What's My Line?

In a crowded world where privacy is increasingly difficult, more and more Americans are trying to exert some measure of control over who can summon them out of a hot bath, a sound sleep, or an absorbing conversation. The unlisted phone number, long a hallmark of distinction for the few, has become nearly as common as a credit card.

Of the Bell System's 66 million phones and extensions.* 4,000,000 numbers are unlisted. Of New York City's 2,275,000 private phones. 280,000 are unlisted, and the number grows by 3,000 per month. Of Denver's 487,318 phones, 20,710 are unlisted (up 5,453 from the previous year); 14% of Chicago's private phones are unlisted, as are some 19% of Los Angeles'.

This trend is far from pleasing to the telephone companies. "It interferes with our basic function,'' says a spokesman plaintively. "We're supposed to be helping people communicate." There are also less philosophical reasons. The more unlisted numbers, the fewer phone calls, the less revenue. And the more work: operators spend time looking up numbers for inquirers, finding them unlisted, then explaining over and over that the number cannot be divulged, even though the caller is an old Army buddy, a favorite aunt, or a client who wants to place a big order.

The phone companies do their best to discourage would-be unlisteds by pointing out all the inconveniences involved, plus the hazard of being unreachable in an emergency. One common problem is forgetting one's own number and being unable to call home on some urgent matter--which is said to have happened to President Franklin Roosevelt, trying to call his wife in Manhattan.

There are many reasons for the vogue. "It's like belonging to an exclusive club," says one unlisted, "and the implication is that one must be very important." Show biz types have an easily understood reason for avoiding telephonic pestering, or pretending to. One Brooklyn movie theater manager is unlisted to avoid the calls he used to get from irate parents whose children he had to eject for rowdiness. Night workers who sleep during the day often have their phones unlisted, and so do some old ladies who are painfully conscious of their vulnerability to a hard-luck story. Doctors and top executives sometimes keep one phone unlisted for outgoing calls only, and the parents of teen-agers often find it expedient to turn the listed phone over to the children and keep an unlisted one themselves.

* Bell accounts for nearly all the phones in nearly all the nation's urban areas; there are an additional 13,000,000 phones, divided among 2,845 companies serving mostly rural areas, where unlisted numbers are rare.

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