110 
House Garden 
If Mandan can, 
you can 
The same street 
lighting engineering 
service that helped 
Mandan to illumin¬ 
ate is at the service 
of your city. These 
specialists are part 
of the General Elec¬ 
tric Company; an 
organization of 
100,000 men and 
women who make 
apparatus through 
which electricity is 
put to work. 
One of the best lighted 
towns in the United 
States is Mandan, 
N orth Dakota, which 
has one ornamental 
street light to every 
ten residents. 
Better street lighting 
means safer streets 
and higher property 
values. Yet the cost 
per person per year is 
so small that every 
live town can afford 
it. 
If Mandan can, you 
can. 
GENERAL ELECTRIC 
Among public betterments open to ah 
cities, better street lighting makes the 
most improvement at the lowest cost 
TALKING POINTS IN THE HOME 
{Continued from page 106) 
she is doing and comes to find out what 
you need. Then he or she goes back again 
and does it. Four trips and time wasted, 
whereas, if you have a telephone that 
works, all you need to do is to call up 
whom you want, tell the nature of your 
need and in one round trip your need 
could be attended to with swiftness and 
no loss of time or uncomfortable waiting. 
Of course as an emergency call these room 
phones are without peers. 
Fancy the comfort of knowing that you 
can talk to Nurse at night about the 
children if you come home late. Think, 
too, how quickly Nurse can get into 
communication with you if one of the 
children needs you, or in fact how rapid¬ 
ly anyone can call you if you are 
needed. 
As a burglar signal, also, these tele¬ 
phones can be made very efiective. For 
example, there can be here a very simple 
signal so that it can be dialled almost 
without effort. This signal will be knowm 
to every one in the house. Then the near¬ 
est person to an outside phone can call 
the police and you will have an opportu¬ 
nity to conquer the marauder. 
INSTALLATION 
The telephone, though one of the 
greatest of modem devices, one which has 
practically revolutionized life on this 
globe, is still probably the most abused 
thing in the world and one, with the 
exception of golf, that causes with all its 
pleasure giving and general gifts, more 
audible and inaudible swearing than any¬ 
thing else. 
There are many causes for this: One 
because of a faulty installation and 
another due to ignorance in the instru¬ 
ment’s use or rather abuse. 
We have visited in many a house where 
there has been an installation of inter¬ 
communicating telephones and they were 
put in so badly that they are never used. 
It would be the same with any mechanical 
device badly set up or installed. 
It is, for example, quite a habit with 
the contractor wanting to install the 
intercommunicating phones to use ordi¬ 
nary bell wire, parafine insulated, and 
then when the phone is in use for a little 
while the parafine wears off and you get 
a short circuit. Furthermore, the con¬ 
tractors often use wiring lay-outs that are 
too cheap, and sometimes people get car¬ 
penters who know nothing at all about 
these installations and do such cruel 
things to them that it is a wonder the 
systems do not rise and smite them for 
their loose cables and morals. 
Then again, any mechanical contrap¬ 
tion, be it but a knife sharpener, or tele¬ 
phone, needs care. It is useless to believe 
the salesman who says his device doesn’t 
need care. The minute you get a sales¬ 
man who says that about a machine or 
device, show him the door. Fie either 
doesn’t know his business or his product 
is a bit of charlatanry. The good sales¬ 
man will tell you just what care a device 
or apparatus needs. In fact, the more 
consideration machines, etc., get, the 
longer they will live and the better com¬ 
fort they will be. We know nothing so 
maddening as the person who will say, 
“Our vacuum cleaner never works 
well.” 
“Have you ever oiled it?” say we. 
“No.” 
“Well, well,” say we and leave immedi¬ 
ately to avoid being extremely rude. So 
it is with telephone installation. When 
you get one, learn what is necessary to 
maintain it. Probably there will be noth¬ 
ing but a bit of dusting and refilling the 
batteries. 
Of course the switch board should be 
placed in a dry place on the wall that will 
hold it without doubt. The small boy is 
not expected to use it as a squash court, 
so the board must be accessible but not 
readily available. 
The great trouble with the installation 
of a telephone is that the owner generally 
has naught to say about it. It is usu¬ 
ally in the hands of the architect, who 
chooses the type, and the contractor who 
does the work. This happens because the 
owner knows nothing about the subject. 
This article is to tell you something about 
the phones, so that when you build you 
can know what to demand, and when you 
install the phone you will know what 
to expect in so intimate a utility. 
LET THE CONSUMER CHOOSE 
If you only want a few stations or ex¬ 
tensions, use the telephone that will take 
care of this load with the least trouble in 
the long run, one which users have used 
and still recommend and that is not full 
of quirks and “show” pieces. In any 
apparatus beware of the extra fixings and 
the “talking points” which seem in any 
way like extra trimmings. The best of 
these phones are so simple that all you 
need is plyers and a screw driver, and in 
some the voltometer which tells you 
whether your voltage is sufficient. It is 
always well to have a spare instrument or 
wire or dial on hand, for should anything 
occur and you live at a distance from an 
electrical supply shop you will have the 
sense of security which the spare tire gives 
the motorist on the road. 
The maintenance charge of these 
phones is practically nil owing to the way 
they are made. 
The same ills may happen to your 
phone as happen to the regular municipal 
phone. For example, if you leave your 
receiver off you use up your batteries. 
These are easily recharged, as you have 
seen, but why use them up? Such an 
error is particularly applicable to the 
cable systems which have not storage 
batteries and must be refilled by hand. 
Then, of course, you may wear the cords 
of the receiver, you may have a short cir¬ 
cuit or any other disease from careless¬ 
ness. But bear in mind, when the auto¬ 
matic phone is out of order on one line, 
no other line is put out of commission. 
Here is the great value of the unit con¬ 
struction. 
SMALL HOMES AND STEP SAVING 
There are smaller installations which 
lend themselves very well to the small 
house; two-line phones, for example. 
These are usually of the cable type, as the 
automatic type is too elaborate and expen¬ 
sive for small areas. The best of them for 
a few extensions will make housekeeping 
even lighter than before. The charm of 
the house is quiet, and the house that need 
not be suffused with the shouts of mistress 
for maid or maid for mistress is one which 
goes a long way on the road to charm. 
These telephones obviate much run¬ 
ning on the part of the woman in the 
house who has but one maid and does the 
upstairs work herself. In fact, ver}^ few 
women realize the step savers these 
things can be; if they have ever thought 
of the phone at all, they think of it as an ' 
extravagance. How many times a day are 
you called downstairs to speak to the ice i 
man, the express man and all the other 
males that infest our purchasing centers,-, , 
which is but another way of designating ; 
the modern home? 
Think of the bliss of not having to run i 
down from the attic or from the sewing i 
room if there were two or four stations ; 
even in the two floor house! The old- ^ 
fashioned folk who had the speaking J 
tubes recognized this, but with the advent j 
of the elevator apartment and the decline j 
of stairs, even the speaking tube, except | 
for the “walk up” flat, has been well nigh 1 
forgotten. But now the perfected tele- | 
phone is as much beyond the talking tube | 
as the automobile is above the old-time | 
buckboard. | 
We have passed the bell rope days and | 
{Continued on page 112) ^ 
