632 ANNUAL, RE?PORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



all that has been said along the line of the trolley railroad and 

 like ever}' suggestion that has been made and hope that every- 

 thing can be carried out in our Legislature that will be proposed in 

 the interest of better conditions in that direction. I hope we can 

 go to the Legislature with one mind. I am certain that the farmers 

 are not all of one mind with reference to giving the trolley lines the 

 right of eminent domain and I am sure we will never get it until 

 we are united on some solid ground. 



A Member: I have been very much interested and pleased with 

 the talk of the gentlemen with reference to the telephone. I live 

 in the extreme end of Bradford county. We have in our township 

 a private telephone line; on this line there are something over one 

 hundred 'phones. This line is put up by private individuals, headed 

 by Mr. North, and he rents the 'phones on the Bell telephone line and 

 we are connected with them. We are connected with Wysox and 

 with a place in New York State and we have a very fine thing of it. 

 One of the gentlemen spoke about the buying and selling of hogs 

 by the use of the telephone; of course we don't raise them by the 

 car-load but we all raise them to sell and we are connected with 

 half a dozen different buyers and shippers on this telephone line 

 and it is not anything uncommon for these buyers to buy a car load 

 of hogs over the line, and onh^ two weeks ago there was a man, who 

 lives a little above me and handles stock and ships it to Orange coun- 

 ty, New York, and he called up a few of us and wanted to know 

 whether we wanted to buy corn, and some of us manifesting a desire 

 to do so, in a few days he had a car-load of corn on the siding ready 

 for distribution to those who had ordered it. By taking a little pains 

 you will be surprised to find out how cheaply you can imt up a tele- 

 phone line. 



MR. McHENRY: I heartily concur with the paper that was 

 read. It is this telephone line that interests me. I would like 

 to ask the farmers here, why will you make such an effort to have 

 your farms interlaced all over with telephone lines that you have 

 to pay to different com}>anies fo]' talking over, sufficient to make for- 

 tunes for companies, when you can do it yourselves. In our county 

 we have about one-half of the county covered with the farmer's 

 telephone. They put it up themselves and they are managed by 

 our own people. ^Ye have a switch-board in the county seat by 

 which we run our own line that extends into the two adjoining coun- 

 ties. We expect to connect with the adjoining counties in the 

 near future. We have about four hundred 'phones. 



There is one thing I am proud to say to-night. I am living to see, 

 what some of the grangers predicted twenty-five years ago, that 

 they have something now throughout the farming districts tluit the 



