14 Telephone Systems of the Continent of Europe 



2d. as in Germany and Denmark ; had they been free to telephone 

 messages to be written down and posted as letters or post-cards, 

 the tale might have been quite different. 



It would not be correct to blame the National Telephone 

 Company for not giving these facilities, for, indeed, it has not 

 been in its power to accord them. No ; the blame must be borne 

 by the Post Office, which, under the mistaken idea that the best 

 way to serve the public interest is to curtail such facilities as are 

 not provided by itself, has denied the public these advantages. 

 As a consequence, its revenues have suffered by the competition 

 of the telephone trunk lines. During the author's continental 

 tour of investigation nothing was made clearer to him by the 

 foreign officials than that the encouragement given to the sub- 

 scribers to forward telegrams by telephone for transmission has- 

 compensated to a very large extent, if not altogether, for the tele- 

 graphic traffic lost by the rivalry of the trunk lines. In every 

 country the tale is the same : the telegraph revenues have not 

 suffered by the competition of the trunk lines because the exten- 

 sion of the telephone system has provided new feeders to the 

 telegraph in every direction, and these newly-found feeders have 

 provided traffic enough to outweigh the loss on certain long 

 distance lines. Thus, to cite an example, the extensive telegram 

 traffic which formerly prevailed between the Bourses of Brussels 

 and Paris, and which necessitated the constant employment of 

 several direct telegraph wires, has been entirely wiped out by the 

 telephone circuits ; but, notwithstanding this, the telegraph receipts 

 continue to grow. During these fourteen years, therefore, the 

 Post Office has been engaged in cutting off its nose to spite the 

 companies, and has voluntarily cast away a source of income which 

 would have rendered unnecessary the wails made over revenue 

 lost through the competition of telephone trunks. The author 

 is of course aware that the telephone exchanges in some of the 

 principal towns are, and have been for some years, in connection 

 with the Postal Telegraph Office ; but what is wanted is not a 

 partial, but a universal and unrestricted, application of the service. 

 Obstacles are thrown in the way of establishing connection with 

 telegraph offices. For instance, the Mutual Telephone Company 

 applied for, but could not obtain, a connection in Manchester.. 



