The History of the Telephone [70]
done, therefore, we may venture a guess as to the future of the telephone. This "grand telephonic system" which had no existence thirty years ago, except in the imagination of Vail, seems to be at hand. The very newsboys in the streets are crying it. And while there is, of course, no exact blueprint of a best possible telephone system, we can now see the general outlines of Vail's plan.
There is nothing mysterious or ominous in this plan. It has nothing to do with the pools and conspiracies of Wall Street. No one will be squeezed out except the promoters of paper companies. The simple fact is that Vail is organizing a complete Bell System for the same reason that he built one big comfortable barn for his Swiss cattle and his Welsh ponies, instead of half a dozen small uncomfortable sheds. He has never been a "high financier" to juggle profits out of other men's losses. He is merely applying to the telephone business the same hard sense that any farmer uses in the management of his farm. He is building a Big Barn, metaphorically, for the telephone and telegraph.
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. It will have a staff- and-line organization, to use a military phrase. 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.
The line of authority, in such a system, will begin with the local manager. From him it will rise to the directors of the State company; then higher still to the directors of the national company; and finally, above all corporate leaders to the Federal Government itself. 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 de- partment. But it is an axiom of democracy that no company, however well conducted, will be permitted to control a public convenience without being held strictly responsible for its own acts. As politics becomes less of a game and more of a responsibility, the telephone of the future will doubtless be supervised by some sort of public committee, which will have power to pass upon complaints, and to prevent the nuisance of duplication and the swindle of watering stock.
As this Federal supervision becomes more and more efficient, the present fear of monopoly will decrease, just as it did in the case of the railways. It is a fact, although now generally forgotten, that the first railways of the United States were run for ten years or more on an anti-monopoly plan. The tracks were free to all. Any one who owned a cart with flanged wheels could drive it on the rails and compete with the locomotives. There was a happy-go-lucky jumble of trains and wagons, all held back by the slowest team; and this continued on some railways until as late as 1857. By that time the people saw that com- petition on a railway track was absurd. They allowed each track to be monopolized by one company, and the era of expansion began.
No one, certainly, at the present time, regrets the passing of the independent teamster. He was much more arbitrary and expensive than any railroad has ever dared to be; and as the country grew, he became impossible. He was not the fittest to survive. For the general good, he was held back from competing with the railroad, and taught to cooperate with it by hauling freight to and from the depots. This, to his surprise, he found much
There is nothing mysterious or ominous in this plan. It has nothing to do with the pools and conspiracies of Wall Street. No one will be squeezed out except the promoters of paper companies. The simple fact is that Vail is organizing a complete Bell System for the same reason that he built one big comfortable barn for his Swiss cattle and his Welsh ponies, instead of half a dozen small uncomfortable sheds. He has never been a "high financier" to juggle profits out of other men's losses. He is merely applying to the telephone business the same hard sense that any farmer uses in the management of his farm. He is building a Big Barn, metaphorically, for the telephone and telegraph.
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. It will have a staff- and-line organization, to use a military phrase. 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.
The line of authority, in such a system, will begin with the local manager. From him it will rise to the directors of the State company; then higher still to the directors of the national company; and finally, above all corporate leaders to the Federal Government itself. 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 de- partment. But it is an axiom of democracy that no company, however well conducted, will be permitted to control a public convenience without being held strictly responsible for its own acts. As politics becomes less of a game and more of a responsibility, the telephone of the future will doubtless be supervised by some sort of public committee, which will have power to pass upon complaints, and to prevent the nuisance of duplication and the swindle of watering stock.
As this Federal supervision becomes more and more efficient, the present fear of monopoly will decrease, just as it did in the case of the railways. It is a fact, although now generally forgotten, that the first railways of the United States were run for ten years or more on an anti-monopoly plan. The tracks were free to all. Any one who owned a cart with flanged wheels could drive it on the rails and compete with the locomotives. There was a happy-go-lucky jumble of trains and wagons, all held back by the slowest team; and this continued on some railways until as late as 1857. By that time the people saw that com- petition on a railway track was absurd. They allowed each track to be monopolized by one company, and the era of expansion began.
No one, certainly, at the present time, regrets the passing of the independent teamster. He was much more arbitrary and expensive than any railroad has ever dared to be; and as the country grew, he became impossible. He was not the fittest to survive. For the general good, he was held back from competing with the railroad, and taught to cooperate with it by hauling freight to and from the depots. This, to his surprise, he found much