Page:The Girl Who Earns Her Own Living (1909).djvu/150

 ing-school for a period of one month, during which she is paid five dollars per week, and must spend in the classroom practically the same hours she will be employed when she becomes a graduated operator, or from nine o'clock to five.

This classroom contains a huge switchboard, accommodating twenty-five operators, at which girls secure practical training and experience. The branches taught theoretically, as well as practically, by lectures, consist of the use of the various parts of the operating equipment, the local telephone geography, the proper method of completing any call and the necessity of being courteous in all relations with the public. The location of the various exchanges all over the city and the general geography of the city are taught by the aid of huge maps. A girl must know the location of fire-alarm stations, engine houses, police stations, and hospitals. She must be prepared to handle every sort of emergency call, for many a burglar has been trapped, many a fire checked, many a panic averted, through the cool head and quick action of a telephone operator.

Every day she is given drills in pronunciation and the correct method of modulating her voice. In a great exchange with scores of girls working at the switchboard, not a single voice is raised above what is commonly known as a