the health of a generation of working women.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Dr. Robt. Dwyer of the University of Toronto, an expert in nervous diseases, says that the work of the telephone girl is one of the most terrible occupations known to American working women. He says: 'After these girls have served the company four or five years, and have got married and left the service, they turn out bad in their domestic relations. They break down nervously, and nurture nervous children, and it is a loss to the community. I think it is the duty of the state to legislate in matters of this kind. It is this sort of thing that is laying the foundations of the asylums.' Dr. Jas. M. Anderson, another nerve specialist, is quoted as saying: 'I have treated a number of telephone girls, most for eye troubles, headache and nervous strain. After a service of three or four years I would expect to find an exhausted womanhood.' After hearing these experiences, what man or woman is there who will not blush at the thought of any mistreatment of these girls of the industrial system? Of course, the skimping telephone trust is at the base of the evil. It employs too few women, at ridiculous salaries, considering the hazardous work, and it allows the girl to take the abuse of the public when the service is faulty.
“Exhausted womanhood after 'three or four years,' and for six or ten dollars per week.”
This 1909 critique of the 'telephone trust' highlights the long history of undervaluing service-sector labor. Just as operators were then subjected to public abuse and physical burnout for 'ridiculous salaries,' modern gig and call-center workers face similar systemic pressures in our current economy.
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