256 RURAL MICHIGAN 



IMackinac, or reached tlie iniiiing settlements on the 

 Lake Superior shore from some point in Wisconsin, 

 in the season wlien the lakes were closed to shipping. 

 Then it was that postal rates ran at twenty-five cents 

 a letter and the receiver paid, if his available supply 

 of cash met the postal requirements. 



The telephone system of Michigan^ which has 

 greatly quickened communication throughout the two 

 peninsulas and between country and town, in 1917 

 possessed 1,072,()51 miles of wire, and utilized 43,128 

 instruments, which gives a ratio of one telephone to 

 140 persons. In the ratio of telephones to popula- 

 tion, Michigan was less well served than her neigh- 

 bors, Ohio, 1 to 102, Indiana 1 to 162, and Illinois 

 1 to 172. In 1917, 603,254,645 messages and talks 

 occurred over tlie lines of the Bell system, while 

 296,575,452 messages and talks took place on the 

 "independent" lines of the State, the total thus 

 amounting to 899,830,097 telephone communications. 

 This very strikingly indicates the place telephone 

 transmission has acquired in modern life. How much 

 of this service belongs to the strictly rural districts 

 can scarcely be determined, but the census returns 

 for 1920 indicate that 97,874 farms in Michigan 

 reported telephones and that these represented 49.8 

 per cent of all farms in the State. The census report 

 for 1917 indicates that the systems and lines having 

 an annual income of less than $5,000, which were 

 1,298 in number, employed 46,941 miles of wire and 

 53,928 telephones, and that the number of messages 

 and talks over these lines was 57,840,250. The total 



