My Sisters Telegraphic. By Thomas C. Jepsen. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2000. Pp. x, 231. $49.96, cloth; $21.95, paper.

Abstract

In what he terms a pursuit of “unwritten history” (p. 197), Thomas Jepsen has penned a social history of women in telegraphy during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Jepsen is well versed in the technology of the industry and has written several articles on women telegraphers. Here in seven chapters he describes the extent of female employment, both in the United States and other countries, and then ranges widely over a host of issues. These include wages, working conditions, personal characteristics of women telegraphers, social class, ethnicity, mechanization, love in the office, and even women telegraphers in literature and the cinema. There is also a considerable discussion of the role women played in the many, mostly unsuccessful attempts of telegraphers to unionize. The book is based on a wide reading of primary sources including the Western Union Archives, as well as much secondary literature.