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 gentle telephone required in its attendants.

Girls were easier to train; they did not waste time in retaliatory conversation; they were more careful; and they were much more likely to give "the soft answer that turneth away wrath." A telephone call under the boy regime meant Bedlam and five minutes; afterwards, under the girl regime, it meant silence and twenty seconds.
Instead of the incessant tangle and tumult, there came a new species of exchange--a quiet, tense place, in which several score of young ladies sit and answer the language of the switchboard lights.

Now and then, not often, the signal lamps flash too quickly for these expert phonists.
During the panic of 1907 there was one mad hour when almost every telephone in Wall Street region was being rung up by some desperate speculator.

The switchboards were ablaze with lights.