World War I - The Telephone Company

The telephone company made a big deal of these are ladies and, you know, we have special places for them to have their lunch. Despite all these reassurances that these operators were, quote-unquote, proper ladies, at the end of the day, they were still called working girls. And this generated a lot of suspicion and anxiety around the profession. The idea of sending women to war near the battlefield was unusual to say the least.