Telephone company

“ Western Electric operates 29 distributing houses through which materials flow to the Bell companies. Each house is set up to meet the supplies requirements of the telephone company it serves. It works closely with the telephone organization to deliver the goods promptly and efficiently. Each 28 distributing house maintains a repair shop to recondition service-worn telephone apparatus so that it will give good service again, or, if not economical to repair, to dismantle it for salvage. ”

“ The failure of government ownership of the telephone in so many foreign countries does not mean that the private companies will have absolute power. Quite the reverse. The lesson of thirty years' experience shows that a private telephone company is apt to be much more obedient to the will of the people than if it were a Government department. ”

“ A great corporation, nerved at every point with telephone wires, may now pay fifty thousand dollars to the Bell Company, while at the same time a young Irish immigrant boy, just arrived in New York City, may offer five coppers and find at his disposal a fifty million dollar telephone system. ”

“ Telephone system:
general assessment: services only fair; in 2006 the government sold a 51 percent stake in the national telephone company and ultimately plans to retain only a 23 percent stake in the company; fixed-line connections stand at less than 1 per 100 persons; mobile-cellular usage, fostered by multiple providers, is increasing rapidly from a low base domestic: microwave radio relay, open-wire, and radiotelephone communication stations international: country code - 226 ”

“ The other telephones are owned and operated by some 5,000 independent telephone companies and about 20,000 rural or farmer lines outside the Bell System but connecting with it.
Bell telephone service is home town service. Linked with thousands of other home town services, it makes a neighborhood of the nation. The company that furnishes your service is part of your community. ”

“ The section is as follows:
'Every telephone company doing business within this state, and engaged in a general telephone business, shall supply all applicants for telephone connection and facilities, without discrimination or partiality, provided such applicants comply, or offer to comply, with the reasonable regulations of the company ”

“ There are even now only four men who own as many as ten thousand shares of the stock of the central company. This Bell System stands as the life-work of unprivileged men, who are for the most part still alive and busy. With very few and trivial exceptions, every part of it was made in the United States. No other industrial organism of equal size owes foreign countries so little. Alike in its origin, its development, and its highest point of efficiency and expansion, the telephone is as essentially American as the Declaration of Independence or the monument on Bunker Hill. ”

“ Each local company will continue to handle its own local affairs, and exercise to the full the basic virtue of self-help. But there will also be, as now, a central body of experts to handle the larger affairs that are common to all companies. No separateness or secession on the one side, nor bureaucracy on the other—that is the typically American idea that underlies the ideal telephone system. ”

“ Will railway receipts fall off? Will the taxi-cab wait in vain for a call? There is one certain thing the popularising of the telephone will effect—it will test the sincerity of our friend who protests that he is anxious to see us, and to be in our company. If this sentiment, as is often the case, arises merely out of a desire to hear himself talk, the man may simply use the telephone. ”

“ As a telephone user, you want to be able to count on your telephone, to be able to call other telephone users any time, anywhere. You expect reliable service at low cost. The kind of service you expect depends on teamwork—among telephone people in your local company, and among the separate companies that make up the Bell System. ”

“ The telephone was born in America and has reached its highest development in this country. Since 1876, when Alexander Graham Bell first talked successfully over his primitive telephone, a network of voice highways has grown up throughout the nation, linking more than fifty-four million telephones. About four-fifths of these are owned by the Bell System, which is a group of closely associated telephone companies, a research and development organization and a manufacturing and supply company, all headed by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. ”

“ The revenue of $29,850,303 received under the cntr acts during 1926 only slightly more than offset the estimated cost of over $29,250,000.'↑ With respect to these changes the American Company stated in its report for 1927: 'As the business grows and the country grows, conditions change. In the early days of the telephone business it seemed essential that telephone instruments be owned and maintained by a central organization. ”

“ In the case of telegraph and telephone companies doing business in this state: The franchises, rights of way, poles, wires, pipes, conduits, cables, switchboards, telegraph and telephone instruments, batteries, generators, and other electrical appliances, and exchange and other buildings used in the telegraph and telephone business and so much of the land on which said buildings are situate as may be required for the convenient use and occupation of said buildings.'
'Sec. 3666. * * * 1. ”

“ Besides the direct owners of AT&T, many other people—such as insurance company policy holders and bank customers—help indirectly to finance the business through the AT&T shares held by organizations and trustees. The largest AT&T shareholder is a nation-wide investment firm that holds stock for thousands of customers. Among other institutional holders are some 2,100 churches, 1,100 hospitals and homes, over 1,000 schools and libraries, over 500 foundations and charities. ”

“ How to get the benefits of organization without its losses, to become strong without losing quickness, to become systematic without losing the dash and dare of earlier days, to develop the working force into an army of high-speed specialists without losing the bird's-eye view of the whole situation,—these are the riddles of the new type, for which the telephonists of the next generation must find the answers. They illustrate the nature of the big jobs that the telephone has to offer to an ambitious and gifted young man of to-day. ”

“ In this way, masked as competition, the nuisance and waste of duplication began in most American cities. The telephone business was still so young, it was so little appreciated even by the telephone officials and engineers, that the public regarded a second or a third telephone system in one city as quite a possible and desirable innovation. ”

