Venus Green is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the City College of New York. From 1974–1990, she was employed by New York Telephone Company as a switching equipment technician.

RACE ON THE LINE

Gender, Labor, and Technology in the Bell System, 1880-1980By Venus Green

DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2001 Duke University Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8223-2554-3

Contents

Preface……………………………………………………………………ixAcknowledgments…………………………………………………………….xiiiIntroduction……………………………………………………………….11 “Hello Central”: The Beginning of a New Industry……………………………..112 “Hello Girls”: The Making of the Voice with a Smile…………………………..533 The “Ladies” Rebel: Unions and Resistance……………………………………894 “Goodbye Central”: Automating Telephone Service………………………………1155 The Bell System Family: The Formation of Employee Associations…………………1376 The Dial Era……………………………………………………………..1597 Racial Integration and the Demise of the “White Lady” Image……………………1958 Black Operators in the Computer Age…………………………………………227Epilogue…………………………………………………………………..258Notes……………………………………………………………………..| 265Selected Bibliography……………………………………………………….339Index……………………………………………………………………..351

Chapter One

“Hello Central”: The Beginning of a New Industry

The mammoth American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) and its associated companies, formerly known as the Bell System, evolved from a small, unincorporated patent association formed in 1875 into a national monopoly that amassed huge profits and dominated virtually the entire telephone service and equipment manufacturing industry by the eve of World War I. From March 7, 1876, when the U.S. Patent Office issued Alexander Graham Bell U.S. Patent No. 174,465 for an “improvement in telegraphy” (the electric speaking telephone) to the divestiture of AT&T in 1984, Bell interests focused on technological development as the most important tool for achieving domination over the industry as well as over the workers. Consequently, the history of the various company formations that eventually became the Bell System is characterized by the tireless pursuit of new technologies and machine innovations.

The first Bell companies faced a multitude of financial, technical, organizational, personnel, and industrial competition problems that needed solutions before the companies could control the industry and provide the kind of service that Bell and his colleagues envisioned. Technical difficulties threatened to completely repel an already skeptical public, and a constant shortage of capital to finance equipment development and expansion plagued the new investors. Other inventors and even large corporations ceaselessly encroached on the Bell patents, while trying either to take over the Bell companies or to steal the industry outright. From Bell’s point of view, government officials and regulations not only limited Bell expansion but inhibited Bell defenses against its predatory competitors. Added to these external pressures, the Bell companies’ own internal structure lacked coherent organization and a consistent personnel policy. From the beginning, managers faced these challenges by using technology to attract and direct investment capital, to defeat competitors, to organize production of telephones, telephone equipment, and service, and to reorganize internal corporate and personnel structure.

Bell Corporate Evolution and Development of Long Distance

After several successful experiments, the receipt of another patent (U.S. Patent No. 178,399 granted in June 1876), and the formation of the Bell Patent Association on September 1, 1876 (to obtain future patents), Alexander Graham Bell signed over his patent rights to the Bell Telephone Company on July 9, 1877. This company established the important and fundamental Bell policy of leasing (not selling) telephones and telephone service, but the advancement of the industry required a more intense financial investment and a more complex organization. After two years of experimenting with different corporate and licensing arrangements, in 1879 the first Bell trustees established the National Bell Telephone Company. Capitalized at $850,000 and incorporated in Massachusetts, this company absorbed the stock and rights of all other Bell companies, making it the most significant telephone company in the United States and Canada.

The potential for high profits in telephone technology triggered fierce competition and patent litigation. Alexander Graham Bell had not been the only contender for a telephone patent. Elisha Gray, who had received a patent on the very same day as Bell, signed his over to Western Union Telegraph Company. Western Union entered the telephone business in 1878. Armed with telephone patents, Thomas Edison transmitters (the best at that time), an established wire system, and huge capital resources, Western Union presented a formidable opposition to the National Bell Telephone Company. Fortuitously, the invention of an even better (the Blake) transmitter in 1879 shifted the advantage back to the Bell company. The Blake transmitter, along with other factors, persuaded Western Union to sell its telephones and patent royalties to the Bell interests, thereby giving Bell the patent monopoly for nearly fifteen years. After this agreement, Bell interests aggressively defended their technological superiority.

