The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-01-22
TELEPHONES ON FARM
HALF A MILLION HAVE BEEN INSTALLED IN FIVE
 YEARS PAST.
Expiration of Early Patents Has Facilitated the Movement-Ear- mers and Country Doctors Find
 Them Convenient.

New York Sun.
 The spread of what is known as inde- pendent telephony, which followed the running out of the fundamental telephone patents in this country, has had many striking developments, but none more re- markable than those which have given every farmer in the land the chance to rig up a telephone and thus put himself in direct touch with the outer world. The ubiquitous trolley. running out. into the rural regions from the nearest urban cen- ters, has done much to change the con- ditions of rural and agricultural life, but over and above all the telephone is prov ing the instrumentality of what is, as a matter of fact, a new civilization.
 Only those who have travelled of late through the rural parts of the great mid dle 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 1t with avtdity and connected himself up with some cooperative system in hls own neighborhood, or again, with bolder ef- fort, has pushed out and joined his own line with the network of some adjoining village. The cooperative principle has In this way received a new and striking ex- republication, while the economic out comes, even at this early stage, are so wide-reaching that 1t is hard to deter mine just where the effects of this change will stop
 Farmers Appreciate Them.
 It is estimated that during the last five years telephones have been put into near ly 600,0OO rural homes. The farmer finds that with the telephone he can keep in touch with the market, selling his pro- duce or live stock when quotations are the most favorable.
 By sparlng himself and his help useless trips back and forth for the purpose of delivering his products or of ascertaining the status of the market, he now saves a vast amount of time in the course of the year. When he is assured by infor- nation over the telephone that he can sell to advantage he loads up his wagon, and not till then.
 As illustrating the advantage of keep ing in telephone touch with the market. an incident in last years Eansactions in broom corn in Illinois is related. A pros pective rise in the market was preceded by great activity on the part of the brok- CTS.
 Buyers from the outside began to clean up the broom corn at $60 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 addition to getting nearly double the usual work out of his teams through their being saved futile trips to market, 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 diminish ed output of the hands at work in his ab- sence.
 Another farmer saved all his buildings by being able to summon help quickly from a nearby town and also from his neighbors when fire broke out. Still an other. by getting a physician promptly saved the life of his only son when the delay of half an hour would have been fatal.
 Doctors Find Them Useful. l It is now a common practice for the country doctor to give directions by tele' phone for caring for the patient, bott diagnosing and prescribing. In Illinois the speeches of a recent political conven' tion were listened to by the farmers or a rural system as they sat in their homes from fifteen to thirty-six miles away. Be ing in speaking distance of his neighbor not only does the farmer feel a new sense of personal security, but he knows that his belongings are safer from molesta tlon than they ever were before Int telephone has been instrumental in caus Ing the arrest of many horse thieves ana outlaws and in some districts the far mers have almost broken up chicken steal
 ing and petty larceny by telephoning tn,
 police and commission merchants of thej
 losses and thus enabling prompt arrests
 to be made
 The women and children come in fo
 their share of the benefits of the tele
 phone. During the dreary winter night
 they can gossip with their neighbors Nn,
 they no longer live in dread when tn men are away. The tramp is chary O l. performing his professional stunts wher , he finds telephone wire running into tn
 house. for he realizes that if necessar