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by Thomas A. Edison at Menlo Park, New Jersey, and in 1888 an actual test of the electric system was made in Richmond, Virginia. Immediately after, the street railway lines of Boston and Philadelphia were electrified, and within three years nearly every large city of the country had its overhead trolley lines. In 1890 the electric street car lines had 1,261 miles of trackage; the cable lines, 488 miles; the horse car lines, 5,661 miles; and the steam power lines, 711 miles. The capital stock of all these lines was $163,506,444. In 1894 the total mileage was: electric, 10,363; cable, 632; horse, 1,914; miscellaneous, 679; total, 13,588. At that time there were nearly 1,000 street railways in operation, with a capital stock of $748,014,206. In 1907 the number of street and electric railways was 1,238, the mileage 38,812, the capital stock of the corporations $2,251,425,882, and their funded debt $1,872,408,516. Electrification of steam railroads began in this decade. Notable examples of this change from steam to electricity were seen in the New York City suburban service of the New York Central, the New York, New Haven and Hartford, and the Long Island railroads. The problem of electrification over long tistics, Treasury Department (Washington).

distances was also under serious consideration, with unreserved prediction of ultimate success. In New York, Boston, and Chicago extensive systems of subways were built to supplement the street car lines in meeting the increasing travel demands of the congested centres of population.*

* Rowland Hazard, The Crédit Mobilier of America (Providence, 1888); Arthur T. Hadley, Railroad Transportation, Its History and Its Laws (New York, 1885); W. J. Abbott, American Ships and Sailors (New York, 1902); Charles Francis Adams, Jr., Railroads, Their Origin and Problems (Boston, 1871); John P. Davis, The Union Pacific Railway (Chicago, 1894); J. L. Ringwalt, Development of Transportation in the United States (Philadelphia, 1888); A. P. C. Griffin, List of References on Mercantile Marine Subsidies and List of References Relating to Railroads in Their Relations to the Government and the Public (Library of Congress, Washington, 1903 and 1904); Report of the United States Industrial Commission (19 vols., Washington, 1900-02); Edwin A. Pratt, American Railroads (New York, 1903); Emory R. Johnson, American Railroad Transportation and Ocean and Island Transportations (New York, 1903 and 1906); W. L. Marvin, The American Merchant Marine (New York, 1902); Henry Fry, History of North Atlantic Steam Navigation (New York, 1896); William W. Bates, The American Marine, Its Rise and Ruin (Boston, 1902), and The American Marine, The Shippers' Question in History and Politics (Boston, 1893); David A. Wells, Our Merchant Marine (New York, 1887); W. T. Dunmore, Ship Subsidies (Boston, 1907);' Poor's Manual of the Railroads of the United States (New York, 1865-1912); census reports, 18701910; The Statistical Abstract (Washington, 1900-1910); monthly and yearly reports of Commerce and Finance issued by the Bureau of Sta

CHAPTER X.

1865-1912.

DEVELOPMENT OF SYSTEMS OF COMMUNICATION.*

The advent of the telegraph

Its early development The first American-British Atlantic cable - The expansion and consolidation of the telegraph business - The spread of Atlantic and Pacific cables Perfection of the telegraph and its importance in modern business - The advent of the Bell telephone - Rival telephone systems and companies Rural telephones Present extent of the telephone - The wireless telegraph.

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In the closing years of the Nineteenth century and after the telegraph and telephone came to rival all previous instrumentalities for bringing the country together in social and business unity. They constituted, with the railroads, a trio that revolutionized modern life in all of its branches of activity. At the outset there was intense rivalry between the two systems of communication. As the time went on, however, it was realized that one supplemented the other and that the two, together, worked most efficiently. The telegraph was well established nearly 25 years before the telephone came into existence, but the younger invention surpassed its rival in public favor before the end of the century. It came into wider and more public use than its predecessor, occupying an entirely new field, creating and meeting new needs.

this country, the years immediately following the Civil War were particularly noteworthy for the gradual consolidation of the various companies into larger, more compact, and more serviceable corporations, the perfecting of the trans-Atlantic cable system, and the improvement of the transcontinental line. The feverish haste of promoters and contractors to preempt unoccupied territory continued with little, if any, interruption; and the demands of the country and the world for the service grew every year. Hence scores of new companies (some of them of minor importance and others of strong character and great aims) were organized.

In 1865 the International Ocean Telegraph Company was organized to lay cables to the islands of the West Indies and thence to Central America, South America, and under the At

In the history of the telegraph in lantic to Madeira and Lisbon. This

Prepared for this History by Herbert N. Casson, author of American Telegraph and Telephone Systems, etc.

was the beginning of an important extension of a service which was absorbed eight years later by the West

ern Union Company. In 1866 came the Pacific and Atlantic to connect the leading cities of the North and South, from New York and Boston to New Orleans and San Francisco. Several small companies were organized within the next two or three years in Pennsylvania and the South to be feeders of the Pacific and Atlantic trunk line. In 1869 the Southern and Atlantic connected New York and Washington with Southern cities, but, within a few years, this, as well as the Pacific and Atlantic, was absorbed by the growing giant, the Western Union. In 1879 came the American Union Company, established by Jay Gould to overthrow the Western Union. It had the advantage of running its wires along the lines of the railroads owned or controlled by Gould and his associates. But in two years it went the way of the others, and in 1881 became part of the Western Union system.