They also quickly recognized their exalted position and their need to expand through greater capitalization. Under the provisions of a special legislative act, the American Bell Telephone Company (ABT) filed for its Certificate of Incorporation, on April 17, 1880, which empowered it to own stock in its licensed companies, including 30 percent of another corporation in Massachusetts. By licensing small local investors, the Bell System induced them to use their money to finance the companies necessary for the proliferation of telephone use. And more importantly, ownership of significant percentages of the licensees’ stock, as with leasing, gave the parent company control over the industry. In order to strengthen this control and to achieve equipment uniformity over telephone technology, American Bell Telephone Company purchased a majority interest in the Western Electric Manufacturing Company, transferred other manufacturing resources to it, and changed its name to the Western Electric Company (WECO) in 1881. The next year WECO became the sole authorized manufacturer of all Bell System equipment.

The incorporation of the American Bell Telephone Company, the licensing of associated companies, and the acquisition of the Western Electric Company were cornerstones for a completely universal system, but long distance service, the most profitable part of the business and the most effective means of suppressing competition, required greater development. American Bell Telephone Company, under the capitalization permitted at that time by the Massachusetts legislature, could not afford the construction costs of the long distance lines to interconnect each licensee. When the legislature refused to raise the limits on ABT capital stock, the directors formed and incorporated the American Telephone and Telegraph Company in New York state as an ABT licensee in 1885. Free to construct and maintain long distance lines throughout the United States, Canada, and Mexico, the new company rapidly developed the technology that eventually resulted in communication between New York and San Francisco in 1915.

Defeat of Independent Competition

Independent telephone companies had always existed, but Bell System patent infringement suits had limited their operations. After the original Bell patents expired in 1894-95, the entire industry experienced a period of intense competition. Independents had avoided direct conflict by opening exchanges in small Midwestern and Southern towns and in rural and farming areas. Using this strategy, they captured nearly 50 percent of the national telephone business by 1902 and maintained that position until 1907.

Determined to conquer the entire field, the Bell System fought back. In many places, Bell companies changed a flat-rate charge to a measured one, expanded into suburban and outlying areas, and used their influence to bar bank financing and municipal franchises to Independents. AT&T refused to interconnect with them, refused to sell Bell equipment to them, consolidated their licensees into larger operating units, and resisted government intervention. The most effective oppositional policy isolated the Independents by not allowing them to connect to Bell long distance lines. Thus, by manipulating technology, AT&T kept the Independents from making further inroads into the industry. To protect this advantage and to escape an attempt by the state of Massachusetts to regulate its stock prices, ABT transferred its stock to AT&T in New York City in 1899, making AT&T the holding company for the licensees, long distance carrier, WECO, and other Bell interests. The Bell System had emerged.

Theodore N. Vail brought to this corporate entity the management “vision that finally ended the competitive era and created the unified organization capable of controlling and directing the whole industry.” Instead of refusing interconnection, he extended the policy, begun in 1902, of interconnecting with Independents not in direct competition with the system. Vail bought competing Independents wherever he could, and AT&T in 1909 gained a controlling interest in Western Union Telegraph Company.

Bell’s rapid acquisition of Independents and its control of Western Union created a public uproar, which prompted complaints against AT&T to the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC). Agitation also was widespread for government ownership of the industry. In 1912, the ICC considered allegations that AT&T was in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust law, and in 1913 U.S. Postmaster General Albert S. Burleson instructed post office officials to investigate the feasibility of administering telephones under his supervision. To avoid the possibility of government ownership, Vail accepted regulation in the belief that he could direct its outcome. In 1913, AT&T agreed to sell its Western Union stock, to stop buying controlling interests in competing companies, and to interconnect locally and for long distance with Independent systems that were compatible with Bell System equipment. This public relations victory, known as the Kingsbury Commitment, made the Bell System appear highly conciliatory, while not restricting it from buying up noncompeting Independents.

AT&T’s ascendancy resulted not only from owning the most advanced technology but from building the corporate structure that created the technology and organized the workers around it. As they defeated the competition, Bell executives took measures to reorganize the companies on a functional basis rather than a territorial one. In order to achieve national standardization of departments and technology, AT&T and each associated company formed three separate departments. The Plant Department carried out construction, installation, and maintenance of line and switchboard equipment. The Commercial Department’s duties included billing, customer services, advertising, accounting, etc. The Traffic Department handled telephone service, operator discipline, and training. AT&T, in addition, established standards and procedures for the operating companies to provide uniform telephone service nationally.

