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

LITERATURE 123
rather exposure to the potential corruption incumbent upon working in the
business and commercial world. Exposure to the moral vicissitudes of the
commercial world had long been used as a rationale for barring women
from the telegraph office.
“The Thorsdale Telegraph”
Barnet Phillips’s “The Thorsdale Telegraphs,” a telegraphic romance that
appeared in the October 1876 Atlantic Monthly, deals with women operators
in the railroad depot. It is the first-person story of Mary Brown, age nineteen,
who has just graduated from a business college where she studied telegraphy.
She reflects on the advantages of her education; were it not for her
knowledge of telegraphy, she would be helping her sister teach school in a
remote part of the state, something she clearly regards as a step downward. 6
She arrives at Thorsdale, where the railroad company has offered her a
position as a telegrapher. Thorsdale is a tiny midwestern town consisting of
little more than the junction of two railroads. She presents herself at the
telegraph office at the railroad depot. She is put off at first by Jahn Thor,
the telegrapher and stationmaster, and his seeming indifference to her; he
continues to stare at a timetable on the wall after she introduces herself.
After learning her name, he asks:
“Are you a quick operator?”
“Not very, sir; though I have had a fair practical experience.”
“So! Rather easily flustered?” he inquired, moving towards another
machine, which commenced working, and over which he
was now bending somewhat attentively. “Did you understand that
last message?”
“No, sir,” I answered, “I was not listening; I could have understood
it had I chosen to.”
“Then you are not curious?”
“Yes, I am,” I responded, by no means relishing his interrogations.
Jahn Thor is testing her. Railroad telegraphers were the air traffic controllers
of the nineteenth century; they had to make split-second decisions