In 1885 there were 217 companies in the country, of which the Western Union, controlling two-thirds of the wire mileage, was the principal. This supremacy had been brought about largely by the merging of the American Union and the Atlantic and Pacific companies in 1881. The lines of the New York Mutual Telegraph Company, the Baltimore and Ohio Railway Telegraph, the American Rapid Telegraph, and the Northwestern Telegraph companies had also been taken over. At the opening of the Twentieth century the telegraph business of the country was controlled by

the Western Union and the Postal Telegraph-Cable companies. In 1901 the Western Union had 193,589 miles of pole and cables, 972,766 miles of wire, and 23,238 offices; the Postal Telegraph Cable had 43,850 miles of pole and cables, 243,423 miles of wire, and 14,870 offices. In 1904 there were in the United States over 250,000 miles of pole and cable, 1,250,000 miles of wire, and 40,000 offices. The public sent upward of 70,000,000 messages, for which it paid over $30,000,000. These figures show to what astounding proportions this business had grown in sixty years. But the increase in the next few years was even more remarkable. In 1911 the Western Union had 1,487,345 miles of wire and the Postal 390,139. There were nearly 50,000 offices in the country, which transmitted over 90,000,000 messages.

A second American-British Atlantic cable was laid in 1866, a third from Ireland to Newfoundland in 1874, and a fourth from Ireland to a terminus on the coast of New Hampshire in 1875. The cable of 1866 was a permanent success and the problem of telegraph communication between the two continents was completely solved by that enterprise and those that closely followed. During the next quarter of a century Atlantic cables between North America and Europe became almost commonplace. Among the great lines of that period was the commercial cable, laid in 1883 and 1884 from Ireland to Cape Canso and thence to Rockport, Massachusetts and Coney

Island, New York. In 1885 the cables of the world were 73,779 miles, of which more than 40,000 lay between America and Europe. In 1903 there were 19 cables in existence between the two countries, several of which, however, were not in use. In 1903 the Commercial Cable Company laid a cable 7,846 miles long across the Pacific, with termini at San Francisco and the Philippine Islands, and stations at Hawaii, Midway Island, and Guam.

Side developments of the telegraph have been numerous and are scarcely second in importance to the main system. Among these are the District Telegraph Company, the Gold and Stock Telegraph Company, and the systems of private lines extensively used by newspapers, business men, and large corporations. These have become such features of modern business life that it is not possible to comprehend how public and private affairs could now be conducted without them. The development of the telegraph has kept pace with its commercial progress. Thousands of new inventions have added to its efficiency until the perfected machine of the Twentieth century bears little resemblance, save in fundamental principles, to its original of 1846.

Although the electrical production and transmission of sound was considered and experimented with by scientists long before the middle of the Nineteenth century, the efficient speak

ing telephone dates from the discoveries of Alexander Graham Bell and others in the last quarter of that century. The Bell instrument was publicly exhibited in 1876 and came into commercial use the following year. It was slow in coming into general appreciation, even though its usefulness was clearly apparent. From the original method of a single wire connecting two stations only, the exchange system was invented, which was the one thing needful to enhance and extend the utility of the new invention. Within seven years every city or town in the United States of 10,000 inhabitants or more, and many smaller communities, had an exchange.

That was the real beginning of the telephone. Concerning the situation as it then existed, it has been well said that all was industrial and scientific confusion. Rival inventors came promptly, and the business was saved only by the consolidation in 1881 of the six companies which had sprung into existence. The mechanical and scientific problems that remained to be solved were seemingly insolvable a "Gibraltar of impossibilities." All that those had who followed Bell and Watson, his associate, was “that part of the telephone which we call the receiver. This was practically the sum total of Bell's invention, and remains to-day as he made it. It was then, and is yet, the most sensitive instrument ever put to general use in any country. There were no

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switchboards of any account, no cables of any value, no wires that were in any sense adequate, no theory of tests or signals, no exchanges, no telephone system of any sort whatever." *

That was in 1881. But in 1878 the New England Bell Telephone Company had been organized for New England and the Bell Telephone Company for the United States; in the following year the National Bell Telephone Company arose as a consolidation of the two and was, in turn, succeeded in 1880 by the American Bell Telephone Company. The telephone was passing through a business experience which strikingly resembled that of the telegraph: a small beginning, great and rapid expansion, inventing rivalry and patent infringement, sharp competition, and the final extinction of injurious rivalry by the consolidation of opposing interests. Nine years after the American Bell Telephone Company had become the controlling corporation (in 1899) it was taken over by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, which had been originally started to handle the long-distance branch of the busi

ness.

But it had been a long and weary progress before this point of business importance had been attained. In the spring of 1875 there was not a single telephone in practical use in the United States. Before the close of the

*Herbert N. Casson, The History of the Telephone, p. 115.

following year, 5,187 had been installed, but even then the instrument was little more than a toy. A decade later the number of instruments in use had increased nearly eighty fold

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to 380,277. The years immediately following also showed an increase, but a much smaller one proportionately, the number of instruments installed by 1895 being 660,817 - less than double the number in 1878.

The most dangerous competitor the Bell telephone ever had was the Western Union Telegraph Company, which was early in the field with the inventions of Elisha Gray and Thomas A. Edison; but the patent litigation that ensued was ended by compromise and the relinquishment of its telephone branch by the telegraph company. Other rivals were not formidable and the Bell people had a monopoly that still holds at the end of nearly 40 years. The commercial systems of the whole country were unified, apparatus was harmonized and standardized, and the business was developed at every point along both industrial and scientific lines. As a result, the Bell company was built up into a powerful machine, the interests of which became so completely and strongly interwoven with the varied interests of the country that it held a position in which, if not impregnable, it was certainly able to withstand powerful attacks.

Strong attacks finally did come. As the term of the fundamental patents owned by the Bell company ended, in

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