DEVELOPMENT OF TELEPHONE SERVICE 437 



Had the telephone been sold outright, in place of being leased for 

 use in designated territory, it is very doubtful if a transcontinental 

 system could have been established, or the full intercommunicating 

 value of the telephone developed. For it is one of the few natural 

 monopolies. Foreign telephone experts say that the American tele- 

 phone system has no equal in scope and efficiency, which is a gratifying 

 endorsement, in view of the fact that the foundations of this American 

 transcontinental system were not laid by men long skilled in an estab- 

 lished art, or men who wielded the power inherent in great financial 

 resources, but by men who strove against the combined forces of com- 

 plete absence of telephonic experience, practise and knowledge, of the 

 destructive power of the elements, and of human greed that would 

 publicly rob vested right and good name. 



Had these pioneers comprehended all that was to be endured, the 

 losses, the bitter competition, the costly litigation, how many would 

 have had the courage to imperil funds and business reputation in so 

 hazardous an undertaking ? For never before did an industry progress 

 so rapidly as is recorded of the art of telephony, none ever had to face 

 such costly, peculiar and ever-expanding demands, and none was ever 

 so bitterly and so unjustly assailed. 



These pioneers soon found that one set of telephone equipment 

 would scarcely be installed by a local company before it would have to 

 be displaced by improved apparatus, if the field was to be held. Or an 

 unexpected marvelous growth in the number of subscribers would 

 compel complete rebuilding of lines and the installation of more im- 

 proved apparatus. Came storms of wind and sleet wrecking miles of 

 pole line; flashed the lightning, burning out every coil in the plant; 

 came the newly-invented electric lights rendering the service useless 

 after night-fall until circuits were rearranged; came the trolley, 

 making metallic circuits a technically and a judicially determined 

 necessity ; all in the brief span of eight years. ' Nothing is constant 

 but change,' was a sentiment readily subscribed to by pioneer tele- 

 phone men. 



Yet notwithstanding discouragements, disasters and hardships, of 

 a character unknown before, the dream of yesterday is the realization 

 of to-day. For now there are nearly three million telephones con- 

 nected to this one transcontinental system, receiving service over a 

 total wire mileage exceeding five million miles, while the actual cash 

 investment in new construction alone expended by the companies 

 forming this great system during the past five years only aggregates 

 two hundred millions of dollars. 



How came the first commercial telephone exchange to be devised? 

 is a question often asked. The idea of a central exchange telephone 

 system was one of Graham Bell's earliest conceptions in connection 

 with the possible utilization of the telephone. Thus it came in the 

 natural development of so useful a public-service function as telephone 



