The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1898-03-09
As to Competing Telephone Com
panies.

That competition is the life of trade APP
plies to nearly or quite every business
known except that of the business of the
telephone. The telephone is sui .generis.
Rules and laws that apply in all other
fields do not apply to the telephone at ALL
the truth Of which statement it is easy to
The telephone subscriber who has often
wished to communicate quickly with some
friend not in possession of telephone and
who has been forced to impose the delivery
of a message upon some neighbor of the
friend who did have a telephone, or who
has telephoned the message to the nearest
pay-station and waited the tedious process
of the slow moving pay-station boy, can
gather an idea of the inconvenience that
lines permitted in Cincinnati. The friend
with whom the subscriber to the new tele-
phone company wanted to talk would either
have no telephone at all or would be sure
to be in the other company and so as in
accessible as if without a telephone.
There are three separate and recently or
ganiZed telephone companies now asking for
franchises in Cincinnati, asking to string
wires on those streets from which the old
telephone company has removed them and
asking the opportunity to go into a cut
throat business. There are people who
would favor granting the franchise asked );
a petition to this effect has been circulated
one thing desired by the telephone sub,
scriber, and cheapness is what the COM
panies now asking for franchises offer, why
does he not go to any electric supply place
and purchase a telephone outfit and nail it
to HIS wall? Possibly he can persuade his
neighbor to go in with him and purchase
another telephone outfit and do as he has
done. Then they can attach the two tele-
phones oy single wire and if they so elect
can talk to each other until their arms
drop off. The permanent outlay in such an
enterprise would amount to but few dol
lars. OF what avail would it prove, how
ever, in case the purchaser wished to call
a doctor or cab or the police or talk to
any friend other than the one who went into
the telephone ownership business with him
Suppose, instead of buying a telephone out
to one of the new telephone companies, of
what possible service can the new service
be to him If he cannot communicate through
it to any of his friends or business assoc
pounds of yellow gold be to an exile son
some desert island where there was no
other living human being to accept the gold
as currency or look at it as an ornament?
Is it not manifest to the intelligent bust
ness man that If rival telephone companies
were in the field it would become an absolute
necessity for him to be a subscriber to all
of them in order to be in direct commune
cation with all people with whom he did
business? Suppose the rates of the tele-
phone service were reduced by the opposi-
ton, would not the aggregate for all tele-
phone service amount to much more than
there not be in. addition the exasperating
necessity for consulting two or three tele-
phone directories instead of one every time
one subscriber wanted to call up another?
With the streets again tangled up with tele-
phone wires and walls decorated with rival
telephones would not the last state of the
telephone subscriber be worse than
the first? These are things 1t is
worth the while for Cineinnatians to think
about before they rush headlong into the
arms or fan into the lap Of a new telephone
company Editorial in Cincinnati Times
Star. March 2.