The Palatka news and advertiser. [volume] (Palatka, Fla.) 1908-19??, 1914-12-11
ANOTHER METHOD OF
SURPRISING COMPETITION

From consideration of the Bell Company's work in
the field of politics. one turns naturally to its manipulation
OF another powerful agencythe public press Its record
here has certainly been approached, and it we'll
that it has not If all the other great public corporations
should learn to the this telephone corporation
has used it, the people would have real to fear indus
trial enslavement
very early in the fight literary bureau estab
shed at the Boston headquarters of the Bell Company
which had for its mission the dissemination of matter that
should mold public opinion along the lines desired by the
trust 1t hoped to establish these false premises in
the public mind:
"That the telephone is natural monopoly
THAT dual or competing telephone system is
hardship the people and that brings advantages
the end to the subscriber
THAT the Bell Company alone equipped for CIV
ing a satisfactory service and reasonable rates.
THAT competition wasteful and must necessari-
ly increase rates in the end.
'That persons investing in Independent securities
must inevitably lose their money.
THAT the Independent companies were simply being
promoted by schemng manufacturers to unload worthless
apparatus.
THAT the Bell Company could furnish long distance
connections and that, without such connections tele-
phone service was worthless.
"That Bell telephone securities alone offer safe in
vestments in this industrial field
THAT the Independent companies are going into
bankruptcy almost as fast organized, and
THAT the whole Independent movement is small I'M
important, and doomed to early extinction
How well the Bell press bureau has done it's work,
every reader of this article may ascertain for himself
Ninety-nine men out of every hundred in communities
where the Independents not in actual operation will
affirm every one of these propositions though without
Independents actually work. plenty of people may
be found who hold to these false IDEAS Ask them where
they get their opinions the subject and they will be un
able to tell you except that they know them They are
unaware that the impressions they giving out as facts
have been carefully drilled into them by the agents of the
Bell Telephone Company operating through the newspa-
pers and other publications that willing to lend them
selves to this sort OF work for money consideration The
process as simple is effective AS soon as teephone
opposition threatens to manifest itself in community
there VIII suddenly appear that section of the local
press that is willing to sell it's reading columns for good
price gris of articles detailing most infinitely the Sc
we're financial loss that has in other places to invest
ors IN Independent securities These articles all of them
paid for at the highest reading matter rates generally
appear under such headlines these taken from the New
York Press of June 25, 1905:
LOSSES IN TELEPHONE FIELD
Investors in Independent Companies Suffer Throuob
Many Failures
In the course of year have received throueb the
clipping bureaus as many two thousand articles of This
nature They came out of all classes of papers from the
poor cheap country weekly to the metropolitan da,r
Most OF the articles exact reproductions even r.
paragraphng Invariably they were full of false State
ments." ~ ~ ''''e-
THE PALATKA AUTOMATIC TELEPHONE IN
4 x X