Women in the Utah Work Force from Statehood to World War II
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Miriam B. Murphy—Mims, as she was called—contributed much to the writing of Utah’s history. Born in 1933 to Edward A. Brinton and Julia Maxfield Brinton, Murphy grew up in Salt Lake City and graduated from West High School. She began honing her skill with words as a young woman: she majored in English Literature at University of California Berkeley and the University of Utah, where she served as associate editor and then editor-in-chief of the Daily Utah Chronicle. After working in advertising in California and New York, Murphy returned to Utah; in 1971, the Utah State Historical Society hired her as associate editor of Utah Historical Quarterly. She continued in that position until her retirement in 1997. During her years with the historical society, Murphy did the kind of exhaustive work on which publications and historical understanding are built: wordsmithing, proofreading, illustrating, and indexing the quarterly, as well as editing the popular Beehive History. With the approach of the state’s centennial, Murphy contributed a remarkable twenty essays to the Utah History Encyclopedia, and the Wayne County Commission asked her to write its volume for the state’s centennial history series. Meanwhile, her scholarship in the quarterly focused on women’s history. The following article, first published in 1982, showcases Murphy’s facility with Utah history and the careful research that informed her arguments. 1 gh In the early 1900s Charles O. Harris of the Utah Independent Telephone Company visited the Maxfield homestead in Big Cottonwood Canyon. He asked two daughters of the house if they would be interested in working for the new venture. The girls’ father was outraged: “No daughter of mine will ever be a telephone operator. Most of them are nothing but little hussies.” As the chagrined Harris quickly explained to his host, such a notion was incorrect. The Independent was looking for “good girls.” Lois and Josie Ellen Maxfield were surely that, and, more to the point, they were experienced workers eager to learn new skills. Like so many young women of their time, they had labored not only at home but as
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