Speaker 1: A federal as a protection of my heart radio. It's
Speaker 1: hard to overstate the impact of the telephone in the
Speaker 1: last hundred and fifty years. This communications technology has altered
Speaker 1: the land, the sky, the makeup of outer space. And
Speaker 1: if you trace the contours of history, you'll often find
Speaker 1: the telephone in places you wouldn't expect. A background character
Speaker 1: in stories inspiring and despicable alike. So I'm not here
Speaker 1: to approve of history. I'm just here to tell you
Speaker 1: the story. This is Elizabeth Copps. I'm Elizabeth Cobbs. I'm
Speaker 1: a historian. Do you want me say Moore? She is
Speaker 1: and was being incredibly modest. So I hold the Melbourne
Speaker 1: glasscock chair in American History at Texas and n the
Speaker 1: author of eight Boom, also a senior fellow at Aford
Speaker 1: University's Hoover Institution, made two documentary films. The PBS was
Speaker 1: on the Historical Advisory Committee of the U. S. State Department. Previously,
Speaker 1: for six years sat the Pulest Surprise Jury for History.
Speaker 1: I always think that sounds I think that sounds more
Speaker 1: impressimate than it was. Well, yeah, I don't ask for
Speaker 1: my CV for the initial spark that would come to
Speaker 1: connect well, almost everything. One has to look back to
Speaker 1: the mid nineteen century and a young Scottish American immigrant
Speaker 1: named Alexander Graham Bell. His mother was deaf, and he
Speaker 1: found that he was the only member of his family
Speaker 1: who could really communicate with his mother, especially as her
Speaker 1: hearing got worse and worse and finally went all together.
Speaker 1: He would press his lips to her forehead and talk.
Speaker 1: He became a teacher of elocution, a language teacher, and
Speaker 1: began teaching at a school for the deaf in Boston,
Speaker 1: carrying out his self imposed mission. This interest he had
Speaker 1: going back to his mother's disability, so he had this
Speaker 1: great empathy for people couldn't hear, and he became very
Speaker 1: interested in the way that vibrations communicated electrically. As it
Speaker 1: would turn out, it was that interest which led him
Speaker 1: to experiment the telephone, was introduced in eighteen seventy six
Speaker 1: at the Philadelphia Centennial, saying famously, he was talking with
Speaker 1: his assistant, communicating across several rooms, but it was a
Speaker 1: way to link people, to bring humans in contact with
Speaker 1: each other. Initially, it seems like a parlor trick, and
Speaker 1: in fact Bell offered to sell his innovation to Telegraph company.
Speaker 1: Another important job handled quickly and efficiently by Western Union
Speaker 1: and Telegram, And they said, oh no, who's going to
Speaker 1: use a telephone To people who are in profit making enterprises,
Speaker 1: their loath to spend money on something that seems gimmicky.
Speaker 1: But to the average person, the immediate relevance of this
Speaker 1: technology was quite apparent. Within a very short period of time,
Speaker 1: a year or two, people started put together what became
Speaker 1: known as p b X systems, internal telephone systems where
Speaker 1: it's like a closed circuit like the old fashioned hotel,
Speaker 1: where someone is getting calls in at some central exchange,
Speaker 1: some central switchboard, and connecting people in rooms or within
Speaker 1: a military base or a company. Good morning. So pb
Speaker 1: X systems were the first ones to get going. But
Speaker 1: then right away people started to develop subscription systems. We
Speaker 1: would subscribe to a telephone system and you would be
Speaker 1: able to talk to other mutual subscribers. They wouldn't be
Speaker 1: within your same company, like the PBX system anybody could
Speaker 1: join and could get a subscription, and suddenly you be
Speaker 1: talking to all kinds of folks. Now, for that reason,
Speaker 1: a lot of the initial telephone systems you could only
Speaker 1: talk with people within your system. After a dozen or
Speaker 1: so years, there was a universalization of the system. They
Speaker 1: basically put all the systems together. So even if you
Speaker 1: got telephone service from say Verizon, you could call somebody
Speaker 1: who had a T and T American Telephone and Telegraph,
Speaker 1: that is the company that Bell founded. For the first
Speaker 1: half of their history, telephone systems depended on an operator.
Speaker 1: Most of the other parts of the technology are really
Speaker 1: you know, they're technological. Their machines, you set them up,
Speaker 1: you maintain them. They run on their own until they break,
Speaker 1: and then if some guy comes in and fixes it right,
Speaker 1: a repair person. But the one human being that was
Speaker 1: necessary for every single call to be made in this
Speaker 1: era was the operator operator. This was in a period
Speaker 1: in which telephones didn't have dials, So imagine what they
Speaker 1: called a candlestick phone was like a black candlestick. Really
Speaker 1: at the base there was no dial. So what would
Speaker 1: happen is you would simply lift off the black receiver
Speaker 1: and you would speak into it. And what would happen
Speaker 1: is that by lifting it, it would trigger an electrical charge.
Speaker 1: The act of lifting the receiver would trigger a very
Speaker 1: tiny electrical charge which would go down the wire to
Speaker 1: the exchange, the telephone exchange wherever that was, whether it
Speaker 1: was your pb X exchange in the basement of your
Speaker 1: hotel or an exchange across town operated by a T
Speaker 1: and T. Then what would happen is a light would
Speaker 1: come on on the switchboard of the operator, or sometimes
Speaker 1: depending on the way the switchboard was set up, a
Speaker 1: flap would drop down. And that's where our current term
Speaker 1: I dropped call comes from. Switch to the network with
Speaker 1: the fewest dropped calls, So this flap would dropper, the
Speaker 1: light would light up, and the operator would say number please,
Speaker 1: and she would actually try to say the best I
Speaker 1: could because they were trained in a very specific way
Speaker 1: of where your voice goes up and where your voice
Speaker 1: goes down, and how long you pause number me, thank you.
