Prof. Susan Crawford continues her excellent notes on the history of telephony with another couple of great posts (History of Telephony and When Old Technologies Were New).

For an entire generation after the telephone was introduced, the Bell system managers resisted its use for social purposes. Yes, there are memos and reports from the early years saying that managers were trying to get people to stop gossiping on the telephone. The president of Bell Canada, in 1890, complained he couldn't stop trivial conversations, and a manager in Seattle in 1909 wanted to limit use of the telephone for purely idle gossip. [emphasis in original]