The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1903-10-19
TELEPHONE ON THE FARMS.
Half a Million Installed in the Last
Five Years.
From the New York Sun.

The spread of what is known as in
dependent telephony. which followed
the running out of the fundamental
telephone patents in this country, has
had many striking developments, but
none more remarkable than those
which have given every farmer in the
land the chance to ris up a telephone,
and thus put himself in direct touch
with the outer world. The ubiquitous
trolley. running out into the rural re-
gions from the pearest urban centers,
has done much to change the condi-
lions of rural and agricultural life;
but over and above all, the telephone
is proving the instrumentality of what
is as matter of fact, a new civiliza-
ton.
Only those who have Travelled Of late
through the rural parts of the great
Middle States and of those in the
Northwest can have the remotest idea
Of the manner in which, finding the
telephone available and cheap, the
farmer has seized upon II with avidi-
ty and connected himself up with some
cooperative system in his own neigh
borhood or again, with holder effort,
has pushed out and joined his own
line with the net work of some adj
joining village. The cooperative
principle has in this way received a
new and striking exemplification while
the economic outcomes, even at this
early stage, are so wide reaching that
it is hard to determine just where the
effects of this change will stop.
1t is estimated that during the last
five years telephones have been put in
to nearly half million rural homes
The farmer finds that with the tele-
phone he can keen in touch with the
market, selling his produce or live
stock when quotations are the most
| favorable.
By sparing himself and his help use
less trips back and forth for the pur-
! pose of delivering his products, or of
ascertainlng the status of the market
he now saves a vast amount of time
in the course Of the year. When he is
assured by information over the tele-
phone that he can sell to advantage
he loads up his wagon, and not till
then.
AS illustrating the advantage of
keeping in telephone touch with the
market an incident in last years
transactions In broom corn in Illinois
is related. A prospective rise in the
market was preceded by great &C
tivity on the part of the brokers.
Buyers from the outside began to
| clean up the broom corn at $50 a ton,
when a telephone manager called up
the farmers on his system and told
them the market was rapidly rising.
The result was that before the season
ended they got $240 a ton for their
crop. One farmer reports that in adj
| dition to getting nearly double the
usual work out of his teams, through
their being saved futile trips to mar
ket, he has been enabled to do away
with the hire of two men, as he could
spend more time on his farm, and save
| the diminished output of the hands
| at work in his absence.
Another farmer savel all his build
| ings by being able to summon help
| quickly from a nearby town and also
| from his neighbors when a fire broke
out. Still another by getting a ply
stefan promptly, saved the life of his
only son, when the delay of half an
hour would have been fatal.
| 1t is now a common practice for the
country doctor to give directions by
telephone for caring for the patient,
both diagnosing and prescribing. In
! Illinois the speeches of a recent polti-
| cal convention were listened to by the
farmers on a rural system as they
sat in their homes from fifteen to
| th;rty-siX miles away. Being in
| ulSldIlCe OIL his U6lSnDOl, not
| only does the farmer feel a new sense
of personal security, but he knows
that his belonging are safer from mo-
| lestation than they ever were before.
| The telephone has been instrumental
| in causing the arrest of many horse
| thieves and outlaws and in some dis
| tricts the farmers have almost broken
up chicken stealing and petty larceny
| by telephoning the police and COM
| Ia ,fe Nf 4
thus enabling prompt arrests to be
made.
The women and children come in for
their share of the benefits of the tele-
phone. During the dreary winter
nights, they can gossip with their
neighbors, and they no longer live
| in dread when the men are away. The
tramp is chary of performing his pro-
| fess!onal stunts where he finds a
telephone wire running into the house,
for he realizes that If necessary the
whole neighborhood can be called in
| few minutes.
That some women have ingenious
| ideas Of their own as to the purpose
l of the telephone is evident from the
stories that crop up from time to time
of the experiences of the inspectors.
One of these officers relates that one
| of his linemen weht into a house to
inspect the telephone IN a rural line
in Adams county, Illinois. Seated in a
rocking chair, contentediy occupied
with her knitting, was the wife of the
subscriber to the system.
At first sight the lineman thought
she was wearing a novel kind of head
dress, but a second glance discovered
| the fact that Sine had tied the telephone
receiver to her ear and was listening
to every conversation that passed over
| the wire.
Another woman wanted to go on an
| errand some distance down the village
! street so she took the receiver off the
hook and left it on the table near the
cradle, telling the central operator that
If her baby began to cry she was to
call her up at the grocer's.
An innovation in the use of the tele-
/ phone which promises to be the vogue
is already very popular. The local
| grocer or butcher, realizing that time
! is money, pays for the monthly rent
of the telephone of any of his custom,
ers who spend $25 at his store during
the month, or makes a correspondent
discount for smaller expenditure. He
finds that in the increased amount of
business coming through the greater
ease of transmitting orders, and the
reduction in his staff of order men, he
can well afford to throw in the tele-
phone service, which Furthermore be-
comes a splendid advertisement for his
store.
In the early days Of the rural teIe-
phone the farmers were content to
utilize their fence wires for inter-
communication, and in many districts,
particularly in the Western states, this