Listening In on the Party Line, 1914

Do you wonder if someone is listening in on your private telephone conversations? In 1914, especially in rural areas, it was likely that someone was. Here's an article entitled "Listening On the Wire" from the May 16, 1914 issue of the Washington Post about a small town in Illinois that turned down private telephone lines in favor of the less private party lines.

If there were a Nobel prize for candor, it should be awarded jointly to the residents of Byron, Ogle county, Ill. They have confessed the greatest venial sin of the farming districts, the sin rarely confessed and never forgiven. They listen on the party line, and they love it so that they would rather admit it than have the pleasure taken away from them.

All this came out when the telephone company offered to give Byron an up-to-date system with individual service at no increase in cost. To the amazement of the public utilities commission the Byron folk declined the apparent boon. Questioned, they declared that such a change would deprive them of their finest evening amusement.

You may draw for yourself the picture of five yawning, drowsy families in Byron all on the same line. it is too early to go to bed and too far to walk to the moving picture show. The motorcar is out of order and all the magazines have been read. Bridge has never been introduced into the family, and checkers are passe. Dullness reigns.

Tinkle, tinkle! The family is aroused to life. Two long and a short. That is for the Bilkinsens down the road. And a few minutes -- or half an hour--later, the receiver is silently dropped back upon the hook and the waiting family hears, in minute details, all the "Said-shes" and "Said-Is" and "He's-been-beating-her-agains."

Multiply this scene by three or four and you have the sum of the pleasure of listening on the wire. The game puts the village postmaster out of business as a clearing house for gossip. Yet until Byron was driven to confessing, everybody has always denied committing the sin.

Incidentally, listening on the wire is an indoor sport that is not confined to farming districts. It is enjoyed in the cities, too. Strangely enough, the person most frequently accused of listening on the wire is the one innocent person. That's Central. She hasn't time to listen, and even if she had she has troubles enough of her own without picking any more off the wire.