Jasper County Democrat, Volume 12, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 July 1909 — MUTUAL ’PHONE PROSPECT GOOD. [ARTICLE]

MUTUAL ’PHONE PROSPECT GOOD.

Is Being Talked In All Parts of the County. EVERYONE HEARTILYIN FAVOR And the Proposition Is Likely to Take Definite Shape In the Next Few Weeks—Would Be No Trouble to Get From 500 to 1,000 Farmers In Jasper County to Take Stock In the System, Is the Belief Of Many People We Have Talked To—Experience On a Small Scale In Newton Tp„ By a Mutual Company.

The proposition to establish a mutual telephone system to take in the entire terrieory of Jasper county, as urged by The Democrat two weeks ago, is meeting with growing favor all the time as it is being talked up in the various towns and neighborhoods. The Democrat continues to get letters from all sections of the county favoring the plan, and many farmers and others from different sections drop in to let us know that they are “fur it” and are ready to do anything they can to help it along and will gladly take stock whenever it has reached the point where subscriptions are asked for. It takes some little time of course, to get to that point, to get where we will go ahead and organize. Little details in knowing just how to proceed to organize, what to make the shares of stock, etc., etc., and other matters must be looked into so that the leaders in the plan will have something definite to go before the people with. Mutual telephone companies are no experiment in Indiana, in fact there are scores of such organizations in successful operation in the state, and the universal reports we get from them are that they are an unqualified success; that the patrons get better service and for less money than with the div.vu companies. To most of our people, however, the idea is new; they know little or nothing about how to proceed to organize and establish such a system. The propositon also to make the system county wide as fast as the lines can be constructed is different from a small system, and means quite a big thing, but one which can be accomplished, and practically every farmer in the county who so desires can be connected up with the county seat and with every other farmer in the entire county, and with long distance and other towns and county seats. Larger mutual systems than this will be, are now in successful operation ; we will have the experience of others to help us out. The writer expects to personally visit some of these larger towns where muttial systems are in operation and publish the experience they have had with theirs, securing the information from both the patrons and the telephone officers. Several farmers in the west part of Jordan tp., are connected with the Brook mutual, and all the patfons of that line with whom we have talked; —many of whom we are personally acquainted with—are loud In their praises of the service and rates given them. They echo the universal sentiment wherever mutuals are In operation—"better service and lower rates.” We promised to say something this week about the farmers’ mutual line in operation west of Rensselaer, in Newton township and herewith give a few facts gained from an intervew with one of the prominent patrons of the line. About seven years ago ten or a dozen farmers in Newton township got together and put up a mutual telephone line connecting their farmhouses. The work of setting the poles and stringing the wire was donated by the interested parties, oak poles cut from their timber being used, and Wm. Halstead did the necessary wire work. Their phones cost them sl2 each, but they are cheaper now. During this seven years they have had absolutely no exfibnse except for replacing batteries occasionally—a Bmall item. For five years they were connected up through the Mt. Ayr exchange and got both Mt. Ayr and Rensselaer for $5 per year. This contract was a verbal one, and the party who made It with the company says his understanding was that It was to be for 20 years. The company however, said it was only for five years, and wanted to double rates—-

make it $lO per year—to continue. The mutual, Itoe patrons said NO, and since last summer they have had no outside connection and can only talk among themselves. This line has given excellent service and the best of satisfaction, and the late James Yeoman, who used to live in that township and used a phone a great deal in stockbuying, often remarked that he got much better service on the mutual line over the county and to Mt. Ayr and Rensselaer than he did over the Jasper County Telephone Co. line—he having both phones in his house. Charles Hammond, his son-fin-law, succeeded Mr. Yeoman on the farm, said the same. Every patron was well pleased. f. Tfl e poles on this line are now getting old, being but cheap oak ones In the beginning, chopped from the adjacent timber, and now need repair. The patrons of this line would gladly welcome the organization of a mutual telephone company in Jasper county, and every one of them would take stock in such an organization—it is no experiment to them. Next week we shall try to give ’he experience of one or mpre larger mutual systems-