Speaker 1: It was the time of tailorism, where everything is very
Speaker 1: scientifically managed. These operators have been trained to provide curfeus
Speaker 1: and speed easter. They wanted the human beings in a
Speaker 1: way to be as precise as the machines. If you,
Speaker 1: like me, weren't born before the implementation of direct distance dialing,
Speaker 1: that is, you've never picked up a phone and done
Speaker 1: anything besides dial You've probably seen this in films, rooms
Speaker 1: crowded with switchboards the size of desks or even walls,
Speaker 1: and cables everywhere, dre over and twisted around one another,
Speaker 1: hands in continuous motion, unplugging and reaching and replugging. Perhaps
Speaker 1: you've also noticed telephone operators are almost exclusively portrayed by women.
Speaker 1: And telegraph services, you would have what they call telegraph
Speaker 1: boys now often young men, and they would hear the
Speaker 1: Morse code and they would transcribe the message and then
Speaker 1: the message would be run by a messenger over to
Speaker 1: where it was going. And of course telegraphs are very
Speaker 1: clumsy for that reason, because it's not a spontaneous communications,
Speaker 1: it's a process. So when they first started using telephones
Speaker 1: and they needed operators to switch the calls, you know,
Speaker 1: to take one call incoming and switch it to the
Speaker 1: correct plug which would take it to the right person,
Speaker 1: they initially tried using young men and they found out
Speaker 1: a couple of problems. These boys were just not that polite.
Speaker 1: They didn't say things like number please. They did feel
Speaker 1: that the women just provided more consistent serve. This they
Speaker 1: were more consumer friendly. But more importantly, women were really
Speaker 1: good at it. Long distance, long distance, long distance. It
Speaker 1: was a very high paced, very stressful job with a
Speaker 1: lot of multitasking involved. To use some kind of modern term,
Speaker 1: words are coming in your ear, you're talking to somebody else,
Speaker 1: You're checking the wires to make sure that other people
Speaker 1: have completed their calls. You're also making notes about how
Speaker 1: long the call last is, because you're going to charge
Speaker 1: the customer based on how long the call lasted, note
Speaker 1: where the call went to. And you're doing this with
Speaker 1: a board of fifty calls that are coming in all
Speaker 1: at the same time. One woman described looking at these
Speaker 1: women's hands was like looking at hummingbirds darting all around,
Speaker 1: and you are being very polite the whole time, and
Speaker 1: you are never ever ever losing your temper for some reason.
Speaker 1: And when were just really good at this. A lot
Speaker 1: of men resisted the job too, because it was so
Speaker 1: identified with women. By this point, it was almost kind
Speaker 1: of a sex segregated occupation. Men who worked in the
Speaker 1: telephone offices in the United States were almost always exclusively
Speaker 1: the supervisors, because men were considered very good at supervisor women,
Speaker 1: but they were not very good at the phones themselves.
Speaker 1: They can't understand it word you're saying, oh boy, well,
Speaker 1: congratulations in the nineteen ten telephone operation was one of
Speaker 1: a rather limited number of professions available to women. Women's
Speaker 1: rights had actually improved some they had women could own property,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, and they could sign contracts, and the
Speaker 1: age of consent of marriage had been moved up from
Speaker 1: ten to about sixteen, and most states so big strides,
Speaker 1: big strides. And yet women didn't have elemental political rights.
Speaker 1: You were defined by the man in your life. Literally,
Speaker 1: really your nationality was defined by his They couldn't vote,
Speaker 1: of course, the right to vote in particular was opposed
Speaker 1: because people thought that it would make women less womanly,
Speaker 1: that you would lose your girls status or something, and
Speaker 1: that men would be less manly, and so you can't
Speaker 1: have that. The other reason was that government, in its
Speaker 1: most elemental way, it's about the physical defense of the nation.
Speaker 1: That's what governments do. They defend the people. And if
Speaker 1: you can't pick up a gun and be a soldier,
Speaker 1: well then you really shouldn't be in government. That one
Speaker 1: is kind of the extension of the other. The interesting
Speaker 1: thing about women's soldiers is that one of the things
Speaker 1: they helped to prove is that women can defend their government.
Speaker 1: In nineteen fourteen is were erupted across Europe, the world's
Speaker 1: largest neutral national pledged not to get involved. I know
Speaker 1: the United States is the world's largest neutral nation. Well,
Speaker 1: it is hard to imagine now, but it was true
Speaker 1: historically for most of our history, only until about seventy
Speaker 1: years ago. The United States had a longstanding of policy
Speaker 1: that went back to George Washington's farewell address, where he
Speaker 1: said it should be the great rule of the United States,
Speaker 1: um paraphrasing now, to not intervene in other people's quarrels. Yes,
Speaker 1: the United States defended itself and sometimes attacked others, but
Speaker 1: it was always explicitly because of something that was in
Speaker 1: our national interest. So the idea of intervening in other
Speaker 1: people's quarrels to help them resolve their problems was not
Speaker 1: something we had ever done. Woodrow Wilson initially said, this
Speaker 1: is a far away thing with which we have nothing
Speaker 1: to do. It can't touch us, which in a way
Speaker 1: he was really right. The United States has always been
Speaker 1: benefited by the fact that we had these giant oceans.
Speaker 1: In fact, that's one reason why people do look to us,
Speaker 1: is because we're kind of a global last wild place,
Speaker 1: so to make you know, we're less likely to be
Speaker 1: attacked than anybody else. But in April of nineteen seventeen,
Speaker 1: the United States broke with over one hundred years of
Speaker 1: tradition and declared war on Germany. So once the United
Speaker 1: States declared war, then there's a question of how do
Speaker 1: you go about it. The United States had never been
Speaker 1: in a major foreign war, had never had allies in
Speaker 1: a war before. Rather than when the French allied with
Speaker 1: us to help us get our revolution through, the man
Speaker 1: they tapped for this difficult job was decorated General John Pershing.
Speaker 1: A new kind of a war is leif in the world.
