Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 66, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 March 1918 — Telephone Pest Branded As a Frightful and Most Unwelcome of Creatures [ARTICLE]

Telephone Pest Branded As a Frightful and Most Unwelcome of Creatures

Probably there is no single mechanical contrivance so absolutely essential to our convenience and comfort today as the telephone. It is the largest small thing in modern commercial, mercantile and social life, and without it we, would be as hopelessly lost in the sea of endeavor as a ship without a compass, says a writer in the Pitts-, burgh Dispatch—if on some balmy, windy or snowy morning, afternoon or evening, the Fool Killer will take time to plant a thunderous wallop upon the low brow of the telephone pest, he will hear the loudest burst of applause in his experience. Persons who have had telephones ever since it was necessary to crank them before starting a conversation, will, upon hearing the contact of the cruel club and pest’s pate, give vent to their emotions in cheers, hand-clap-pings, shrill whistles and tweets of “Bravo.” For a telephone pest is a frightful creature. Until Alexander Graham Bell, by his wonderful invention made it possible for a nut to extend his field'of operations as far as he had money to pay for, countless persons who are now nervous derelicts lived calm, well-balanced lives. If they were fleet of foot or athletic the* could readily circle the tiresome person at top speed or hop onto a car going into any direction the moment they set eyes upon him. Now, it is different The mental wildcat drops a nickel in the slot, pulls the door shut after him, and has his victim just where he wants him. The types of these “jitney” howlers are as diversified as their range of voice, but their ability to provoke heat under starched collars, to bring water to the eyeglasses and to cause a frenzy of undrilled dancing on the other end of their unspeakable wire is unfailing.