Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 62, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 March 1914 — TELEPHONE QUESTION BEFORE COMMISSION [ARTICLE]

TELEPHONE QUESTION BEFORE COMMISSION

Attorney Halleck Appears for the People and Attorney Parkinson For the Company. The Public Service Commission in Indianapolis today listened to the argument of Attorney A. Halleck and Attorney W. H. Parkinson in the local telephone matter. Delos Thompson, the president and general manager of the company, has been in Indianapolis since yesterday. Mr. Parkinson will tell of the direful hardships that have beset the local company and how the president has worn himself thinbeoause of the troubles and how the company, capitalized for $48,000 and taxed for about SIO,OOO and having an actual physical valuation of a lot more than it is capitalized for has been dragging the poor stockholders nearer and nearer the brink of financial ruin until they have come to the commission to ask them to authorize an increase of rates of something l|ke fifty per cent. Mr. Thompson will doubtless have his pockets bulging out with the figures showing that the receipts have all faded away and the company has been compelled to use about all of its toll receipts to keep its nose above water and that Central Union experts testify that it costs $1.40 to plant a twenty foot pole. But the commission is composed of five men who know a few things and Attorney A. Halleck will inform them in cases where they do not know, and we are just as certain as we were the day that Mr. Murphy listened to the long sizing of figures here, that the commission will decide that it has no authority and in justice to the patrons of the utility and with regard to their duties will not authorize a higher rate based upon any promise of reconstruction. The Republican has known for' some time that several telephone men have been after the local plant and have offered President Thompson far in excess of the 50 per cent that he so frequently bluffed about selling out for. We are informed that at this time there is an offer to buy the plant at 85 per cent of its capitalization. And we believe that a man or a company can be found to take over the plant at 100 per cent, and if the entire plant can not be bought that the prospective purchasers will give 85 per cent and possibly 100 per cent for the controlling stock, provided it Includes the stock owned by Delos Thompson. The Republican is more and more convinced that there is money and

lots of it in the telephone business and that any figures produced to show that the Jasper County Telephone Co. has lost money are nothing more than a proof of mismanagement. A telephone story will be printed in a day or two that will show that a man who started in four years ago with a capital of SI,BOO built up a plant that made him a profit of more than $15,000 when sold four years later. We have been fold that we do not know anything about the telephone business. Delos Thompson told us so. Strange idea for a man who acknowledges that ,be has made a complete failure of the business for twenty years, in the very center of a territory where others have made small fortunes. But ignorant as we may be or as he may consider us to be in the business, we will venture that any real telephone man or real business man who will undertake the management of the local company can make it earn at the present rates from 12 to 20 per cent a year. If Mr. Thompson will sell the controlling interest in the telephone company for 85 cents on the dollar he won’t have to go beyond April Ist and probably not later than March 20th to make a sale. And a man will buy the plant who will give a written contract to maintain the rates at $2 for business phones and $1 for residence and farm phones for a period of 25 years. If the people swallow the slush about this telephone company losing money or about the aggrieved stockholders selling the business out at 50 cents on the dollar they are an easier bunch of marks than we believe them to be and the only way we will be convinced we are wrong is for Mr. Thompson, the president and the general manager, to make a proposition to sell those figures. We believe that he is holding the stock, his stock, at somewhat above par. Does this look like a reason why higher rates are deserved? Put this company into the hands of telephone men who have the business ability to run it and at the rates now paid it will beat any bank stock In Jasper county.