The Bell System also adopted a more elaborate managerial hierarchy to enforce its standards and methods and to nurture experts in each field of work. The new policies redefined engineering work along plant, traffic, and commercial lines with an emphasis on advancing telephony through scientific research and development. A reorganized Western Electric handled equipment standardization and quality testing, whereas the new engineering departments concentrated on areas such as long distance development and switchboard equipment installation and maintenance. The Engineering Department rapidly increased in size and importance. Before this time, in order to sustain technological superiority, the Bell System had placed a priority on the acquisition of all new patents pertinent to telephony. Competition, however, induced the desire for independent internal research.

Technological and organizational changes within the Bell System affected its major group of employees-telephone operators. Between the 1880s and the end of World War I, these forces transformed telephone operators’ work and working conditions in major ways. Technological improvements in switchboards and transmission required different skills and tasks. In the midst of the competition, operators had to learn new operating methods at the same time that the pressure fell on them to deliver the quick service each consumer requested. Competition compelled the Bell System to tighten its discipline and seek methods to increase the number of calls an operator could handle. As with equipment, Bell engineers standardized operating methods and procedures subsequent to corporate reorganization. Hence, the labor process of operators evolved in concert with these developments.

The Labor Process

During the first two years of telephone service (1876-78), subscribers made connections simply by picking up the phone and talking directly to the person called (usually signified by the number of times a bell would be rung). One wire connected each subscriber to the other (so there were as many wires as each subscriber had access to other people). Of course, this method of providing telephone service was chaotic, expensive, and unreliable because the subscribers were responsible for their own wires. Technical experts invented exchange systems and switchboards so that all lines would be wired into a central office, where they could be connected to other lines through the switchboard, thereby eliminating all except one wire (or later, a pair of wires) to the subscriber. Using a variety of skills, telephone operators, sometimes with the assistance of other technicians, made the connections.

In September 1878, Emma M. Nutt began working on an experimental basis as the Bell System’s first woman operator at 342 Washington Street in Boston. Some forty-seven years later and nearly fourteen years after her retirement, she wrote an enduring sketch of an early switchboard and the major components of telephone operating skill:

The switchboard extended nearly the length of the room, a space between that and the operator’s tables for the switchman who answered the calls; he stood in front of the switchboard with several long cords hanging around his neck, on each end of which was a plug and another cord in his hand with a plug on one end and a telephone on the other. When a subscriber rang the switchman would plug in and, using the telephone as both receiver and transmitter, ascertain the name of party wanted (numbers were not used at that time). He would then take two of the cords from around his neck and connect the party calling and the party called with the operator’s table. There were seven tables arranged in a line in front of the switchboard one after the other A.B. C.D.E.F. and G. a chair at each table. The tables were similar to an old style sewing machine. On each there were two black walnut stands or standards on one of which was a Blake transmitter in a walnut box, on the other … telephones. Along the front of the table there were I think three pairs of nickel strips and a cord to which was attached a jack with a push button on it. Directly in front of the operator resting on the back of her table was placed a “list board” on which was tacked a sheet of paper nearly the size of the board on which was written the names of the subscribers, they were written in red and blue pencil. The bells corresponded with the colors. Numbers were not in use then, the switchman called out the names of the party called and calling also on which strips he had put them. The operator after she had called the subscriber was supposed to listen to the conversation as much as possible to make sure the message went through correctly. If they could not hear distinctly or get the message correctly, the operator was supposed to transmit. When they had finished she notified the switchman and he disconnected the lines.

Nutt emphasized both the “physical” and the “personal” components of skill used “to transmit” or to insure that each party communicated with the other. Even though she worked on a switchboard that quickly passed out of existence, Nutt’s recollections describe the core of telephone operators’ labor process.

As switchboard technology developed, operators’ tasks constantly changed to accommodate new switchboards and methods of operating. However, certain fundamental mechanical manipulations and physical motions required to make these connections persisted. Like Emma Nutt, every switchboard operator recognized that a caller desired attention, answered, and received the request. On learning the called party’s identity (numbers came later), the operator located the called party on the board (assuming this was a local call), performed a busy test, rang (even with automatic ringing she had to insert a plug), and connected the two parties. After making sure they were speaking, the operators continued to make calls for other subscribers while listening in (or, later, observing a lamp signal) to determine if the subscribers had finished talking or wanted further assistance. Finally, the operator disconnected the call by pulling down the cords, restoring the line to normal.

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Excerpted from RACE ON THE LINEby Venus Green Copyright © 2001 by Duke University Press. Excerpted by permission.
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