United States, there were in operation a little over 250,000
telephones. In the seventeen years since the expiration of the
fundamental patent, independent telephone companies throughout the
United States have installed and now have in daily successful use over
3,911,400 telephones. In other words, since its first beginnings,
independent telephony has brought into continuous daily use nearly
sixteen times as many telephones as were brought into use in the equal
time of the complete monopoly of the Bell organization.

At the beginning of 1910, there were in service by the Bell
organization about 3,633,900 telephones. These with the 3,911,400
independent telephones, make a total of 7,545,300, or about
one-twelfth as many telephones as there are inhabitants of the United
States. The influence of this development upon the lives of the people
has been profound. Whether the influence has been wholly for good may
not be so conclusively apparent. Lord Bacon has declared that,
excepting only the alphabet and the art of printing, those inventions
abridging distance are of the greatest service to mankind. If this be
true, it may be said that the invention of telephony deserves high
place among the civilizing influences.

There is no industrial art in which the advancement of the times has
been followed more closely by practical application than in telephony.
Commercial speech by telephone is possible by means of currents which
so far are practically unmeasurable. In other words, it is possible to
speak clearly and satisfactorily over a line by means of currents
which cannot be read, with certainty as to their amount, by any
electrical measuring device so far known. In this regard, telephony is
less well fortified than are any of the arts utilizing electrical
power in larger quantities. The real wonder is that with so little