Jasper County Democrat, Volume 12, Number 74, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 December 1909 — JUST A FEW REMINDERS. [ARTICLE]

JUST A FEW REMINDERS.

In refusing to grant a franchise to the Home Telephone Co., Monday night the city council carried out what the president of the old company said they would do three months ago, when a committee appointed by th© president of the new company waited upon him—at his own invitation—to ascertain what price his company would sell Its plant to the new company for, which shows that he knew his council better than some others did. In refusing the franchise, one member offered the gratutious insult that the new company had no backing and did not have enough stock subscribed to build a mile of lines. And yet this same member paid his Indebtedness to the McCoy bank at some 10 or 15 cents on the dollar, while so far as our knowledge goes there is not a man of the one hundred or more who have already subscribed stock to the new company and who in the aggregate are worth upwards of a million dollars—except John F. Bmner, who merely subscribed for one share for effect —who ever pa'd their honest debts for less than one hundred cents on the dollar. Mercenaries of the old company used every trick and artifice to defeat this franchise, even to going to the extent of circulating the report that a contract had been made and signed up between the new company and the old one whereby the former was to sell its franchise as soon as granted, to the latter—thus taking advantage of the well known antipathy of the public to the old company—in the frantic efforts to defeat the franchise. A few well intentioned people were lead to believe this rot, although President Yeoman of the among rther things, that if the new new company stated to the council, company ha<J sold out it didn’t know anything about it. The most of the members of the committee appointed by the president of the new company to look after this franchise and who attended the meeting when it was first presented, was convinced that Thompson controled the council, and that the franchise could never get through, or if it d*d, so many riders of an objectionable nature would be tacked on 1 that it would be impossible to accept it. Their judgment then was correct, and the well known selfish policy that Rensselaer has always maintained toward the surrounding oountry, on which it* very life and existence depends, has once more manifested itself. The Home Telephone Company is not dead, however, as the mercenaries of the old company would wish, and the action of the council will but strengthen it among the country people, who can do without Rensselaer if Rensselaer can do without them, it can locate its central at Parr or some other more friendly town, as some of the directors have suggested, or can locate Just outside the corporate limits of Rensselaer

and run in a few wires over private property, in spite of the Thompson influence, and transmit the few messages necessary by messenger. It would then be free from city taxes and save much in the cost of line construction and soon have the entire country service cut off from the city subscriber except through Its own central office. What action will be taken in this respect remains to be seen at the annual meeting next month, but that the of the Thompson-influenced council in refusing a franchise is bitterly resented is demonstrated by one prominent farmer who had subscribed for one share of stock declaring that he now had SSOO to put into it if the company would locate its central outside of Rensselaer. The movement for a telephone company in Jasper county organized along mutual lines was started last July by the action of the old company in raising toll rates and the rates in the country 60 per cent and in apparently giving to both town and country patrons just as poor service as it possibly could in revenge for the defeat of its movement to boost rates in the city to a corresponding degree, which was largely due to The Democrat’s exposure of the plan and lIS’ opposition to it. After the Home company was organized the old company became panic-stricken and, using J. F. Bruner as a stool-pigeon, sent him out through the country anti told the farmers who had phones then or had previously had them, but had taken them out rather than submit to the stand-and-dellver policy of the old company, that he (Bruner) had bought all the country lines from the old company and he would restore the old rates. As a result, because of the organization of the new company the country users of phones are each being saved 50 cents per month on the hundreds of phones in use, and the old company has hustled about and greatly Improved the service both in town and country. This, In a measure, has allayed the opposition Of the short-sighted ones, who do not have enough forsight to realize that if the new company could be killed off that old conditions and the exorbitant rates would soon be restored.

As previously stated in these columns, the public was not demanding the installation of any new system that could only be operated at an increase of rates. What it demanded and what the new company proposed to give was good and efficient service and a restoration of old rates, both in country and in toll rates, with the magneto system of full metallic service. The city council at Mr. Thompson’s behest, said that the new company must put in the central energy system in town or none at all, and from the best information the new company could get such a system—which no one was demanding, mind you, and had little advantage over the magneto system—could not be installed and operated for the same rates as the magneto plant. For this reason only, and as a safeguard against loss, It asked that if this system were required that a graduated rate might be charged, if necessary, after 500 phones were in operation In Rensselaer—a greater number than the old company now has or ever did have in the city—and the maximum rates of $1.50 and $2.50 could not possibly apply until there were 700 phones in the city, which would mean that the new company would have to have all the business and the city would have to grow one-third in population. When objections were made Monday night to this rate by the Thompson emisaries, the new company offered to let the old rate of $1 and $2 for the common battery or central energy system be restored and they would further investigate the matter and that if such a system could be operated without loss it would accept the franchise. But new excuses were then advanced by the Thompson council and the franchise was voted down, and in doing so The Democrat believes a great mistake was made which will be realized sooner or later. The only apposition to the granting of the franchise that was shown before-the council waß from emisaries of the old company, but the actual local stockholders of the latter, as previously stated, were there ready to oppose if necessary.