496 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Each of these companies operated under its own management, was 

 governed by its own policy, and supplied its service at such rates as 

 each thought best adapted to meet the views of local patrons. There 

 was little or no uniformity in these rates, for the majority had been 

 established not only without regard to the brief but costly experience 

 with low rates that the companies established in 1878 had passed 

 through, but adversely to the sensible suggestions of the parent com- 

 pany to make the service so good that business houses would pay at 

 least a dollar a week for local telephone service. Again, not only were 

 rates established without a due regard for the amount of cash invest- 

 ment that would be required per subscriber, but in entire forgetfulness 

 of two essential factors in determining cost of production and supply: 



(1) Decrease in plant valuation due to improvements in the art, and 



(2) the destructive action of the elements. 



In some states there was, in 1879, a Bell license for each county, 

 and as each licensee was wholly independent of any and all other 

 licensees, there naturally came to be a great diversity of opinions re- 

 garding proper methods of construction and operation, equitable inter- 

 change of toll-line traffic, profitable rates and the legal protection that 

 the parent company should insure to its licensees. Furthermore, the 

 broader-minded licensees began to perceive that the telephone business, 

 instead of being merely a local issue, was not only interurban and 

 interstate in character, but continental in scope, and that the healthy 

 growth and ultimate success of these operating companies were largely 

 dependent on the scope and the character of the service supplied, rather 

 than on patent protection. In 1879, it was also foreseen that an 

 amount of capital many times larger than the original estimate called 

 for would have to be invested to place the business on a permanent 

 foundation. Thus the wisdom of consolidating these small county 

 licensees into large state or interstate companies was perceived, and 

 large operating companies controlling exchanges in many counties were 

 in existence before the close of 1879. 



Incidentally it is worth while to recall that while some of the 

 pioneers were men to whom too much credit can not be given for the 

 intelligent and persistent manner in which improvements in and ex- 

 tensions to the service were introduced, there were other pioneers whose 

 grasp of the problems they were facing was exceedingly slight, though 

 these latter gentlemen had no hesitation in branding as heretical all 

 views opposed to their own, or in combatting the progressive sugges- 

 tions of the parent company. Even the technical press was pessimistic 

 in belief concerning the future of the telephone. In 1882, the editor 

 of The Operator wrote : " The telephone is almost entirely a local con- 

 venience, nearly as much so as gas lighting and horse cars ; its monopoly, 

 which is not an oppressive one, rests upon the possession of patents, 

 and must expire with the patents." 



