The enterprise. [volume] (Wellington, Ohio) 188?-1899, 1897-10-13
OPPOSITION.
WHERE rHg PROFITS ARE.
Summary of the Telephone Opposition
Movement by the Ohio State
journal.

Legitimate opposition is always
healthful in the way of curbing COM
binations and monopolies. Opposition
in the telephone business, however, is
only calculated to add TO the troubles
from which we would escape. Expert
ence has convinced those who sincerely
hoped otherwise that two telephone
systems cannot exist in the same COM
munity. except at loss financially to
the owners. During the past year
OVER FORTY OPPOSITION COMPANIES,
scattered through several states, have
gone out of business with loss of
;about all the capital invested. The OPP
position plant at Hannibal, Mo-, cost
$4,000, and was sold by the sheriff
within two years for $500. And the
worst of it is that innocent people are
dragged into these losing ventures of
scheming persons. The plan is usual
ly this: Two or three strangers come
into a town or city and agree to build
an opposition plant if they can enlist
home capital to help. They find some
local man who will ayr to get
franchise through the city council. For
this work he is given either small
cash bonus or block of stock in the
new company. The plant is put in at
a cost of say $4,000, but the promoters
have way of showing
HOW 1T COST $1,000.
They magnanimously agree to take one
half the capital stock if the citizens
will put up the other half. The ex-
change is opened, the rates for service
cut down and while everybody is happy
over the new deal, the promoters say
they need money badly to carry out
the same work in another city, and
will sell out their $4,000 worth of stock
for 81 800. The local company takes in
this liberal offer, and the schemers go
away $1,000 ahead for few weeks
work. In very short time the local
company finds its plant deficient in
some particular, the instruments will
not work properly, and the rates are
so low the receipts will hardly meet
expenses, to say nothing of the interest
on the capital invested. Even those,
who have assisted the promoters and
wilfully OF otherwise sold out his
friends and neighbors for the stock he
holds, finds it worthless, and that he,
too, has been duped, Meantime the
old -line companies move evenly along,
improving their service and extending
their lines in all directions. 1t has
taken years of labor and millions of
dollars to build up the great system of
communication between distant points.
The benefits of this great system,
which could not be
DUPLICATED IN FIFTEEN YEARS,
makes it absolutely necessary for the
shrewd business man to retain his tele-
phone with the old-line companies. If
he takes the opposition service also, it
is only to please some friend who has
an interest in the new company, but he
soon finds that the two instruments to-
gether are nuisance and cost him
more than the one before.
The sooner these facts are acknowl-
eyed by business men the better they
will be able to meet and dispose of the
numerous telephone promoters, whose
only object is to grow fat upon profits
made under promises which can never
be carried out, and conditions which
do not now ard never can exist.-Ohio
State Journal, Columbus, Oct. 7.