mains in the employ of the company, she is advanced gradually to the following positions: Senior operator, eleven dollars per week; chief supervisor, fourteen dollars a week; chief oper-, ator, twenty to twenty-five dollars per week.
In a telephone exchange the working day is about eight and a half hours, with two thirty-minute rest periods, morning and afternoon, or for night workers at about the same intervals apart. All over the country the telephone companies are famous for their welfare work, but particularly so in New York City. Here you will find a matron or welfare secretary at every exchange. The building always has its kitchen, dining-room, sitting-room, supplied with reading matter, an emergency hospital, and a lockerroom with an individual locker for each operator. Hot tea and coffee are served to the operators free of charge at any hour of the day or night, and girls are permitted to bring their own luncheons to eat with the beverages served in the dining-rooms.
This is the bright side of the exchange picture. Its hard side shows the nervous strain under which girls must work, the ever-present necessity of concentration, and the extreme discourtesy, almost insults, which even good operators meet from a certain portion of the general public. Many operators complain of the small pay and the part which office politics play in
