Arizona republican., 1905-02-04
The Growth of the Telephone.

| 4 bulletin just issued by the census
 bureau aHd rrepared by Thomas Com merford Martin tells story of indus | trial development in America which a almost unique. It summarizes a report that is yet to appear relative to the | telephones and telegraphs of the Unit | ed States in the year 1902. The most
 fascinating and impressive revelations
 in this document, of course, are those which pertain to Bells wonderful in vention. They can he paraueled in American history only by the rapid growth and enormous utility of electric lighting and traction. MT. Martins statistics possess the greater value
 from the fact that no attention was
 given in the census of 1890 to the tel
 ephone. The situation in 1902, there
 fore, is compared with that in 1880. In
 the interval between those years the
 number of exchanges in the country
 increased from 3S4 to 10, ,361, or about
 thirtyfoldl It is estimated that the
 number of talks by telephone in the
 year 1902 was more than five billion,
 such conversations being more numer-
 ous than the pieces of first class mat
 ter sent through the United States
 mails.
 Only glance at MT. Martins figures
 is needed to show how greatly the tel
 ephone now overshadows the telegraph.
 In the business which makes use of the
 one about $S48.O0O, 900 was invested in
 1902, as compared with S163.O0O,O 900 de- voted to the other. The telephone gave employment to 64,62S wage earners, and the telegraph to 26,97S, though the disproportion between the total wages in the two industries was a trihe less obvious. The telephone had in service four times as many miles of wire as the telegraph, and carried ffty-six times as many messa ges. If the differ ence be so great at present, what will it be ten years hence? In the future the demand for telephones will proba- bly, not increase so rapidly as in the recent past, but for some time to come the telephone must gain in popularity faster than it's rival
 Three classes of lines are recognized 1 by MT. Martin. Of the 5,OOO,OOO miles l of wire required for the telephones of i this country, 97 1-2 per cent are op- ! erated by companies doing business for l revenue only. Something like 1-2 per | cent of the mileage Is under the con trol of mutual organizations, which | find exchanges desirable, but employ | their wires for the convenience of the l members and not to earn money. A [ third class of lines, nearly 5000 in { number and having an average length ! of ten miles, is owned by farmers, who l dispense altogether with switchboard | facilities. Not a few farms are reached | by wire from city exchanges. but it has ! not been possible to obtain data con cerning these. The independent rural | lines for which returns are available | are much more numerous in Indiana | Missouri and Iowa than else 1 where. These four states reported 75 | per cent of the whole.
 The number of telephones in use in | 1902 was 2,315, ,297, or about l to 34 | of the total population. From that av- | craze, however. there were some wide | departures. California. for instance, | l for every 14, and Alabama | 1 for every 134. The average number | of messages per telephone for the year | was 2,19O. In states that were well | supplied with instruments the number | of messages was smaller than this. | New York reported 1,464 and New Jer- | sey 1,147, while in Alabama the aver | age number of messages per telephone | was 3,279 and in Tennessee 3,557. In | other words. the number of telephones E gave a direct implication of the pro gressive spirit of a locality, whereas the amount of business which one in strument was required to do seems tc have been in inverse ratio thereto