The History of the Telephone [64]
the muddle continued. In order to compel competition, according to the academic theories of the day, licenses were given to thir- teen private companies. As might have been expected, the ablest company quickly swallowed the other twelve. If it had been let alone, this company might have given good service, but it was hobbled and fenced in by jealous regulations. It was compelled to pay one-tenth of its gross earnings to the Post Office. It was to hold itself ready to sell out at six months' notice. And as soon as it had strung a long-distance system of wires, the Postmaster General pounced down upon it and took it away.
Then, in 1900, the Post Office tossed aside all obligations to the licensed company, and threw open the door to a free-for-all competition. It undertook to start a second system in London, and in two years discovered its blunder and proposed to cooperate. It granted licenses to five cities that demanded municipal ownership. These cities set out bravely, with loud beating of drums, plunged from one mishap to another, and finally quit. Even Glasgow, the premier city of municipal ownership, met its Waterloo in the telephone. It spent one million, eight hundred thousand dollars on a plant that was obsolete when it was new, ran it for a time at a loss, and then sold it to the Post Office in 1906 for one million, five hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars.
So, from first to last, the story of the telephone in Great Britain has been a "comedy of errors." There are now, in the two islands, not six hundred thousand telephones in use. London, with its six hundred and forty square miles of houses, has one-quarter of these, and is gaining at the rate of ten thousand a year. No large improvements are under way, as the Post Office has given notice that it will take over and operate all private companies on New Year's Day, 1912. The bureaucratic muddle, so it seems, is to continue indefinitely.
In Germany there has been the same burden of bureaucracy, but less backing and filling. There is a complete government monopoly. Whoever commits the crime of leasing telephone service to his neighbors may be sent to jail for six months. Here, too, the Postmaster General has been supreme. He has forced the telephone business into a postal mould. The man in a small city must pay as high a rate for a small service, as the man in a large city pays for a large service. There is a fair degree of efficiency, but no high speed or record-breaking. The German engineers have not kept in close touch with the progress of telephony in the United States. They have preferred to devise methods of their own, and so have created a miscellaneous assortment of systems, good, bad, and indifferent. All told, there is probably an investment of seventy-five million dollars and a total of nine hundred thousand telephones.
Telephony has always been in high favor with the Kaiser. It is his custom, when planning a hunting party, to have a special wire strung to the forest headquarters, so that he can converse every morning with his Cabinet. He has conferred degrees and honors by telephone. Even his former Chancellor, Von Buelow, received his title of Count in this informal way. But the first friend of the telephone in Germany was Bismarck. The old Unifier saw instantly its value in holding a nation together, and ordered a line between his palace in Berlin and his farm at Varzin, which lay two hundred and thirty miles apart. This was as early as the Fall of 1877, and was thus the first long-distance line in Europe.
In France, as in England, the Government seized upon the telephone business as soon as the pioneer work had been done by private citizens. In 1889 it practically confiscated the Paris system, and after nine years of litigation paid five million francs to its owners. With this reckless beginning, it floundered from bad to worse. It assembled the most complete assortment of other nations' mistakes, and invented several of its own. Almost every known evil of bureaucracy was developed. The system of rates was turned upside down; the flat
Then, in 1900, the Post Office tossed aside all obligations to the licensed company, and threw open the door to a free-for-all competition. It undertook to start a second system in London, and in two years discovered its blunder and proposed to cooperate. It granted licenses to five cities that demanded municipal ownership. These cities set out bravely, with loud beating of drums, plunged from one mishap to another, and finally quit. Even Glasgow, the premier city of municipal ownership, met its Waterloo in the telephone. It spent one million, eight hundred thousand dollars on a plant that was obsolete when it was new, ran it for a time at a loss, and then sold it to the Post Office in 1906 for one million, five hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars.
So, from first to last, the story of the telephone in Great Britain has been a "comedy of errors." There are now, in the two islands, not six hundred thousand telephones in use. London, with its six hundred and forty square miles of houses, has one-quarter of these, and is gaining at the rate of ten thousand a year. No large improvements are under way, as the Post Office has given notice that it will take over and operate all private companies on New Year's Day, 1912. The bureaucratic muddle, so it seems, is to continue indefinitely.
In Germany there has been the same burden of bureaucracy, but less backing and filling. There is a complete government monopoly. Whoever commits the crime of leasing telephone service to his neighbors may be sent to jail for six months. Here, too, the Postmaster General has been supreme. He has forced the telephone business into a postal mould. The man in a small city must pay as high a rate for a small service, as the man in a large city pays for a large service. There is a fair degree of efficiency, but no high speed or record-breaking. The German engineers have not kept in close touch with the progress of telephony in the United States. They have preferred to devise methods of their own, and so have created a miscellaneous assortment of systems, good, bad, and indifferent. All told, there is probably an investment of seventy-five million dollars and a total of nine hundred thousand telephones.
Telephony has always been in high favor with the Kaiser. It is his custom, when planning a hunting party, to have a special wire strung to the forest headquarters, so that he can converse every morning with his Cabinet. He has conferred degrees and honors by telephone. Even his former Chancellor, Von Buelow, received his title of Count in this informal way. But the first friend of the telephone in Germany was Bismarck. The old Unifier saw instantly its value in holding a nation together, and ordered a line between his palace in Berlin and his farm at Varzin, which lay two hundred and thirty miles apart. This was as early as the Fall of 1877, and was thus the first long-distance line in Europe.
In France, as in England, the Government seized upon the telephone business as soon as the pioneer work had been done by private citizens. In 1889 it practically confiscated the Paris system, and after nine years of litigation paid five million francs to its owners. With this reckless beginning, it floundered from bad to worse. It assembled the most complete assortment of other nations' mistakes, and invented several of its own. Almost every known evil of bureaucracy was developed. The system of rates was turned upside down; the flat