The Austin weekly statesman. (Austin, Tex.) 1883-1898, 1884-02-14
CROSSED WIRES.

noise among the telephone people as
well as among the telegraph compa-
MES. His late denunciation of pro-
cesses by which Mr.. Gould has in
erased his telegraph wealth as well as
his moves in telephone circles shows
him up as the enemy Of monopolies in
a quarter where such eLmity
could hardly have been expected. The
parties who have heretofore controlled
the telephone have done great work.
They have made the instrument OF
necessity to every live business man,
and have established creditable tele-
phone exchanges in nearly every i'm
portant town in the civilized world.
But, it is said, they have not done one
fourth what they might have achieved
under a more liberal policy. Had
they gone into the manufacture of
telephones for sale outright at a fair
profit, instead Of for rent only at an
enormously extortionate rate, they
might have extended the use of the
same Indefinitely, and so entrenched
in popular favor as to make competi-
ton Improbable and almost impossi-
BILE. But, instead of this, they have
built up a gigantic and enormous
monopoly which, like hgge, insatia-
BILE octopus, sprawls its long arms all
over the world to gather in from every
| quarter a tribute utterly dispropor-
| toned to the cost of the service rem
dered. Patent laws that may be in
voked to protect men in such practices
as have prevailed in regard to the tel
phone are radically wrong, and
ought to be amended or abolished
Almost any ingenious person
could make Bell telephone
at a most tritling cost, and yet thous-
ands of dollars would not buy one.
1t is not for sale, but may be used
only as the property of a company for
aspecified time on the payment of an
exhorbitant rate for its rent. But IN
der the active movements of Robert
Garrett it looks as though the tele-
phone is to have its monopolistic bot
tom knocked out from under it and
that before a great while peo-
pie may reasonably hope to use
the instrument at living figures. The
Globe telephone company, with which
Mr.. Garrett has associated himself,
promises to be an aggressive instead
of a defensive one. The parties con-
trolling this organization set forth
that they control the claims of one
Antonio Meucci, of New York, who
was engaged in experimenting upon
the transmission of the human voice
as far back as 1915. Meucci's assignees
are declared to be in possession OF
abundant evidence to subs1antiate
these claims, consisting in part of
affidavits of many and disinterested
parties, who either assisted at
or witnessed these experiments
and who saw, handled and tested the
apparatus used by Meucci. But the
evidence which, they claim, renders it
impossible to successfully dispute
Meucci's priority to all others in the
invention of telephoning is that years
! before any of the patents owned by
the Bell monopoly were issued, Meucc
actually filed caveat for his inven
ton, in which caveat he describes the
same as sound telegraph" Plausi
BILE reasons, such as poverty, bad faith
of pretended friends and physical in
jury which incapacitated Meucci from
business or exertion of any kind, are
given to show why he was prevented
from pressing his claims for a patent
under the caveat; and application fol
such patent is now on file and is being
pressed by able attorneys, who conf
IDENTIFY expect to obtain letters patent
which will shut out all others. II
may be that the establishment Of
Meucei's claims would simply mean
to the public the exchange of one mon.
opoly for another; hut, in the general
shaking up of the subject which is
likely to result from such extensive
litigation, there is great room for hon
at least that the whole quesS5n OF
who originated the telephone will be
involved in So much legal uncertainty
that no man or set of men will be able
to maintain any exclusive right to the
inheritance of the same, and that any
one who feels disposed may engage in
the business, with the assurance that
no organization will feel securely
enough entrenched behind legal deci-
sions to interfere with him.