Speaker 1: General John Pershing was a kind of man from central casting,
Speaker 1: you know, square jaw, tall, steely blue eyes looking off
Speaker 1: into the distance. He was also a very competent officer.
Speaker 1: He had served in the West in command of a
Speaker 1: group of African American soldiers which were nicknamed buff those soldiers.
Speaker 1: He had served in the Spanish American War. He had
Speaker 1: actually led the famous Persian expedition to try to nab
Speaker 1: Poncho Villa from Mexico when ponto Via tech the United States.
Speaker 1: By the way, Poncho Villa escapes when he finished grammar
Speaker 1: school and got his high school diploma. He didn't have
Speaker 1: a job, and he so he i took a job
Speaker 1: teaching at as would have been described at the time
Speaker 1: a school for colored children. Later, when he was a
Speaker 1: drill instructor at West Point, he was taunted because he
Speaker 1: had led black troops. West Point, of course at that
Speaker 1: time all white, all male, and the white cadets didn't
Speaker 1: like him, and so they thought they would get back
Speaker 1: at him, and he got a nickname. Later, this derogatory
Speaker 1: nickname was commuted to black Jack. He was known as
Speaker 1: Blackjack for the rest of his entire career. We often
Speaker 1: think of the military as a conservative institution, but it's
Speaker 1: also the case that when people are trying to kill you,
Speaker 1: that you generally want the person at yours side on
Speaker 1: your side who is best at their job. And I
Speaker 1: think that that's what Blackjack was like. He was somebody
Speaker 1: who recognized that people could be very good at their
Speaker 1: jobs and they should be respected for that, and a
Speaker 1: place made for them on how to build and install
Speaker 1: a US Army abroad. Pershing was largely given carte blanche.
Speaker 1: He shipped out in June of v arrived in England
Speaker 1: and made his way to France. Pershing when he first
Speaker 1: gets there, is largely setting up what's going to happen,
Speaker 1: and the dough boys as they're called, don't really begin
Speaker 1: arriving in numbers until the spring. He takes by the
Speaker 1: way with him telephone equipment, knowing that the French have
Speaker 1: very little, very good telephone equipment. Telephones have been invented here,
Speaker 1: so all of the best telecommunications technologies on this side
Speaker 1: of the Atlantic, so they take some of that with
Speaker 1: them in the first ship that sales they get over
Speaker 1: to us, and they spend about five six months just
Speaker 1: sort of setting up and figuring out what they're gonna do.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that becomes really clear early
Speaker 1: on is that they cannot dog on it make a
Speaker 1: dang telephone call. The army is operating largely p b
Speaker 1: X boards, but to get outside the Army to call
Speaker 1: anywhere else, you have to connect with the local exchange.
Speaker 1: The local exchange is run by a French person and
Speaker 1: they all speak believe it or not, they all speak French.
Speaker 1: So one of the problems for these American der boys
Speaker 1: is that they're connecting with French operators, they can't speak
Speaker 1: the language and The other problem too, is that men
Speaker 1: just have not proved very good at this job. In
Speaker 1: November of nineteen seventeen, Pershing sends a memo back home,
Speaker 1: and he says, I have got to have women operators.
Speaker 1: Get them to France as soon as you can, make
Speaker 1: sure they're in uniform, put them under command, and get
Speaker 1: them over here. So immediately the War Department sends out
Speaker 1: press releases all over the country saying we want women operators.
Speaker 1: Women are needed to go over there. To quote that
Speaker 1: George M. Cohen song, What was put out was that
Speaker 1: women were needed as soldiers. Women would serve in uniform,
Speaker 1: They should leave their civilian garb at home. They would
Speaker 1: be subject to the same military discipline as the men,
Speaker 1: making the same kind of contribution, as important a contribution
Speaker 1: as even men who went over the top, because they
Speaker 1: said over the tops of the trenches in New Orleans
Speaker 1: be getting In early December of nineteen they are all
Speaker 1: these newspapers all around the country, you know, from from
Speaker 1: Atlanta to Seattle, Washington asking women to volunteer. Seventies si
Speaker 1: hundred women volunteer for the first one positions, so seventh
Speaker 1: thous and six women volunteer. They do it so fast
Speaker 1: the army doesn't even have applications, so then it takes
Speaker 1: him a few weeks to get that on board. One
Speaker 1: of the things is that they had to speak French
Speaker 1: without hesitation. They had to be able to simultaneously translate. Pronunciation,
Speaker 1: have to be very very good. They had to be
Speaker 1: very quick witted, They had to be very good listeners.
Speaker 1: They had to be just very adept physically. At these operations.
Speaker 1: They did sort of assume anybody who had all those
Speaker 1: kind of native characteristics could be taught telephone operating, and
Speaker 1: so they also trained them in that, and some people
Speaker 1: washed out of that. In the end, they did get
Speaker 1: the people who were their very best, whether by natural
Speaker 1: aptitude you're by practice. The keenness of American citizens to
Speaker 1: volunteer for the war effort speaks volumes about the attitudes
Speaker 1: of the time. There was really a sense of public service.
Speaker 1: The idea was that you were to do for your government.
Speaker 1: It wasn't what your government was to do for you.
Speaker 1: The notion that America was a democracy, that it was
Speaker 1: this government was its people was still a very present sentiment.
Speaker 1: Funds and daughters of pioneers, cousins of the people, who
Speaker 1: built America, especially because there was no professional army, or
Speaker 1: a very tiny one, so if the nation needed defending,
Speaker 1: it meant, well, gosh, it's up to us. It's our nation.
Speaker 1: We're the ones who've got to do this. And almost
Speaker 1: five hundred switchboard operators had become the first female soldiers
Speaker 1: of the U. S. Army. Two and twenty six would
Speaker 1: cross the Atlantic with the Signal Corps. Women served in
Speaker 1: myriad other capacities for the war effort. The U. S.
Speaker 1: Navy enlisted women for the first time to serve domestically.
