The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-04-26
THIRTY YEARS OF
 ELECTRICAL TALK Marvellous Growth In Use of
 the Invention NOT A GENERATION OLD Only to 1900 People In 1sso-Now There Is To Every 2o-America
 Is Far In the Lead In Use
 and Manufacture.
NOT A GENERATION OLD

of most Americans that 1t is almost in- possible for them to believe that in it's commercial use it has only just reached the 30-year mark Yet this is the fact to which President Vail of the American Telephone and Telegraph company calls attention in the annual report of his com pany, which has just been issued. There probably never has been another case in the history of the world in which an in- vention revolutionzng in so many ways the existing methods of doing business has been brought into practically uni versal use within such a brief period of time. Derided in the beginning as in terestng scientific toy which never would be of any practical use, the tele- phone has reached a point today where it is an essential adjunct of every busi- ness office and it is rapidly coming to be considered equally important alike to the farmer and the city resident. It has given rise to the greatest public utility corporation in the world as well as to hundreds Of smaller concerns, gives cm- ployment directly and indirectly to hum dreds of thousands of persons and yields volume of business amounting to more |
 It is noteworthy that the most rapid progress of the telephone has been in the United States. This may be due partly to the fact that Alexander Graham Beli, its inventor, was a citizen of this country. A more important influence has been that with his well-known propensity for hustlng and time saving, the American grasped the possibilities of the nstru ment more quickly than the slower-going business men of other lands. There are staid and conservative Englishmen, even at the present day, who refuse to discuss business matters over the wire. An Amer ican who adopted this attitude would be regarded as a dead one and would not be likely to survive long in the struggle for business. To present the difference between American and foreign telephone habits satisfactorily the number of teie- phones in Great Britain is one to 116 per sons; in Germany, one to 1l3; in France, one to SOL in Russia, one to 202S; and in Sweden, the most fully developed of the European countries, one to 46. For all of Europe the average is one telephone to 26S persons. In the United States there is a telephone to every 22 of the popd- lation and this takes no account ot the thousands of persons making use of tue so-called independent lines or small co- operative lines throughout the country, which would raise the proportion prob ably to one to IS.
 As these figures show the most advanc- ed country in Europe, telephonically, oc- cupies about the same position as the United States did in 1905, which is a long way behind as progress in this industry goes Great Britain and Germany are where America was in 19OO France is about 20 years behind this country, While Russia still is in the dark ages of tele- phonic communication represented in the United States by the figures for it's very beginning in 1878.
 The swift growth in the use of the telephone in the United States is shown by statistics of the Bell system, the only one for which complete hgures are avail able. These show that in 1878 there were less than 10000 telephones comprising what is now the greatest system in the world It was not until 1884 that the hundred thousand mark was passed, and not until 1890 was the second hundred thousand added. by 1898 there were some thing over 100000 subscribers stations ln the whole system.
 The ten years that have passed since that time have seen such an astonish- ing growth of the telephone business that mere figures convey very little idea of it. At the beginning of 1901 the num- Der had reached S5000O and in that year the million mark was passed For the
  was at the rate of about 30O,O00 a year and brought the total for 1905 up to 2,000OO0. During 1905 more than half million new telephones were brought into use and in the following year the 3,UOo VU0 mile post was left behind. The banner year in the entire history of telephony however was 1907, the number of new stations added during that twelvemonth being 76S, $40, making a total of 3,SS9OOO or only a little less than 4,00OOo0 tele- phones in use in the United states Ill this one system alone. There are nine times as many Americans using tele- phones now as ten years ago and P times as many as in 1888.
 There was one Bell telephone to every g persons in the country on January | 1908; one to every 113 in 1900: one to every 2S5 in 1890; and only one to about 1900 in 1880. Taking into account the ilnes not included in these statistics, It IS probably safe to say that there IS one telephone to every IS or 19 persons in the country. As several persons ordinari- ly use one instrument at least one-third of all the people in the country men, women and children, use the telephone to a greater or less extent What thls use amounts to is shown by the lact that there are upwards of 1S,00000O tele- phone calls day or a total of almost six million a year over the lines of the one leading system. This is nearly equal to 70 talks for every innabitant of the United States.
 One might think with this tremendous progress of telephone facilities that the limit of it's use had almost been reached This is not the view of the best informed telephone authorities who point out that the extension in the employment or the telephone and the adaptation of the in- strument to new uses is likely to be eyeh greater in the future than in the past. One field in which a very rapid growth is now beginning is among the farmers of the country. There are said to be 7,OOo,- GOO farms in the United States and tee- phone statsticians estimate that within a few years 90 per cent of these, or up- wards of 6000,000 will be in communica- ton with the rest of the world by wire. To encourage this movement the prin- cipal manufacturers of telephone appar- atus are pushing it's sale among the farmers of the country, and the leading telephone company is encouraging it's use on the farms by connecting the co-opera- tive associations organized in rural com munities with it's long distance system, extending throughout the country.
 Another field that is being developed rapidly is the use of private systems to connect various departments of extensive business plants or different points on large estates. Every extension of the great network of telephone communica- ton makes the system as whole more valuable to each user for 1t puts him in direct touch with larger and larger sec
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