the want ads/telephone operators
One hundred years ago today … The New York Tribune want ads included job listings, job candidates’ ads, and rooms available. Most prominently, it featured a call for telephone operators at the New York Telephone Company. The job was specifically for women between the age of 21 and 25 who were willing to work at night.
The New York Tribune, 13 July 1920, p. 13. Newspapers.com.
The Wall Street Journal version of the ad tried to entice applicants with an illustration of convivial women at leisure, presumably suggesting that the job entailed much downtime.
The Wall Street Journal, 15 July 1920, p. 8. Newspapers.com.
According to an article by Erin Blakemore, women became the preferred option for the profession of telephone operator in the early twentieth century. The public, she writes, “swooned over the smooth voices of the ‘hello girls.’” Blakemore is sure to point out, however, that telephone companies’ hiring practices discriminated against people of color and immigrants, and those “with an accent of any kind.”
The New York Telephone Company was formed in 1896 in a merger of several regional companies. It underwent a century of permutations and changing names before emerging in its current form (Verizon).
WRITTEN BY JONATHAN GOLDMAN, JULY 13, 2020.
TAGS: employment, women in the workplace, telephone companies, technology