New Ulm review. (New Ulm, Brown County, Minn.) 1892-1961, 1905-07-19
New U1mRevieW
Wednesday,, July 10, 1905.
Who Is "Us?"


'sUs" and "Wen and "Our" are
terms use in Newspaper offices and have
a distinct difference in their appll-
cation than they have in most OF the
other places where they are used and
we presume in that sense the president
Of the New Ulm Rural Telephone Co.
uses it as the editorial ''us'' when he
says in his last weeks article. 1T is
owned and operated by US
If that is not the case then he refers
to the stockholders Of the company.
They are the Jus" referred to. Now
there is this difference between a com
petitive telephone business and COM
petition in any other business. In the
grocery business q man does not have
to buy two or three lots to get one; he
does not have to buy two wagons to
get one but in the telephone business
he has to buy two phones to get the
service of one.
If the New Ulm Rural Telephone Co.
will buy up the other and operate SO as
to cover the entire field as the Mime
sofa Central does now, there can be no
excuse for objection, but in dividing
the small business that this city offers
1t simply puts an Ubiquitous taxation
on all, who of necessity, have to cover
the entire field.
The "us' referred to in the Journal
article undoubtedly means the stock
holders Of the new company, and they
by no means compri.e the entire popu-
lation Of the city, and when the time
for dividends comes, and number of
the smaller stockholders have been
bought up and very few comprize the
company, how many of the citizens of
this city are going to say with great
degree of pride sit is owned and oper-
ated by us?"
The truth of the matter is, it is a
business enterprise, pure and simple,
just as the Minnesota Central was when
so many of the people of this city put
their money into it and many of them
still have their money there. To have
the pride of ownership that the Journal
claims for it it must be municipal
affair, the same as the electric light
system.
The Review for sometime has been
paying for two phones one in the Office
and one in the rooms in the Boesch
building for one the charge has been
81 a month, for the other 81, and there
has been no favoritism. But that is
neither here nor there. We have yet
to find anything free in this city, ex-
cept the air we breath and if the editor
of the Journal had his way we would
be taxed for that.
1t is because there a good many of
"us" who do not share in the stock of
the new company and some Of "us"
have stock in the old company and
there is no call for two companys. that
we object to the double taxation. It is
a good deal of John D. Rockefeller
affair on a small scale, where the
supply of oil is no better but the price
twice as high.
The fact that all this trouble could
have been avoided as it is avoided
in Sleepy Eye makes the circumstances
all the more deplorable. The business
men Of this city do not care whether
they pay s. a month to Mr.. TIiesch's
company or to DR.. Schoch's company.
They are not so unreasonable as to
suppose that either one of them is 60
ing to operate at a loss. Both are in
the field to make money on the invest
ment and pay salaries to the officers
and Mr.. Liesch is president