My Sisters Telegraphic: Women in the Telegraph Office ... - Monoskop

ENTRY OF WOMEN INTO TELEGRAPHY IN EUROPE 97
as an independent periodical, and its editors, J. N. Ashley and Frank Pope,
continued its sympathetic view toward women’s rights. Again in 1868, they
attempted to close discussion of the issue, with no more effect than Lewis
Smith had seen in 1865. 20
The NTU gradually faded out of existence in 1869, in part because of
its reluctance to take a stand on political issues such as the rights of women
and the gradual loss of privileges in the workplace. It was afraid of offending
the powerful telegraph companies and was thus reluctant to become a militant
labor organization. Eventually it lost its agenda completely, and telegraphers
gravitated to organizations that were more responsive to their
needs. 21
As Melodie Andrews points out in her essay “‘What the Girls Can Do’:
The Debate Over the Employment of Women in the Early American Telegraph
Industry,” the dire effects predicted by T. A. and others who warned
against allowing women to become telegraphers simply did not materialize,
at least not in the nineteenth century. Women entering the craft in large
numbers after 1870 did not displace male operators; women supplemented
the male force by primarily occupying lower-skilled positions that offered
correspondingly lower pay. Yet by debating their opponents in print and insisting
on their right to earn a living as telegraphers, women operators created
their own legitimacy and visibility in the industry. By 1866, even before
Western Union began to encourage the entry of women into the industry,
female telegraphers had found a voice of their own and had established
identities as skilled workers. The letters published in the Telegrapher provide
a rare look into the gender politics of the workplace as practiced in the midnineteenth
century. 22
The Entry of Women into Telegraphy in Europe
Women were first admitted to the telegraphic service in Europe during the
1850s and 1860s. Generally, women were allowed to become telegraphers
for reasons of economy; a woman could manage a combined postal station
and telegraph office, particularly in small towns and rural villages, at a lower
rate of pay than a man would receive for the same work.
When the International Telegraphic Union (ITU) was formed in 1865,
twelve of its twenty-two original member nations employed women as
telegraphers. The experiences of these telegraph administrations with the