Private Enterprise in America

In America the possibilities of the telephone as a time-saving and labor-saving invention were better realized from the outset. Thanks to the intelligence, foresight, and public spirit of Mr. Theodore N. Vail, founder of the telephone enterprise in the United States and still president of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, the business has been steadily built up with high ideals of organized efficiency and civic duty. Mr. Vail's ambition was, and is, “that every person, firm, or company in the United States that ought to have a telephone shall be provided with one, and that any person so provided, wherever he may be located, can within a reasonable time be connected to the telephone of any other subscriber and talk satisfactorily.” For 30 years work has been steadily carried on with this ideal in view, and with marvellous results. At the International Telephone and Telegraph Conference held in Paris in September, 1910, the chief engineer of the company summarized some of these results as follows:

In the plans which we have made for New York and for the other cities in America it has been found, all things considered, most economical when building new subways to plan for a period somewhere between 15 and 20 years ahead.

Our expenditure for new construction during the first six months of 1910 is more than $21,000,000.

The fundamental plans for New York, not including the vast suburban region outside of the municipal limits of Greater New York, provided in 1900 for a system of 51,398 telephone stations, served from 52 central offices, with an estimated population of 4,800,000. In 1930 the plans provide for 2,142,000 stations, to be served from 109 central offices, with an estimated population of 8,800,000.

At the present time an enormous amount of toll line business takes place between New York City and the territory tributary to it for 30 miles around. In 90 per cent. of this business the connexion is made in an average of 38 seconds. In all of these cases the transmission conditions are so planned that the subscriber may converse with ease. A local call is accomplished in less time, requiring only 22 seconds where but one office is involved, and slightly more between two offices.

Between cities as far distant from each other as New York, Boston, Washington, and Philadelphia, “Good talking with prompt connexions” by underground cables is the regular rule, while communication by phantom loaded overhead circuits has been extended as far west as Denver, distant 2,200 miles from New York.