New England Telephone Operators’ Union Strike begins.

Led by Julia O’Connor, some 12,000 members of the New England Telephone and Telegraph Company, two-thirds of them women, go out on a strike that paralyzes phone service in the region. Describing conditions in the Boston telephone exchange office at 8 Harrison Avenue that led to the strike, O’Connor explains, “Operators are seated so close together that arms and shoulders touch as they reach for subscribers’ signals. Electric fans stir the air sluggishly, making it hotter and with their buzzing and humming . . . operators who become hysterical or faint, carried from the board.” The strike ends when management agrees to increase wages and improve working conditions on April 22, 1919. Workers stage another, less successful strike in 1923.*