Speaker 1: Red Cross nurses and y m c A volunteers risked
Speaker 1: life and limb abroad. But the Hello Girls, as these
Speaker 1: operators would be called, we're special. They have been vetted
Speaker 1: by the army. They have been investigated repeatedly by Army intelligence.
Speaker 1: Because keep in mind, these people are going to be
Speaker 1: handling national secrets literally in their hands, and through their headsets,
Speaker 1: they can hear every command that's going to go out,
Speaker 1: because in World War One almost all commands retreat fire.
Speaker 1: The actual business end of war is handled by the telephone,
Speaker 1: and through telephone operators. One of the most important persons
Speaker 1: is Grace Banker, who was a twenty five year old woman.
Speaker 1: She had been a telephone supervisor in New York City,
Speaker 1: recent college graduate of Barnard College, all women's college associated
Speaker 1: with Columbia University, which didn't yet admit women. One week
Speaker 1: she applies to go into the signal Corps and she
Speaker 1: doesn't hear back, and she writes them again a week
Speaker 1: later and says, you know, I hope you didn't lose
Speaker 1: my letter. And then the week after that she's inducted
Speaker 1: and fingerprinted and told, oh, actually you're gonna be in
Speaker 1: charge of the first contingent. There had never been women soldiers,
Speaker 1: so there weren't women officers. So they immediately looked around
Speaker 1: and said, okay, well you know who might be officer material.
Speaker 1: And here's a young woman who's done this very rare
Speaker 1: thing at the time, which is to become a college graduate.
Speaker 1: It's the blame of old Montana Little, the cowboy girl,
Speaker 1: Amana Bell, the Golden Well. Grace. Banker's good friend Merle
Speaker 1: Egan was from Montana. They didn't know each other they
Speaker 1: met going in, but they could be paying good friends.
Speaker 1: She always described yourself as stubborn gal. I also have
Speaker 1: I have a particular weakness for I might say Louise
Speaker 1: and Raymond le Breton, this was oh you too too.
Speaker 1: They were the sisters who were just you know, they
Speaker 1: were well, they weren't very truthful at times. They lied
Speaker 1: like a rug. They wanted to get in the war.
Speaker 1: They were French descent, they spoke French fluently. Louise was
Speaker 1: eighteen and she told the army she was twenty one,
Speaker 1: and her sister Remoaned was sixteen and told the army
Speaker 1: she was eighteen when Army intelligence interviewed them. As all
Speaker 1: these women were interviewed multiple times, Army intelligence reports wrote back,
Speaker 1: and of course I saw the reports in their personnel files.
Speaker 1: They're very mature for their ages. We think they're going
Speaker 1: to do very well. They were very mature for the
Speaker 1: ages they had lied about. There were others. There were
Speaker 1: just so many wonderful women with all these crazy nicknames
Speaker 1: for each other's like you know, there was Esther Tutsie
Speaker 1: to you Tutsie Frisnell, and Suzanne Prevo who was known
Speaker 1: as the wild Cat. And it's funny. I think often
Speaker 1: we look back and people from previous generations and we
Speaker 1: assumed that they were all just kind of prudish and
Speaker 1: that they were all just very staid and sedate and
Speaker 1: never uttered cuss words. Since things and they were different,
Speaker 1: their values were different, but they were just as young
Speaker 1: and vibrant as any millennial, doing what they believed in,
Speaker 1: doing what they loved, you know, wanting to be a
Speaker 1: part of the wider world. While the women, by the way,
Speaker 1: were being inducted and trained and shipped to France. Internally,
Speaker 1: in the army's own internal administration, there was a conversation
Speaker 1: that went on for about five months where the army
Speaker 1: ultimately says, you know what, we're going to consider them
Speaker 1: contract workers. So although the army gave them no contracts
Speaker 1: and in fact had them where the same oath as
Speaker 1: all of the men swore who were inducted, the women
Speaker 1: never knew that the Army, at least internally and its
Speaker 1: upper bureaucracies, did not see them as full soldiers. The
Speaker 1: women thought they were, Let's be clear, they were. In
Speaker 1: early March of the first contingent of thirty three women
Speaker 1: ship out. They all went to France, which itself was
Speaker 1: a little dicey because you know, your ship could be
Speaker 1: sunk at any moment. They're on constant alert until they
Speaker 1: get to England. You're wearing your life jacket even to bed.
Speaker 1: When they arrive, Paris itself is under bombardment. The first
Speaker 1: night they're there, they have to go down into the
Speaker 1: bomb shelters because there's incoming from the German artillery, which
Speaker 1: is now within twenty miles of Paris. It's rainy, it's cold,
Speaker 1: it's freezing. They walk out to work and the mud
Speaker 1: is so deep that they have to put where they
Speaker 1: called duck boards over the muck. Once the battles start,
Speaker 1: they're working sometimes around the clock. There's bombs going off,
Speaker 1: there's artillery concussions are shaking their boards. When the German
Speaker 1: guns got so close the windows would blow out. At
Speaker 1: one point the group of men Russian and tell the women,
Speaker 1: you've got to get out, and the women say we
Speaker 1: will as soon as you do. You're not getting handed
Speaker 1: night towards the end of the war, at one point
Speaker 1: the women were and the men were in these very
Speaker 1: flimsy wooden barracks that look more or less like chicken
Speaker 1: coops that the French had left behind after the Battle
Speaker 1: of Redunda, that they move into and operate. They both
Speaker 1: sleep in them, and their telephone equipment is in them,
Speaker 1: and they messed together, meaning they have breakfast, lunch, and
Speaker 1: dinner together, the women and the men, the officers. The
Speaker 1: prison of work Hampan is right next door to and
Speaker 1: the army field evacuation hospitals right next door, so they
Speaker 1: see all the people coming back torn apart. In fact,
Speaker 1: in their spirit time, the women often went into the
Speaker 1: hospitals to talk to the men because it was very
Speaker 1: cheering to the men to see an American woman a face,
Speaker 1: you know, to hold their hands as they're dying, and
Speaker 1: it was They didn't write about it a lot, but
Speaker 1: they were that's what they were doing. Um you know,
Speaker 1: they had these descriptions they wrote in their diaries. So
Speaker 1: these scenes they saw in those hospitals, which is one,
Speaker 1: as Grace Banker said, would make a pacifist of anyone,
Speaker 1: and she was a soldier. At one point, the German
Speaker 1: prisoner of work knocks over an oil stove and their
Speaker 1: barracks goes up in flanks. The women lose all of
Speaker 1: their possessions, and right next door they're connecting telephone calls
Speaker 1: in a very we're building me out of the same
Speaker 1: chicken cook got of construction and it starts filling with smoke.