“ In general, the lesson in Europe is this, that the telephone is what a nation makes it. Its usefulness depends upon the sense and enterprise with which it is handled. It may be either an invaluable asset or a nuisance.
Too much government! That has been the basic reason for failure in most countries. Before the telephone was invented, the telegraph had been made a State monopoly; and the tele-phone was regarded as a species of telegraph. The public officials did not see that a telephone system is a highly complex and technical problem, much more like a piano factory or a steel-mill. ”

“ Its operators, installers and other representatives are your neighbors. Some may be your friends or relatives. Its departments are managed by your fellow citizens—men and women who have come up through the ranks.
Nine out of every ten telephone calls handled by these home town people are local calls. The tenth call may go across the continent or across the ocean. But wherever the calls go, they travel by means of a marvelously ordered world of wires, cables, switchboards, dial equipment, radio and above all, with the help of people working together to serve the public. ”

“ That the telephone is now doing most of all, in this binding together of all manner of men, is perhaps not too much to claim, when we remember that there are now in the United States seventy thousand holders of Bell telephone stock and ten million users of telephone service. ”

“ To tell the doings of a wire chief, in the course of his ordinary week's work, would in itself make a lively book of adventures. Even a washerwoman, with one lone, non-electrical clothes-line of a hundred yards to operate, has often enough trouble with it. But the wire chiefs of the Bell telephone have charge of as much wire as would make TWO HUNDRED MILLION CLOTHES-LINES—ten apiece to every family in the United States ”

“ He may establish a universal code, so that all persons of importance in the United States shall have call-numbers by which they may instantly be located, as books are in a library.
Some other young man may create a commercial department on wide lines, a work which telephone men have as yet been too specialized to do. Whoever does this will be a man of comprehensive brain. He will be as closely in touch with the average man as with the art of telephony. ”

“ Besides operation and engineering services, other AT&T groups help the telephone companies devise better business and office routines. Still other groups advise the companies on the most efficient methods in accounting, statistical analyses, public relations and advertising activities, and in all the many other phases of the telephone business. ”

“ These telephone girls are the human part of a great communication machine. They are weaving a web of talk that changes into a new pattern every minute. How many possible combinations there are with the five million telephones of the Bell System, or what unthinkable mileage of conversation, no one has ever dared to guess. But whoever has once seen the long line of white arms waving back and forth in front of the switchboard lights must feel that he has looked upon the very pulse of the city's life. ”

“ And thus the larger truth about the telephone is that it is vastly more than a mere convenience. It is not to be classed with safety razors and piano players and fountain pens. It is nothing less than the high-speed tool of civilization, gearing up the whole mechanism to more effective social service. It is the symbol of national efficiency and cooperation.
All this the telephone is doing, at a total cost to the nation of probably $200,000,000 a year—no more than American farmers earn in ten days. ”

“ Plainly, the telephone system of the future will be national, so that any two people in the same country will be able to talk to one another. It will not be competitive, for the reason that no farmer would think for a moment of running his farm on competitive lines. ”

“ Railways and steamships had begun this work of binding man to man by "nobler and cunninger methods." The telegraph and cable had gone still farther and put all civilized people within sight of each other, so that they could communicate by a sort of deaf and dumb alphabet. And then came the telephone, giving direct instantaneous communication and putting the people of each nation within hearing distance of each other. ”

“ The possibilities of clear speech-transmission at indefinite distance are without measure. Like the telegraph, the telephone has opened an immense and profitable industry, involving hundreds of millions of dollars. ”

“ The Government has always monopolized the long-distance lines, and is now about to buy out all private companies. There are only fifty-five thousand telephones to thirty-two million people—as many as in Norway and less than in Denmark. ”

“ Roughly speaking, there are now ten million telephones in all countries, employing two hundred and fifty thousand people, requiring twenty-one million miles of wire, representing a cost of fifteen hundred million dollars, and carrying fourteen thousand million conversations a year. All this, and yet the men who heard the first feeble cry of the infant telephone are still alive, and not by any means old.
No foreign country has reached the high American level of telephony. The United States has eight telephones per hundred of population, while no other country has one-half as many. ”

“ The courteous, helpful service rendered by telephone operators has become a traditional part of American life. Even in communities that have dial service, “the voice with a smile” is on the job to handle long distance calls, to provide telephone numbers not included in the directory, and to give any other help that customers may desire.
Ever since World War II, the Bell companies have kept on installing new equipment in great quantities to meet the largest demand ever experienced for new telephone service. ”

“ Wireless telephony, like wireless telegraphy, but to an even greater extent, is peculiarly suited for the conveyance of marine intelligence. Wireless telephony occupies a unique position in this regard-no operator is required. The additional expense of an operator is an objection to the wireless telegraph in many cases, and forbids its installation. Anybody can operate the wireless telephone. It is also much quicker-words can be spoken more rapidly than they can be put into Morse signals and translated. ”

“ You may accept as a fact that no system of telephony which extends beyond a radius of twenty or thirty miles from any city, however large, will prove a paying investment. For purely commercial or financial interests, the telephone will not come into favor as a medium of direct transmission between large cities. The telephone, like any other enterprise, is valuable so long as it pays, and when it ceases to prove profitable in a pecuniary point of view, its scientific uses will not avail much. ”