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Sold the Cable Ends

By Jonna Rasmussen

Schleswigers stationed on the island of Funen in the old days made a private business out of selling remnants of copper from discarded cable ends, Jonna Rasmussen, project "History of the Telecom sector", relates after a meeting with the senior club of the telephone company of South Jutland.


On a chilly day in October 1996 I met a group of spry and warm-hearted blokes from the senior club in Aabenraa. One of them told the following story:

"When we are leaving for Funen to lay down a long range cable, the white-collar workers admonish us to be good people while we are there. Well, like many others from these areas I have a talent for business. I found out immediately that we got these long cable ends and I asked what to do with them. You can take them to Nyborg refuse disposal plant, the answer was. But every day we had such long ends and it was regular money.

From half past eleven to half past twelve assistants were testing the long-range cable, and we had some time to kill in the meanwhile so we jerked out all the copper ends and put them into a bag. The workman in charge of digging the holes enabling us to splice, went to the scrap dealer with the copper. We got a lot of money out of it and the twelve of us had dinner at the local inn with beer and everything.

The Police Came

And then it so happened that some natives of Funen were stealing overhead wires from the Telephone Company of Funen. They cut them down, wound them up, and sold the whole lot to the scrap merchant. It was reported to the police who went to the scrap dealer’s and, of course, noticed all our copper. Now what is this? Well, there are some Schleswigers in the field who come here and sell copper. Are they permitted to do so? I don’t know, the scrap dealer said. Then the police called the Second Engineer District as it was called in those days and asked if we were allowed to sell the copper. No, we were not.

Then the boss and the engineer turn up. Everybody is summoned to a meeting and asked what is going on with the copper we have sold. Well, it is the workman who has delivered it to the scrap dealer. Indeed, then he is to be given the sack. Then I say: The twelve of us have been out dining for the money. If anybody is to be sacked, it should be all twelve of us. He just happened to be the one who had time to do it. The boss answers: From now on all ends are to be placed at the on-site-hut and the truck from the warehouse in South Jutland will come and collect them."

Did Not Understand Each Other

The common workers in South Jutland were Schleswigers, but the engineer in the story about the copper may easily have been a Copenhagener. After the reunion of North Schleswig with Denmark in 1920 you had to be born north of the Eider to apply for a position with the Danish Post and Telegraph Service. Until 1920 Germans had occupied the leading positions, but after that time a lot of young engineers from Copenhagen went to South Jutland which sometimes caused a clash of culture at the workplaces. The Copenhageners had a hard time trying to understand the North Schleswig dialect and the Schleswigers did not really understand the Copenhageners either – or they would not at any rate.



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