the pushing, jostling, clamoring mob, which the sidewalks are much too
narrow to contain, observe the preponderance of girls. From factory,
office, and department store they come, thousands and tens of thousands
of girls. Above the roar of the elevated, the harsh clang of the
electric cars, the clatter of drays and wagons, the shouting of
hucksters, the laughter and oaths of men, their voices float, a shrill,
triumphant treble in the orchestra of toil.

You may get another vivid, yet subtle, realization of the
interdependence of women and modern industry if you manage to penetrate
into the operating-room of a telephone exchange. Any hour will do. Any
day in the week. There are no nights, nor Sundays, nor holidays in a
telephone exchange. The city could not get along for one single minute
in one single hour of the twenty-four without the telephone girl. Her
hands move quickly over the face of the switch board, picking up long,
silk-wound wires, reaching high, plugging one after another the holes of
the switch board. The wires cross and recross, until the switch board is
like a spider web, and in the tangle of lines under the hands of the
telephone girl are enmeshed the business affairs of a city.

What would happen if this army of women was suddenly withdrawn from the
telephone exchanges? Men could not take their places. That experiment
has been tried more than once, and it has always failed.

Having seen how well women serve industry, go back to the department
store and see how they dominate it also.

The department store apparently exists for women. The architect who
designed the building studied her necessities. The makers of store
furniture planned counters, shelves, and seats to suit her stature.