Evening star., 1944-09-28

candidates are L""e "
preparing to take this campaign
seriously, it may be good time to
offer them an issue. If one OF them
accepts it and the other refuses 1t
then they will have something to
argue about. 1t won't be much OF
battle If Mr.. Dewey devotes HIM
self to asserting that he's as good
a New Dealer as Roosevelt, and Mr..
Roosevelt devotes himself to laugh
ing that of
Here's the issue and either one
can have it: Rural telephones, or
to make 1t sound more like slogan
Phones for the Farmers.
People in the cities will be aston
ished, l am sure, to learn that IN
the matter of rural telephones this
country has been steadily slipping
for more than 20 years. Between
1920 and 1910 the number of tele-
phones on farms decreased by 3s
per cent. In 1920 2,498 900 farms
had telephones. BY 1880 the number
had gone down to 2,l39,O 900, and by
1910 to 1.527,000. In only one region
the Pacific Coast, was there an in
crease. When the census was taken
In 1940-there are no later offlcial
figures-there were 5661 1894 farm
dwellings without telephones, or
7e.6 per cent of all the farm dwell
ings in the country.
They Could Use Them.
If any family has need for a
telephone, you'd think. it is the
family on the farm. If you can't
conceive of life without a phone in
the city, how do you think you
would get along without one on the
farm?
The American telephone system is
the most extensive in the world and
the most efficient. 1t is constantly
expanding-in the cities. The total
number of telephones in use, despite
the decrease on the farms, grew
from less than IA million in 1920 to
more than 20 million in 1910,
Steadily the telephone system has
been bringing the people of America
closer together. You can pick up
your phone in Boston and talk to
your mother-in-law in Los Angeles
just as easily as hollering upstairs
The telephone is making neighbors
of everybody-except the farmers,
In other respects life on the farm
has been steadily improving Farm
ers have more automobiles, more
radios, more electric light and power.
But they have fewer telephones,
fewer even of those party lines about
which so many jokes have been
written. The explanation is a little
difficult to arrive at. Apparently it
is partly due to the fact that small
rural exchanges. mostly co-opera-
tives. cannot be made to fit eco
nomically into the vast network of
the present national telephone
system. In any case there has been
little in the rural telephone field to
tempt the appetite of the Bell
System. The A. T. & T would not
continue to make its habitual 9 per
cent, perhaps, if it brought all the
farm phones into its system and
brought the rural service up to its
own high standard
REA May Show Way.
Yet surely something can be done
and maybe REA has shown the
way. It hasn't been so long since 1t
was taken for granted that farmers
couldn't have electricity. but now SO
per cent of all American farms have
been electrified. % per cent of them
In the last 10 years, thanks to REA.
Another form of public aid-Fed-
eral, State and county road building
has been responsible for much of
the great increase in the use of auto
mobiles by farmers. Without the
new and better roads the jalopy
would not have supplanted the horse
and mule to such an extent.
The problem of rural telephones
can be solved. A half century ago
the Government made a radical de-
parture in postal service by intro
ducing free rural delivery. Ten
years ago it moved in to meet the
farmers need for electricity. Both
OF these operations are how accepted