NEW YORK: Line’s Busy

The warborn shortage of telephones frustrated life in many a U.S. home. In New York City alone last week, despite the addition of a new exchange (Plaza 9), 320,000 applicants were still waiting to clutch a phone of their own.

An alarmed New York Telephone Co. reported that daily calls had risen to a whopping 12,815,000 after V-J day—over a third more than the average prewar chatter. Conversations over private lines were getting longer & longer; wires were especially busy on rainy days, Mondays, and days after holidays. Observed the New York Daily News: “The telephone people aren’t telling which sex gets on a busy wire and talks for half-hour stretches about two-egg cakes and such things. We’re not sticking our neck out, either. . . . We’ve just got an epidemic of telephonitis on our hands and . . . we doubt if it’ll ever be cured.”