Speaker 1: They refused to leave, and the men or climb on
Speaker 1: top of the building are pouring water on it, trying
Speaker 1: to preserve obviously not only the women, but also this equipment,
Speaker 1: because this American made equipment is not available anywhere else
Speaker 1: in the world, has been brought across the ocean for
Speaker 1: this very purpose. Finally, the situation is too dire and
Speaker 1: they tell the women to get out. We're now ordering
Speaker 1: you to get out. They pull out the equipment into
Speaker 1: the nearby field. Somehow they managed to get the fire out,
Speaker 1: put the equipment back in, and they start up operating
Speaker 1: again within half an hour. I mentioned half an hour
Speaker 1: because General George Squire later reported to Congress that in
Speaker 1: a modern war, if communications meaning basically the telephone goes
Speaker 1: down for even an hour, the whole military machine collapses.
Speaker 1: So they were only down for thirty minutes, and the
Speaker 1: women felt pretty proud about that. A renaissance of human engineering.
Speaker 1: The First World War one of the deadliest in history.
Speaker 1: It's the first war of the Industrial Revolution. It's the
Speaker 1: first technological war. So all the amazing cool stuff that's
Speaker 1: been invented in the nineteenth century gets applied to killing
Speaker 1: other human beings, planes and motorized transport and rapid fire
Speaker 1: guns and telephones. This is the first big war with
Speaker 1: modern communications. Unreliable wartime communication dated back to antiquity smoke signals,
Speaker 1: passenger pigel flags, lights and sales signaling. Each had their drawbacks.
Speaker 1: People think, well, radio that was the hot new technology,
Speaker 1: and it was, but it was very clumsy. It took
Speaker 1: three mules to drag a radio set to the field.
Speaker 1: Radio transmissions were wireless and so therefore they can be intercepted.
Speaker 1: And also if there are a lot of messages coming
Speaker 1: from one area, even if you couldn't decode it, you
Speaker 1: at least know that a lot of messages are coming
Speaker 1: from this one place, which means its headquarters. The other
Speaker 1: problem with radios is that they as a form of communication,
Speaker 1: they did not yet carry voices. So radios at this
Speaker 1: time were a form of wireless telegraph. It was Morse code,
Speaker 1: so it required someone to decode the radio transmission. So
Speaker 1: the telephone is amazing. Anybody can talk the other person
Speaker 1: hears immediately what's being said and understands it. It's wired,
Speaker 1: which means that if you want to intercept a call,
Speaker 1: you have to find these specific wire which goes to
Speaker 1: these specific place and then tap into it. Now, even
Speaker 1: the tapping into it would create a kind of funny
Speaker 1: sound on the wires, and experienced operader could often tell.
Speaker 1: And the other thing is that it was easy and lightweight.
Speaker 1: You could put wire in a spindle and run it
Speaker 1: out across the battlefield. The best method is to carry
Speaker 1: the reel and dust the wire. You go jumping craters
Speaker 1: and getting to the other side, and making sure that
Speaker 1: your men have communication all times back home. This method
Speaker 1: is the bathest of all where it can be used.
Speaker 1: A T and T put whole battalions of men in France,
Speaker 1: a T and T line workers and supervisors and engineers.
Speaker 1: They all went together as what we're called the bell battalions,
Speaker 1: and the diamond wish at the center of it. All
Speaker 1: all that wire and all that equipment. It doesn't mean
Speaker 1: anything if you do not have an operator. In her
Speaker 1: book on the Hello Girls, Elizabeth writes telephones became the
Speaker 1: central nervous system of the U. S. Army switchboards where
Speaker 1: its synapsis. The Army did have to use men sometimes,
Speaker 1: and they found that it took the average infantrymen sixty
Speaker 1: seconds to complete a call. It took the average woman
Speaker 1: ten seconds, So in war time, the difference between sixty
Speaker 1: seconds and ten seconds is the difference between living or
Speaker 1: getting your head blown off. Even after the US officially
Speaker 1: entered the conflict, more than a year passed before American
Speaker 1: troops engaged in combat. General Pershing felt that the most
Speaker 1: significant blow to German morale and to the German war
Speaker 1: machine would be to hit all at once with a
Speaker 1: full sized American army. America had no army, so I
Speaker 1: had to recruit and train all those men and equip
Speaker 1: them and ship them across the ocean. It just took
Speaker 1: a long time. It's not until the fall of night.
Speaker 1: The war has now gone on longer than four years,
Speaker 1: and the Americans are finally there in mass. There were
Speaker 1: seven women who accompanied General Pershing at the Great American
Speaker 1: battles of the war, which were the two big battles
Speaker 1: towards the end, Saint Miel and the Battle of muzar Gone.
Speaker 1: Pershing needed women, wanted women there because this is really
Speaker 1: where the rubber meets the road. The few women who
Speaker 1: were initially taken to that first great American battle at
Speaker 1: San Miel, it was kind of an experiment. Their secret
Speaker 1: orders were just written as a note. We have that
Speaker 1: note now. It's just recently on Earth and it says
Speaker 1: secret orders to misprovo Ms. Presnell, Miss Banker, you're going
Speaker 1: to the front and get ready to lead a roving life.
Speaker 1: They had gas masks on their chairs, they had trench
Speaker 1: helmets which they were required to wear outdoors at all times.
