The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-06-11

New York, June 10, 1905.--In these hustling modern days the constant en- deavor Is to do everything quioker than it has ever been done oeIors. Fast railroad trains used to mako l'VVo miles in twenty-four hours, ana the record was thought wonderful. Then the run was made In twenty hours; and now there is talk of trains that will do it in even less time. Stcam- ships are continually clipping hours of the ocean record; pneumatic tubes exuedite the, delivery of letters py shooting them with wonderful veloc- ity from enc end of a city to the oth- CT; dwellers in crowded towns traVel high above the streets. and under ground. in subways and in tunnels, all to save time.
 Time is gained in many ways which attract less attention, but which mean
 much in the aggregate. The men who manage the telephone system have re- gently made Improvements which save centuries of time every year--a state ment that is not an Irlshman's bull, either.
 During the last few years the Bell companies have reduced the time of answering telephone calls by about four seconds. What this reduction means might not be manifest nt first; but a calculation will show its im- portance. The Bell companies handled last year S,5S9, ,99s,0OO calls. Four sec onds saved on each call is saving of 14,359,s92, ,00O seconds. There are Sl,- 5S6,eOo seconds in year. Conse- quently, the total saving, in round numbers, amounts to 455 years of time in every one year of operation.
 Four hundred and ffty-five years! Subtract them from 1905 and :ou are taken back to the year 145o. or forty two years before the discovery of America. The Dark Ages are not end- ed---printing is still an unknown art and ignorance reigns generally. Tho Wars of the Roses are desolatIng Eng land, and France is distracted hy fac- tional duarrels. The Spaniards are still lighting the Moors, and ,he Turks have not yet taken Constantinople. It will be a long time before Shakespeare is born, and a longer one before the right of government Is wrested from the hands of the obstinate Stu arts. The whole period covered by the best of Greece's artistic and po- Iitical activity was not nearly 455 years; and the Roman Empire contin- ued in unlmpaired strength much less than half that time.
 The saving of the time of the teIe- phone user has been effected by daily and hourly watchfulness and care. The Dell COHlpduAcn AehNS SoN3oiA2hOA al regular system of inspection Sll over the country, conducted both in their Sentral offices and by outside inspec- tors who do nothing but supervise and test the seAztice.
 A telephone inspectors business is to find out what is wrong for the purpose of making 1t right--especiaIly to discover faults fin operation and correct them. The 90 per cent of things which are done properly do not interest the management as do the 10 per cent of things which are done improperly or too slowly. Besides bringing to light imperfections in the service telephone, inspection furnishes valuable information derived from every case of emergency that may arise. By continual study these men who devote their whole time and at- tention to this work show the com
 panies how to make Improvements which snail be for the benefit of the Isubscribers.
 In inspection work outside the telephone offices. an official visits some subscriber and arranges for a trial of the service by having a call made and then noting all the time ele-