THE TELEPHONE: "AMERICA'S MOST POETICAL ACHIEVEMENT"
A distinguished English journalist, who was visiting the United States, in 1917, on an important governmental mission, had an almost sublime illustration of the extent to which the telephone had developed on the North American Continent.Sitting at a desk in a large office building in New York, Lord Northcliffe took up two telephone receivers and placed one at each ear.In the first he heard the surf beating at Coney Island, New York, and in the other he heard, with equal distinctness, the breakers pounding the beach at the Golden Gate, San Francisco.Certainly this demonstration justified the statement made a few years before by another English traveler."What startles and frightens the backward European in the United States," said Mr.Arnold Bennett, "is the efficiency and fearful universality of the telephone.To me it was the proudest achievement and the most poetical achievement of the American people."Lord Northcliffe's experience had a certain dramatic justice which probably even he did not appreciate.He is the proprietor of the London Times, a newspaper which, when the telephone was first introduced, denounced it as the "latest American humbug"and declared that it "was far inferior to the well-established system of speaking tubes." The London Times delivered this solemn judgment in 1877.A year before, at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, Don Pedro, Emperor of Brazil, picked up, almost accidentally, a queer cone-shaped instrument and put it to his ear, "My God! It talks!" was his exclamation; an incident which, when widely published in the press, first informed the American people that another of the greatest inventions of all times had had its birth on their own soil.Yet the initial judgment of the American people did not differ essentially from the opinion which had been more coarsely expressed by the leading English newspaper.Our fathers did not denounce the telephone as an "American humbug," but they did describe it as a curious electric "toy" and ridiculed the notion that it could ever have any practical value.Even after Alexander Graham Bell and his associates had completely demonstrated its usefulness, the Western Union Telegraph Company refused to purchase all their patent rights for $100,000! Only forty years have passed since the telephone made such an inauspicious beginning.It remains now, as it was then, essentially an American achievement.Other nations have their telephone systems, but it is only in the United States that its possibilities have been even faintly realized.It is not until Americans visit foreign countries that they understand that, imperfect as in certain directions their industrial and social organization may be, in this respect at least their nation is preeminent.
The United States contains nearly all the telephones in existence, to be exact, about seventy-five per cent.We have about ten million telephones, while Canada, Central America, South America, Great Britain, Europe, Asia, and Africa all combined have only about four million.In order to make an impressive showing, however, we need not include the backward peoples, for a comparison with the most enlightened nations emphasizes the same point.Thus New York City has more telephones than six European countries taken together--Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Norway, Denmark, Italy, and the Netherlands.Chicago, with a population of 2,000,000, has more telephones than the whole of France, with a population of 40,000,000.Philadelphia, with 1,500,000, has more than the Russian Empire, with 166,000,000.Boston has more telephones than Austria-Hungary, Los Angeles more than the Netherlands, and Kansas City more than Belgium.Several office buildings and hotels in New York City have more instruments than the kingdoms of Greece or Bulgaria.
The whole of Great Britain and Ireland has about 650,000telephones, which is only about 200,000 more, than the city of New York.
Mere numbers, however, tell only half the story.It is when we compare service that American superiority stands most manifest.
The London newspapers are constantly filled with letters abusing the English telephone system.If these communications describe things accurately, there is apparently no telephone vexation that the Englishman does not have to endure.Delays in getting connections are apparently chronic.At times it seems impossible to get connections at all, especially from four to five in the afternoon--when the operators are taking tea.Suburban connections, which in New York take about ninety seconds, average half an hour in London, and many of the smaller cities have no night service.An American thinks nothing of putting in a telephone; he notifies his company and in a few days the instrument is installed.We take a thing like this for granted.
But there are places where a mere telephone subscription, the privilege of having an instrument installed, is a property right of considerable value and where the telephone service has a "waiting list," like an exclusive club.In Japan one can sell a telephone privilege at a good price, its value being daily quoted on the Stock Exchange.Americans, by constantly using the telephone, have developed what may be called a sixth sense, which enables them to project their personalities over an almost unlimited area.In the United States the telephone has become the one all-prevailing method of communication.The European writes or telegraphs while the American more frequently telephones.In this country the telephone penetrates to places which even the mails never reach.The rural free delivery and other forms of the mail service extend to 58,000 communities, while our 10,000,000telephones encompass 70,000.We use this instrument for all the varied experiences of life, domestic, social, and commercial.