Speaker 1: They were trained in how to use pistols should their
Speaker 1: position be overwhelmed. That was a very short battle, is
Speaker 1: actually really three to four day battle. At the end
Speaker 1: of it, General Pershing actually spied the women. Things were
Speaker 1: calming down and some of the women were walking down
Speaker 1: the street and he said to Colonel Parker Hit, their supervisor,
Speaker 1: how are the women doing? And Hits said, well, let's
Speaker 1: go across the street and ask them. So Pershing crosses
Speaker 1: the street and the women salute him, and he says,
Speaker 1: how's it going at ladies, And they said very well, sir,
Speaker 1: And he said, is there anything more you want and
Speaker 1: they said, we just want to be as close to
Speaker 1: the action as we can get. He at that point
Speaker 1: turned to Colonel Hit and he said, take them where
Speaker 1: they want to go. Was at that point that then
Speaker 1: they're committed to going to the Battle of Musargne, which
Speaker 1: goes on for forty seven days, and there's this epic
Speaker 1: scale battle that was what helps to end the war.
Speaker 1: The Battle of Mozargone would put all their logistics to
Speaker 1: the test. Fresh American soldiers marched into battle alongside their
Speaker 1: European allies. They would hit the Germans with everything they had.
Speaker 1: Everybody ramps up to execute the last engagements of the war,
Speaker 1: and even then nobody knows that Germans are fantastic fighters.
Speaker 1: In some ways, persian Is is deluded as all the
Speaker 1: other officers of the French and the German and the British.
Speaker 1: He does what they did, throws bodies against protected trenches,
Speaker 1: against machine gun and placements, and people are mowed down.
Speaker 1: The ballamas are gone. Itself. Is just one of the
Speaker 1: bloodiest battles in all of American history, one of the
Speaker 1: longest battles. The tempo in the switchboard room, the women said,
Speaker 1: you just can't imagine it, just cannot imagine the speed
Speaker 1: of this. There's all this effort to just get the
Speaker 1: men into place, and then Coban it starts and the
Speaker 1: women are fielding calls this whole time, Calls of all
Speaker 1: sorts including friendly fire. We've now overrun our position, and
Speaker 1: our men behind us are now firing into where Americans
Speaker 1: have advanced, and so our own troops are story need
Speaker 1: to get hit. And how do they communicate that. They
Speaker 1: get on their telephones and they call back to the
Speaker 1: switchboard operators who put them into command, into touch with
Speaker 1: the artillery command, who tells the man stop. And they're
Speaker 1: also air basis. They don't go open the planes until
Speaker 1: they get the phone call, which says, Okay, now you go,
Speaker 1: and this is where you're going to go. So everything
Speaker 1: is coordinated through these telephones. Nobody knew how long it
Speaker 1: would go. Most people thought the war would probably last
Speaker 1: another year into nine, but the American presence really did help. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: it is the combined efforts of all the armies, the French, British,
Speaker 1: the Americans that convinces the Germans that the war is
Speaker 1: just never going to go their way. The war ends
Speaker 1: at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the
Speaker 1: eleventh month. On November eleven, Germany signed the armistice, ending
Speaker 1: World War One. But for the Hello Girls and millions
Speaker 1: more women across the Atlantic, the battle at Home raged
Speaker 1: on since at least the Seneca Falls Convention of eighteen,
Speaker 1: activists in America had been formally petitioning for a federal
Speaker 1: amendment to enfranchise women, but the nineteen tens not much
Speaker 1: had changed. There's a tipping point for the nineteenth amendment
Speaker 1: simply it is World War One. Women's participation in World
Speaker 1: War One, which was much broader than the telephone operators.
Speaker 1: Women had served as nurses, just volunteers at home as
Speaker 1: well and yes on the battlefields. In that way, women's
Speaker 1: rights and their women's right to vote is in parallel
Speaker 1: with the earlier right of African American men to vote
Speaker 1: because they pick up arms in the Civil War. Similarly,
Speaker 1: at the beginning of the United States, men who didn't
Speaker 1: own property picked up muskets at Lexington and Concord. President Wilson,
Speaker 1: who initially resisted entering the war, had also positioned himself
Speaker 1: against women's suffrage. Woodward Wilson, who had staunchly opposed a
Speaker 1: national amendment to the Constitution to enfranchised women, he comes
Speaker 1: around to their point of view, and in fact, he
Speaker 1: gives this beautiful speech to the U. S. Senate in
Speaker 1: October of from paraphrasing, but he says something like are
Speaker 1: we going to ask for and take all that women
Speaker 1: can give, and say, we still do not see what
Speaker 1: rights this gives him. And he noted the fact that
Speaker 1: by this point twenty other countries, largely because of World
Speaker 1: War One, had enfranchised women. Bolshevik Russia, Germany, Great Britain, Canada,
Speaker 1: and all kinds of countries set enfranchised women. And he said,
Speaker 1: are we going to be the last to learn the lesson?
Speaker 1: I think of the irony of that. You're the first
Speaker 1: modern democracy, every public and it's one of the last
Speaker 1: to give women the vote. As he says in his
Speaker 1: speech to the U. S. Senate, We're going to have
Speaker 1: to resign the leadership of liberal minds around the world
Speaker 1: if we cannot do this thing that everybody else is doing,
Speaker 1: if we cannot honor the citizenship of women. One of
Speaker 1: the reasons why he's so reluctant to do so has
Speaker 1: much less to do with gender than it has to
Speaker 1: do with race. Race is actually the uninvited guest to
Speaker 1: the party. Has it is so often in American politics,
Speaker 1: a lot of the opposition to a federal suffrage amendment
Speaker 1: for women is too full. First of all, Southern states
Speaker 1: do not want the federal government telenom pretty much anything,
Speaker 1: but especially about voting rights. The second problem is that
Speaker 1: the federal Suffrage Amendment is worded that it will include
Speaker 1: all women, So this will mean African American women and
Speaker 1: can vote too. And the really remarkable thing when you
Speaker 1: actually read the records of the U. S. Congress at
Speaker 1: this time, again and again in the U. S. Congress
Speaker 1: has said very openly and repeatedly, well, we all know
Speaker 1: that the fifteenth Amendment was a mistake, meaning that the
Speaker 1: amendment that enfranchise black men. And there is not a
Speaker 1: single moment in the US Congressional record where someone stands
Speaker 1: up and says, no, the fifteenth Amendment that was right. Okay,
Speaker 1: I might not agree with votes for women, but certainly
Speaker 1: African American mentioned vote. So there was this turning away
Speaker 1: from what had been accomplished in the Civil War itself.
