Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 22, Number 91, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 August 1901 — TELEPHONES ON THE FARM [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

TELEPHONES ON THE FARM

Telephone companies are not able to keep up with the demand for telephones by farmers. They would make desperate efforts to do so if they could get the material, but all factories are behind the orders. The companies are nursing this rural desire for telephones. They wish the farmer’s trade. vl . J It is said that the necessity of meeting this demand is mainly responsible for the recent call for another $5,000,000 on the stockholders of the Central Union Telephone Company by John I. Sabin, the new President. In his circular letter to the stockholders he said: ■“There Is no use crying over spilled milk or abusing one another for things not accomplished. The people of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and lowa want telephone service. Are you giving it with fewer than 70,000 stations? When you have 300,000 exchange stations then you will have a good start, not before. You are not satisfying the public because your system does not reach far enough. There are scores of villages and small towns that, taken as a whole, should have 500,000 telephones in which the Central Union has not a single instrument.” Pushing: Rural Business. According to figures given by S. P. Sheerin, of Indianapolis, in an address nt the recent meeting of the Independent Telephone Association of the United States, at Buffalo, the independent companies are more largely engaged in furnishing this kind of service in Indiana than the older company. He said the Central Union, according to its own figures, had 22,000 telephones in the State, while the independent companies had 54,500. It is probable that the reason the independent companies have more telephones in the rural districts is because that was a field not cultivated by the Central Union when It was alone in the telephone business in this State. The new companies were quick to get into the neglected field, and they are cultivating it well. No exact figures have been gathered

by the companies showing the relative , number of farmers now using the telephones at their homes. At the present .rate of construction it will be possible, before the end of the year, to talk by telephone to 1,000 farmers in Marion County. There are telephones in the houses of 1.200 to 1,400 Boone County farmers, and probably in those of an equal number in Hendricks County. There is farm service from nearly all the city and town exchanges in the gas belt. It is probable that there are farmhouse telephones in seventy' of the ninety-two Counties of the State. In some instances there are small systems where three or four farmers each get a $lO telephone outfit, use the wire fences for lipes of communication, and are thus restricted to conversations among themselves. Such a system is used just outside the limits of this city, where six families of one name on adjoining farms have this easy communication withonc another. There is no “exchange.” One ring calls one of them, two rings call another, and so on to six rings. In more pretentious systems the wires are strung on bean poles or fence posts from farm to farm, and an exchange is established with switching facilities. The companies are discouraging crude equipment, however, and these” home-made "lines are thus only used for strictly local purposes. The companies will not connect their lines with them. They say a chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and they will not have the general service impaired by a weak part of it. Here are some things Mr. Sheerin said in his*Buffalo address: “The telephone is a greater boon to farmers than to any other class. The great drawbacks to country life are its isolation, meager opportunities for social intercourse and fewer opportunities for protection. If the farmer is out of touch with the market the telephonje brings his ear close to it; the weather report is brought to his door to protect his crops and his cattle; the telephone saves his horses weary miles of travel to transact his every-day business. Good Lines Desirable. “The farmer should not put up cheap grounded telephone lines on native poles 300 to 400 feet apart, marring the landscape. The poorly constructed telephone is worse than no telephone. The line should be regarded as part of the road itself and equally for the purpose of facilitating messages. The telephone is a messenger—it is a troop of messengers. It should be as free from interruption on the highways of a country as the bearer of a writ of habeas corpus. There is no way by which messages can be transmitted with so little wear and tear to the roadway. “The time is not far off when telephone lines will be looked on as sacred property. In some respects the tele-

phone is the most important use of the highway. Trees should give way to the telephone, as they have to the making of roads. Where telephones run, trees should be set back 25 to 39 feet. The couhtry telephone lines should be of the best material, on well-shaped poles at least 25 feet high and six inches in diameter. As time passes, poles will probably be shortened and the wires be as near the electrical conditions will permit, except at road crossings.™—“Many small exchanges are preferable to fewer large ones. Village exchanges should have connection with town exchanges and county seat exchanges, and these with city and longdistance exchanges, so that the farmer may Ispeak to anybody anywhere. For this he ought to-have not only a good equipment, but even a better equipment than any one else. His line should not consist of worn-out or old material from town and city lines. He is much more dependent on good service than the city man.” Telephone rates to farmers as a rule are lower than the city charges. The companies say the construction cost of the country lines is much less. In this county the farmer gets Ills telephone for $lB a year and this entitles him to free service in the city and outside it within the county. Take the New Augusta exchange as illustration. Of 75 patrons, 50 are farmers, the most distant from the town living five miles out. In addition to having quick communication with 49 other farmers he may order liis groceries at five or six stores, call two or three doctors or a veterinary surgeon, ring up two butchers and consult with a justice of the peace.** These are all within easy reach at New Augusta. So are two sawmills, one grist mill and a blacksmith shop. So if he w*ants to borrow from his neighbors or to get harvest help he may know without leaving his house whether he may get them. He can call to his blacksmith or his barber: “Anything ahead of me,” and when there isn’t hitch up his Maud S. and “be there in a minute.” Or he may mount his bicycle or jump on the interurban car—when the Indianapolis & Logansport Rapid Transit Company gets down to business. Calling up the postoffice, if he hasn’t rural delivery, he may save valuable time on harvest days, by saying: “This is Gilmore; any mail for me to-day?” In an emergency the telephone connection with the doctor’s will requite him perhaps for the year’s charges (telephone charges). Thief-Catchiiia: by Telephone. The “protection” aspect of the telephone was well illustrated near New Augusta. The News, not long ago, told of a farmer near that town who woke up at night in time to see two chicken thieves drive out of the barn lot. He

guessed they were chicken thieves, and former experiences made it 100 *to 1 that he was right. He was. He stood a poor chance of catching them, so he called up his neighbor a mile down the road the wagon took, and asked him to hustle out on the highway with his two sons and three shotguns while he would call up some other neighbors, and the posse would soon be in pursuit. The thieves were- captured and punished, the chickens were recovered and the community relieved of a nuisance. A man at Valley Mills had a young horse be valued at SI,OOO. It took suddenly sick at night, and before he could come to Indianapolis for a veterinary surgeon and take him to the farm the animal died. “I would have given SSOO if I had had a telephone,” he said. He talked about his loss among his neighbors; they had a fel-low-feeling, and there is going to be a telephone exchange there, with lines to farmers’ houses roundabout. One has recently been put in at Cumberland; others are scheduled for Actqn and Clermont. In Perry and Decatur townships, in this County, and in White River Township, in Johnson County, gangs of workmen are now busy putting up country telephone lines. The manager of one of the local coihpanies was asked if it was doing anything in this line and answered: “Yes, we are now working in the north and northw'est part of the County, in the west and northwest besides the east and southeast and south and southwest sections.” It is said that this pretty generally reflects the general situation with all the companies over the Stafe. So with good roads, scientifically built, for either his pleasure or work; with the bicycle ready on the back porch, with the trolley cars whizzing past the house, the rdral mail delivery to bring him his daily newspaper and the telephone to keep him in instant touch with the markets, the farmer has to pinch himself occasionally to see if he really is a farmer and not the hustling resident of a metropolis.—lndianapolis News.