Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 94, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 August 1909 — Wire Business Has Big Growth. [ARTICLE]

Wire Business Has Big Growth.

The enormous growth of telegraph and telephone business in the United States is interestingly set forth in a bulletin just issued by the Census Bureau. It appears from this bulletin that the telephone is supplanting the telegraph to a considerable' extent, even in train dispatching. The bulletin says in part: “More than 15,000,000 miles of single wire are used by the people of the United States in communicating with each other over the various telephone and telegraph systems. Of this number 12,999,369 miles are operated by the telephone systems and 2,072,851 miles by the telegraph companies. This length of single wire would encircle the earth at the equator more than 600 times. Over the telegraph wires in 1907 there flashed 368,470,509 messages, of which 5,869,317 were cablegrams. ,/ “The first telegraph line in the United States was opened for business in 1844, and thiirty-two years later the telephone was introduced. At the 1880 census the telephone companies reported 34,305 miles of wire, about one-ninth of the mileage of the telegraph companies. In 1902 the telephone mileage of wire was about four times as great as that used for telegraph purposes. In 1907 the telephone mileage was eight time as great as the telegraph. “In the amount of business done, the sum paid in salaries and wages and the capital invested in 1907 the telephone business was a little over three and one-half times as extensive as the telegraph industry, and during that time it furnished employment for more than five times as many persons. “Between 1902 and 1907 there was an addition of 8,098,918 miles of wire for the use of the telephone systems, as compared with an increase of but 259,611 in the mileage of owned and leased wire for commercial telegraph purposes. The increase in the Wire mileage of the telephone systems during the five years referred to was more than six times as great as the total amount of wire added to the telegraph business since 1880.’’ The statement is made in the bulletin that the use of telephones by railroads exclusively in connection with the operation of the roads has increased rapidly since 1902. Although the electric interurban roads early recognized the advantages of the telephone for dispatching purposes, the larger steam railroads have been disinclined to substitute the telephone for the long-established telegraph, the general objection being that of the liability of mistakes through the similarity in sound of different words when transmitted by telephone.