Speaker 1: So when Woodrow Wilson becomes an advocate for women's suffrage,
Speaker 1: he knows he's enfranchising African American women. Of course, in
Speaker 1: the South, because of Jim Crow and Pole to access
Speaker 1: the South will pretty readily disenfranchise those who legally should
Speaker 1: be able to vote. But at least on paper, black
Speaker 1: men and and now African American women will have vote,
Speaker 1: And that's because of Woodrow Wilson. He's the one who
Speaker 1: really pushes that across the finish line. The Nineteenth Amendment
Speaker 1: was officially adopted on August, but of course that's not
Speaker 1: the end of the story. While the Amendment was a
Speaker 1: major achievement, issues of voting rights and equal rights for
Speaker 1: all people were and are far from being resolved in
Speaker 1: this country. History is not a light switch. You don't like,
Speaker 1: go oh, let's all be good people now switch Every
Speaker 1: generation has this tax. Can we all I like to
Speaker 1: think we all push the marker forward? To make that
Speaker 1: perfectly clear, all one has to do is follow the
Speaker 1: soldiers home from World War One. After the eighteen Armistice,
Speaker 1: the US Congress has vote a bonus for any person
Speaker 1: who served in the U s. Armed Forces in an
Speaker 1: official capacity. Women who were in the Navy and Marines,
Speaker 1: like all the men, of course, get victory medals saying yes,
Speaker 1: thank you for serving the country. They get hospitalization benefits
Speaker 1: that they've endured some sort of disability or injury. They
Speaker 1: get to join groups like the Veterans of Foreign Warrors
Speaker 1: and Foreign Legion, and these organizations that are formed around
Speaker 1: that same time. They get all of the kind of
Speaker 1: recognition and they literally monetary benefits that come to soldiers.
Speaker 1: The women who were in the U. S. Army come
Speaker 1: home and they find out that the army does not
Speaker 1: consider them eligible for anything. The army considers them soldiers
Speaker 1: up until the moment they are discharged. The minute they're
Speaker 1: out of the army, the army says, oh, well, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, you were contract employees. I've been in army
Speaker 1: uniform for months now, and I've been trained, and I've
Speaker 1: been sworn into the army. What do you mean I'm
Speaker 1: not army. Of course, in France, the women are being
Speaker 1: told oil, you can't go home. You're in the army now,
Speaker 1: you know, stay put until we tell you can. Operator
Speaker 1: General George Squire was one of those people who was
Speaker 1: shocked and dismayed and horrified that these women veterans, who
Speaker 1: had served so honorably and so effectively, they didn't get
Speaker 1: the things that the men they served alongside did get.
Speaker 1: He several times petitioned Congress for the veterans Medals, for
Speaker 1: the Victory Medal, for the disability of benefits, for the
Speaker 1: bonuses that the men got and each time was told no,
Speaker 1: the War Department did not support that effort. Ironically, by
Speaker 1: the way, the War Department was is headed by a civilian,
Speaker 1: so within the army itself there was much more favorable
Speaker 1: attitude towards the women. And then in the administration at
Speaker 1: the executive level, which was supervising the army, one might say,
Speaker 1: beginning in the nineteen twenties, and then in the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: and in the nineteen forties, and in the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: and in the nineteen sixties, and in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: these women get their local congressmen to introduce legislation. They
Speaker 1: write the president's they write Roosevelt and Truman and Eisenhower
Speaker 1: and Kennedy and Johnson and on all the way up
Speaker 1: through Jimmy Carter, saying all we want is to be recognized,
Speaker 1: so the army just doesn't see them. And over time
Speaker 1: the story gets fainter and fainter, like a bad telephone
Speaker 1: transmission itself, and the static crackles over and the stories
Speaker 1: lost altogether. They get to the point, by the nineteen
Speaker 1: thirties they're telling women who ride in and asking for
Speaker 1: their benefits. They're saying, well, you didn't even swear oaths.
Speaker 1: Now I have to do is look in the records
Speaker 1: as I did, and the personal records, and there's oath
Speaker 1: upon oath upon oath upon oath upon. Merle Egan became
Speaker 1: the leading voice in this charge. As a senior citizen,
Speaker 1: she was still seeking recognition for the Hello Girls. At
Speaker 1: some point, she writes to a friend that people sometimes
Speaker 1: ask me why I am still campaigning for this deep
Speaker 1: into my eighties, Because I love my country, and so
Speaker 1: I want my country to be worth loving. Merle Egan
Speaker 1: would go to elementary schools and she's made this doll.
Speaker 1: It's like a Barbie doll, and she's so's a teeny
Speaker 1: tiny uniform, and she puts her old brass and signey
Speaker 1: on the cap, and she goes to school children. She
Speaker 1: wants to tell them the story of the Hello Girls,
Speaker 1: so that somebody won't forget. People won't forget that there
Speaker 1: were these women who served in World War One. In July,
Speaker 1: the Seattle Times published an article on Merle Egan and
Speaker 1: her campaign. A young attorney named Marco happened to catch
Speaker 1: this story in the newspaper. He reads this article and
Speaker 1: he calls her up, and he said, I think you've
Speaker 1: got a legal case here. Do you need any help?
Speaker 1: And she says, well, yes, young man, I love that.
