THE POLE AND WIRE EVIL. 181 



THE POLE AND WIEE EYIL. 



By OLIVER E. LYMAN. 



WHEN any system of business is so conducted as to arouse a feel- 

 ing of opposition on the part of right-minded citizens generally, 

 it is safe to say that some evil exists, which renders the immediate ref- 

 ormation of that system, in whole or in part, a matter of public im- 

 portance. Judged by this standard, our telegraphic and electrical sys- 

 tem would seem to be in need of reformation. That it has evil features 

 no one can deny, and nothing about it, perhaps, is more obnoxious than 

 the method at present in vogue in cities of constructing lines over- 

 ground — a method which has increased in obnoxiousness with the re- 

 cent remarkable growth and expansion of the electrical system. 



The mode of construction has not been conformed to the changed 

 conditions which this growth, simultaneously with the progress of civ- 

 ilization, has brought about. The same method of hanging wires on 

 posts which was introduced by Professor Morse has been persevered in 

 ever since, regardless of the fact that the conditions which rendered his 

 single line across an open country, twoscore years ago or so, innocent 

 and proper, are not the same in our densely-built and populated cities 

 of to-day. Ignoring other causes of change, the telegraphic business, 

 most of which is conducted in cities, has wonderfully increased. In 

 place of his one company there were in 1880 seventy-seven telegraphic 

 and one hundred and forty-eight telephone companies in the United 

 States, which numbers have, since that time, been greatly increased by 

 the more general introduction of the system of telephonic communica- 

 tion and the incorporation of many electric-light companies, to say 

 nothing of an increase in telegraphic associations. The single wire 

 from \Yashingtou to Baltimore had increased in 1880 to 325,517 

 miles of wire, 34,305 of which were operated by the telephone com- 

 panies, and in October, 1883, one company alone, the Western Union, 

 was operating 432,726 miles of wire, nearly enough to reach from the 

 earth to the moon and back again. This same company in 1866 used 

 only 75,686 miles of wire, so that it will be seen it has nearly six 

 times as much wire strung over the country as it had then, and these 

 432,726 miles of wire are exclusive of 144,294 miles of cables and 

 poles. Of the latter ungainly commodity it set up, in the year 1880 

 alone, 168,056, which is about two thirds of all the poles erected that 

 year. 



The magnitude of these figures is by no means wholly due to the 

 extension of lines in newly developed portions of the country. The 

 growth has taken place in cities as well. In New York city, for in- 

 stance, there are now twenty-five public telegraph and four telephone 

 companies, to say nothing of electric-light organizations and private 



