THE DEVELOPMENT OF TELEPHONE SYSTEM 521 



sulators, they being the best as well as the cheapest. Trees, house-tops and poles 

 can be used in the construction of a line. When fastening a line to a tree, let 

 your wire slack enough to swing to and fro with the tree, otherwise your line 

 will be broken during a windstorm. Tree limbs or branches touching the wire 

 have no bad effect on the telephone, but should be avoided if easily possible. A 

 pole should be set no less than three feet in the earth and eighteen to thirty to 

 the mile. Always try and keep your poles in a straight line. 



The flimsy character of such cheap and improper telephone line 

 construction is readily apparent, and we now wonder why the local 

 owners should have been led into such expensive errors. Yet the waste 

 of thousands of dollars in construction of the cheapest character is 

 readily explainable on the ground that few had any faith in the future 

 of telephone service; it was an experiment that might require years 

 to demonstrate its value; thus capitalists refused to countenance the 

 large initial expenditures required in constructing pole lines possessing 

 qualities of permanency and stability. 



Again, this kind of line construction was just as good, and in some 

 cases far superior, to that adopted by several telegraph companies dur- 

 ing the decade preceding the invention of the telephone. This is 

 shown in the report rendered in 1868, by C. F. Varley, a well-known 

 electrician of the English telegraph companies, who made a thorough 

 inspection of telegraph lines in the United States. Mr. Eeid states 

 that this report, 



which was very minute and exhaustive, was a startling revelation of the condi- 

 tion of the American wires. The obstruction by imperfect joints, by relay 

 magnets of all grades of resistance, by impure wire, by contact, by defective and 

 neglected insulation was more or less universal. Many of the original wires 

 were small, naked, full of joints made in all conceivable ways, into which the 

 detained moisture ate a path of rust and ruin. 



Eight years later, that is, in 1875, David Brooks wrote : 



The rates of telegraphing in this country have always been high, yet but few 

 of the stockholders or those who furnish the money to construct the lines have 

 ever received any return for their investments. In most cases the Morse patent 

 was sold to individuals who organized companies, received subscriptions to stock, 

 and constructed the lines, deriving personally large profits thereby. Usually, 

 about three times the amount of money necessary to build the lines was sub- 

 scribed by the stockholders, and an equal amount of stock was issued for the 

 patent; so that those organizing the companies not only derived large profits 

 from the construction of the lines, but also held the controlling interest in the 

 stock. By this mode of procedure a few individual speculators have each suc- 

 ceeded in realizing far greater profits from the Morse patent than were ever 

 realized by its inventor. 



In 1880, the parent Bell company issued further instructions that 

 it believed would be of service to the operating telephone companies, 

 stating : 



It is advisable, where there are numerous wires, to have a cupola erected on the 

 roof of the building where the central office is located, and through it the line 

 wires are conducted to the operating-room. . . . The cupola is about six feet 