Speaker 1: So he assembles this case and begins to put it
Speaker 1: together and collects all this documentation. Me while there is
Speaker 1: a paralleled legislation that's underway in the U. S. Congress
Speaker 1: to acknowledge the women of World War Two, these women
Speaker 1: also had been not recognized as veterans. So it's the
Speaker 1: signal core telephone operators and the Women's Air Force Service
Speaker 1: pilots of World War Two. On the same legislation. Mark
Speaker 1: Ho testifies to the US Congress and he makes this
Speaker 1: incredible legal argument which essentially revolves around these uniforms. Do
Speaker 1: you realize that it is against the law to impersonate
Speaker 1: an officer of the United States government. It's against the
Speaker 1: law to impersonate a police officer. So if your government,
Speaker 1: your federal government, gives you a uniform and tells you
Speaker 1: you must never take it off, you must never take
Speaker 1: off that uniform unless you're in bed with the door closed.
Speaker 1: You may never remove those dog tags. You have made
Speaker 1: them into representatives of the American government. You have made
Speaker 1: them into soldiers by telling them they must always wear
Speaker 1: this uniform. Essentially, he says, you know, we're prepared to sue.
Speaker 1: And the US Congress realizes that this is not only
Speaker 1: the right thing to do, but also the Hello girls
Speaker 1: as well as the women of World War who have
Speaker 1: a pretty powerful legal argument. And so finally, in nineteen seven,
Speaker 1: sixty years after the women were initially recruited, this legislation
Speaker 1: has passed. And then in ninety nine they are finally
Speaker 1: given their discharge papers from World War One, which entitled
Speaker 1: them to the flags on their coffin, to their victory medals.
Speaker 1: And Merle Egan, who gets her discharge papers at a
Speaker 1: formal ceremony in Seattle, Washington, she gives us great speech.
Speaker 1: She says, I'm so proud. I'm so excited not only
Speaker 1: to receive my victory medal for serving in World War One,
Speaker 1: but I consider it a medal for having fought the U. S.
Speaker 1: Army for sixty years and winning meal. Eagan passed away
Speaker 1: in she was buried with military honors. In researching this topic,
Speaker 1: Elizabeth On covered diary entries, letters, photographs, army gear, ephemera
Speaker 1: that in some cases had not been seen in a
Speaker 1: hundred years. The National Archives is very very recently released
Speaker 1: film footage, old archaic film footage of World War One.
Speaker 1: Grace Banker's granddaughter calls me one day. She says, I
Speaker 1: think I found my grandmother. Do you think this is Grace?
Speaker 1: And she sends me the link and I go on it,
Speaker 1: and I've actually seen probably more photographs of Grace than
Speaker 1: she has in World War One. I say, oh, my gosh,
Speaker 1: of course that's Grace. And she's talking and laughing and
Speaker 1: connecting phone calls. And then we get footage that shows
Speaker 1: after the armistice, General Pershing at a reviewing stand with
Speaker 1: thousands of men lined up in these long lines you
Speaker 1: know that go off into the distance, and he's up
Speaker 1: there giving a speech to the men about you know,
Speaker 1: this great victory and it's because of you that this happens.
Speaker 1: And we don't hear his voice, we just see him
Speaker 1: speaking because it's silent film. And in the front row
Speaker 1: of the reviewing stand are the women at attention in
Speaker 1: their uniforms in the front row. And then the army
Speaker 1: later can't see them, can't see them at all. They
Speaker 1: just vanish, which is what I think has been the
Speaker 1: record of women in history and the people of color
Speaker 1: to it. It vanishes. Everybody knows it at the time,
Speaker 1: and then it's not documented and recorded, and so we think, well,
Speaker 1: maybe it wasn't very important, maybe they didn't play a
Speaker 1: very significant role, maybe it never really happened. We're all
Speaker 1: people of modern political correctness. We're just kind of amping
Speaker 1: it up. But it's they were there, and they did
Speaker 1: really important things, and if we take the time to look,
Speaker 1: we'll find them say that. I Femeral is written and
Speaker 1: assembled by and produced by Annie Reese, Matt Frederick, and
Speaker 1: Tristan McNeil, with technical assistance from Sherry Larson, and special
Speaker 1: thanks this episode to Gretchen Prairie and Miranda Hawkins. Elizabeth
Speaker 1: Cobbs is the author of The Hello Girls, America's First
Speaker 1: Women's Soldiers, which was adapted into a documentary. Her newest
Speaker 1: book is The Tubbman Command, a novel following Harriett Tubber.
Speaker 1: Find links to all her work at Elizabeth Cobbs dot
Speaker 1: com and links to ours at Femeral dot Show. And
Speaker 1: thanks to work as Folk and musical director Sandra Kerr
Speaker 1: for sharing their rendition of the March of the Women,
Speaker 1: a Suffragist so composed by Ethel smythe in nineteen ten
Speaker 1: thanks on our website. Ways as a very days as
Speaker 1: a dreary sory day by baby have all, as he says,
Speaker 1: wherey may that the break walls lie strike He's to
Speaker 1: our no, it's candy win. But by day and day,
Speaker 1: all that she had done for the work of to
Speaker 1: day grea biry for and realize love device love sure
Speaker 1: is he nuch much, shows shower Friend. Next time on
Speaker 1: a semi two doors, set down at the piano, placed
Speaker 1: the score in the stand, took out a stop watch
Speaker 1: and closed the lid over the keys. He started to
Speaker 1: stop watch. Thirty seconds later, he opened the lid, then
Speaker 1: closed it back over the keys. He did the same
Speaker 1: thing two minutes and three seconds later, turning the pages
Speaker 1: of the score, all the while performing each of the
Speaker 1: actions as quietly as possible. And a minute and forty
Speaker 1: seconds after that, he stood as if to receive applause.
Speaker 1: World nine Man and in Acus and free from shoe
Speaker 1: pack us from imot Radian. These like the irt radio
Speaker 1: or Apple podcasts, you know everythings in your favorite shows