It is a most interesting sight, to the uninitiated, to go into the operating room of a big commercial office and see the swarms of men and women bending over glass partitioned tables; nimble footed check boys running hither and thither like so many flies, carrying to each wire the proper messages, while the volume of sound that greets your ears is positively deafening. Every once in a while some operator will raise his head and yell "Pink," "C. N. D." or "Wire." "Pink" means a message that is to be rushed; "C. N. D." is a market quotation that is to be hurried over to the Bucket Shops or Stock Exchange, while "Wire," means a message that pertains to some wire that is in trouble and such messages must have precedence over all others. The check boys are trained to know the destination of each and every wire and work under the direction of the traffic chief.
Far over on one side of a room is the switch board. To the untutored mind it looks like numberless long parallel strips of brass tacked on the side of the wall, and each strip perforated by a number of small holes, while stuck around, in what seems endless profusion, are many gutta-percha-topped brass pegs. Yet through all this seeming mass of confusion, everything is in apple pie order, and each one of those strips represents a wire and every plug a connection to some set of instruments. The wire chief and his assistants are in full charge of this work, and it must needs be a man of great ability to successfully fill such a place in a large office.
The chief operator has entire supervision over the whole office, and his duties are hard, constant, and arduous. Like competent train despatchers, men able to be first-class chief operators are few and far between. Not only must he be an expert telegrapher, but he must thoroughly understand line, battery and switch board work, and his executive ability must be of the highest order.
I had always supposed if a man were a first-class railroad operator he could do equally good work on a commercial wire; in fact the operator in a small town is always employed by the railroad company and does the little amount of commercial work in addition to his other duties.
After leaving Blue Field I loafed a while, but that's tiresome work at best, so I journeyed down to Galveston, Texas, one bright fall morning, and after trying my luck at the railroad offices, I wandered into the commercial office on the Strand and asked George Clarke, the chief operator, for a job.
"What kind of a man are you?" he said.
"First-class in every respect, sir," I replied.
"Sit down there on the polar side of that Houston quad and if you are any account, I'll give you a job at seventy dollars per month."
Now a "Quad" is an instrument whereby four messages are going over the same wire at the same time. The mechanism of the machine is different in every respect from the old relay, key and sounder, used on the railroad wires. In a vague way I had heard of "quads," and imagined I could work them as well as an "O. S." wire, but when he said for me to sit down on the "Polar side," I was, for a minute, stumped. However, there were already three chaps sitting at that table, so the fourth place must be mine. I sat down and presently I heard the sounder say, "Who?" I answered "BY," and then "HO," said, "Hr. City," I grabbed a pen and made ready to copy, but by the time he had finished the address I was just putting down the number and check. "Break" I said, "G. A. from," B-r-r-r-r- how that sounder did jump. This interesting operation was repeated several times, but finally I succeeded in getting the message down, and then without giving me time to draw my breath, he said, "C. N. D." and started ahead with a jargon of figures and words that I had never heard of before. His sending was plain enough, in fact it was like a circus bill, but I wasn't on to the combination, and it was all Greek to me. Perspiration started from every pore, and in my agony I said, "Break, G. A. Ahr.," Holy Smoke! how he did fly off at that, and how those other three chaps did grin at my discomfiture.
"Call your chief operator over here," and with that he refused to work with me any more. Clarke came over and that blasted chump at "HO" said,