The man who knows how to use a telephone properly is comparatively a rare personage, and the observance of a few simple rules and suggestions in relation to telephone usage would accomplish, for any busy man, a great economy in money, time and vital energy.

     The telephone has done more to lay bare a latent strain of belligerency in all mankind than any other feature of modern experience, and this element offers the greatest obstacle known to the universal success of telephone operation. But this attitude is not the only abnormal development attending the act of telephoning. A man refuses to recognize plain physical conditions that would be apparent to a child in the primary grades. What man of affairs would willingly give a second audience to a caller who turned his back to his host and directed his voice in a direction away from him? Yet the majority of business men keep their faces a foot or more from the telephone and turned away from the instrument. To expect satisfactory results under such conditions is preposterous. The lips should not be an inch away from the rim of the receiver and the voice should beat squarely upon the drum to which the little “sound hopper” leads. Give a telephone instrument a “square chance” and it will do its work, unless radically deranged or defective.

     This, however, is not the main difficulty. It is only the symptom of the disease. Lack of mental focus is the real trouble, both in talking and hearing — or, in telephone parlance, in transmitting and receiving. If your thought is not concentrated on the transmission of your message you will not make yourself heard or hear what is said to you. This is where a failure to realize that you are holding actual conversation is apparent. No person understands this phase of telephonic trouble better than the operator of long-distance lines, where conversations are important and comparatively expensive, and time is limited. He knows that, in case the two on the line do not readily hear each other, he must make each realize he is not talking into a hole in the end of an iron arm, but speaking into the ear of a man.

Shocking a Man into Attention

     Sometimes it takes a sound shock to effect this focus of mental faculties. Once, when hard pushed, I resorted to a desperate expedient, which demonstrated this point with indisputable force. That was several years ago, when prominent men were not so accustomed as at present to use the telephone. They generally delegated the task to their assistants — a practice now much in vogue in England, where it is well-nigh impossible personally to engage the head of an establishment in telephonic conversation.

     But in case of calls on the long-distance wires the conversations were generally of a confidential nature. Therefore the “parties,” although not thoroughly accustomed to using the telephone, must be made instantly to understand each other, despite the added disadvantages of the “long range.” At that time I was in charge of certain long-distance lines in the East, and was called upon to engineer a conversation of the utmost importance between a Baltimore capitalist and a Boston financier. Time was an essential in the transaction, which involved thousands of dollars.

     The Boston man seated himself at the instrument, in my office, and waited for me to get the Baltimore capitalist properly started. At the first sound of the latter’s voice I knew he was “not there,” mentally speaking. Then I resorted to the usual expedients to impress on him the realization that he was talking with a person instead of at an inanimate object.

     “Don’t hear a word! This thing is ———” he was saying.

     “I’m not a thing, Mr. Smith,” I interrupted; “I’m a man, about thirty years old, prematurely bald, with dark hair and gray eyes. I can hear you because I know you’re a real, live man doing business with your voice, right now. I can hear you because I’m thinking right to the point — and you’re that point! Now listen to Mr. Jones.”

     But still I heard an irascible repetition of: “Can’t hear! Can’t hear! Better give the thing up and telegraph. No use trying this old thing! It’s no account. I tell you I can’t hear a word!”

     Meantime my Boston man was growing restless and excited. Every moment was of great value in the affair. Turning to him I said:

     “If I were to tell Mr. Smith that he lies he’d learn how to hear every word you say in one second. Shall I do it?”

     “Yes,” was the quick response; “and I’ll square it completely, later.”

     Very clearly I spoke into the receiver the words:

     “Mr. Smith, you lie!”

     “What’s that sire?” came the instantaneous answer. “You call me a liar? Why, I’ll, I’ll ———”

     “You will understand,” I interrupted, “that I mean nothing of the kind — only that you do hear distinctly every word I say and you are proving it. Now listen, quick, to Mr. Jones!”

     He had no difficulty in hearing the Boston financier and the day was saved — simply because he was shocked into realizing that he was not taking at a thing, but conversing with a man.

     Women are keenest to grasp the personality of the invisible conversationalist. A telephone is not a dead thing to them. They bow and smile into it and even stop before the mirror to touch up their hair when about to answer a call on a telephone in their own rooms.

     Only a few days ago a man in Chicago decided to give his wife novel surprise on her birthday anniversary. He arranged that, at a certain moment, her mother, whom she had not seen for years, should be at the long-distance telephone office in Philadelphia and should call up the daughter in Chicago. There was a telephone in the Chicago house and the husband answered the prearranged call. Turning from the instrument he said to his wife:

     “Helen — here’s your mother on the wire in Philadelphia.”

     The wife seated herself at the instrument and heard the familiar voice of her mother. It uttered one word: “Daughter!”

     Suddenly the young matron in Chicago gripped the instrument and poured out her heart in the response: “Oh, Mother! Mother!”

     Then, as she heard the sob that came over the wire from the aged mother, she answered in kind, still keeping the receiver at her ear. Speaking literally, those two women cried to each other until the tolls amounted to fifteen dollars. Later they both said that it was the sweetest experience they had known since their long separation began! Nothing could more effectively demonstrate the sympathetic possibilities of the telephone or better illustrate the vital point of realizing the personality behind the voice.

Transcribed by Sandra Williams.