telephone stations are in country districts. The farmer no longer
depends upon the mails; like the city man, he telephones. This
instrument is thus the greatest civilizing force we have, for
civilization is very largely a matter of intercommunication.
Indeed, the telephone and other similar agencies, such as the
parcel post, the rural free delivery, better roads, and the
automobile, are rapidly transforming rural life in this country.
In several regions, especially in the Mississippi Valley, a
farmer who has no telephone is in a class by himself, like one
who has no mowing-machine. Thus the latest returns from Iowa,
taken by the census as far back as 1907, showed that
seventy-three per cent of all the farms--160,000 out of
220,000--had telephones and the proportion is unquestionably
greater now. Every other farmhouse from the Atlantic to the
Pacific contains at least one instrument. These statistics
clearly show that the telephone has removed half the terrors and
isolation of rural life. Many a lonely farmer's wife or daughter,
on the approach of a suspicious-looking character, has rushed to
the telephone and called up the neighbors, so that now tramps
notoriously avoid houses that shelter the protecting wires. In
remote sections, insanity, especially among women, is frequently
the result of loneliness, a calamity which the telephone is doing
much to mitigate.

In the United States today there is one telephone to every nine
persons. This achievement represents American invention, genius,
industrial organization, and business enterprise at their best.
The story of American business contains many chapters and
episodes which Americans would willingly forget. But the American
Telephone and Telegraph Company represents an industry which has