, when the London Athenaeum mentioned it in a few careful sentences. It was not welcomed, except by those who wished an evening's entertainment. An

d. Frederick A. Gower was the first of these. He was an adventurous chevalier of business who gave up an agent's contract in return for a right to become a roving propaga

rtugal, and Italy for two thousand, five hundred dollars. How he was received may be seen from a letter of his which has been preserved. "I have been working in

a-plenty, but no contracts; and came back to the United States an impoverished and disheartened man. Then the optimistic Gardiner G. Hubbard, Bell's father-in-law, threw himself against the European inertia and organized the International a

omestic hearth?" Writers vied with each other in inventing methods of pooh-poohing Bell and his invention. "It is ridiculously simple," said one. "It is only an electrical speaking-tube," said another. "It is a complicated form of speaking-trumpet," said a third. No British editor could at first conceive of any use for the telephone, except for divers and coal miners. The price, too, created a

thrust them into his hands as a gift. At the next meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Lord Kelvin exhibited these. He did more. He became the champion of the telephone. He staked his reputation upon it. H

most all were agreed that what Bell had done was a humorous trifle. But Lord Kelvin persisted. He hammered the truth home that the telephone was "one of the most interesting inventions that

claps are different from the human voice. They were in fact electrical claps; while Bell conceived the idea-THE

credulity, and thinking the whole exhibition a joke, shouted into the mouthpiece: "Hi diddle diddle-follow up that." Then he listened for an answer. The look on his face changed to one of the utmost amazement. "It says-`The cat and the fid

g and hearing distance," it exclaimed; "scarcely anything was more desired and more impossible." The next paper to quit the mob of scoffers was the Tatler, which said in an editorial

ueen Victoria drove to the house of Sir Thomas Biddulph, in London, and for an hour talked and listened by telephone to Kate Field, who sat in a Downing Street office. Miss Field sang "Kathleen Mavourneen," and the Queen than

e an order which raised the hopes of the telephone men to the highest heaven, from the banking house of J. S. Morgan & Co. It was the first recognition from the "seats of the mighty" in the business and financial world. A tiny exchange, with ten wires, wa

n passed six years before the telephone was born, but no matter. The telephone men protested and argued. Tyndall and Lord Kelvin warned the Government that it was making an indefensible mistake. But nothing could be done. Just as the first railways had been called toll-roads, so the telephone was solemnly declared to be

als in the telegraph department. There was no book and no college to instruct him. His telegraph was then, as it is to-day, a business failure. It was not earni

ly swallowed the other twelve. If it had been let alone, this company might have given good service, but it was hobbled and fenced in by jealous regulations. It was compelled to pay one-tenth of its gross earni

. It granted licenses to five cities that demanded municipal ownership. These cities set out bravely, with loud beating of drums, plunged from one mishap to another, and finally quit. Even Glasgow, the premier city of municipal ownership, met its Waterlo

ondon, with its six hundred and forty square miles of houses, has one-quarter of these, and is gaining at the rate of ten thousand a year. No large improvements are under way, as

the telephone business into a postal mould. The man in a small city must pay as high a rate for a small service, as the man in a large city pays for a large service. There is a fair degree of efficiency, but no high speed or record-breaking. The German engineers have not kept in close touch with the pr

ed degrees and honors by telephone. Even his former Chancellor, Von Buelow, received his title of Count in this informal way. But the first friend of the telephone in Germany was Bismarck. The old Unifier saw instantly its value in ho

the most complete assortment of other nations' mistakes, and invented several of its own. Almost every known evil of bureaucracy was developed. The system of rates was turned upside down; the flat rate, which can be profitably permitted in small cities only, was put in force in the large cities, and the message rate, which is applicable on

ephone. As George Ade has said, "Anything attached to a wall is liable to be a telephone in Paris." And so, what with poor equi

y have even organized a "Kickers' League"-the only body of its kind in any country-to demand good service at a fair price. The daily loss from bureaucratic telephony has become enormous. "One blundering girl in a telephone exchange cost me five thousand dollars on

ixty days," he said; "and agree to forfeit six hundred dollars a day for delay." Such quick work had never been known. But it was Chicago's chance to show what she could do. Paris and Chicago are four thousand, five hundred miles apart, a twelve days' journey. The switchboard was to be a hundred and eighty feet in leng

capital and used no enterprise in expanding it. Outside of Vienna, Budapest, St. Petersburg, and Moscow there are no wire-systems of any consequence. The political deadlock between Austria and Hungary shuts out any immediate hope of a happier life for the telephone in those countries; but in Russi

r the telephone. They have seen the value of the talking wire to hold their valley villages together; and so have cries-crossed the Alps with a cheap and somewhat flimsy system of tele

er, who studies the heavens from an observatory on Monte Rosa. At her own expense, the Queen had this wire strung by a crew of linemen, who slipped and floundered on the mountain for six years before they had it pegged in place. The general situation in Italy is like that in Great Britain. The Government has always mon

umb-nail systems, no two of which are alike. In Belgium there has been a government system since 1893, hence there is unity, but no enterprise. The plant is old-fashioned and too small. Spain has private companies, which give fairly good service to twenty thousand people. Roumania has half as many. Portugal has two s

named Henry Cedergren. Had this man been made the Telephone-Master of Europe, there would have been a different story to tell. By his insistent enterprise he made Stockholm the best telephoned city outside of the United States. He pushed his country forw

five thousand users, and might have more, if it had not been stunted by the peculiar policy of the Government. The public officials who operate the system are able men. They charge a fair price and make ten per cent profit for the State. But they do not keep pace with the demand. It is one of the o

ment. A fund of twenty million dollars is to be spent in constructing a national system of telephone and telegraph. Peking is now pointing with wonder and delight to a new exchange, spick and span, with a couple of ten-thousand-wire switchboards. Others are being built in Canton, Hankow, and Tien-Tsin. Ultimately, the telephone will fl

people to talk to him whenever they had grievances. And they talked! They talked so freely and used such language, that the Shah ordered out his soldiers and attacked them. He fired upon the new Parl

nnial, introduced telephony into his country in 1881; but it has not in thirty years been able to obtain ten thousand users. Canada has exactly the same

clattering sign-language of the natives. One strand of copper wire there is, through the Congo region, placed there by order of the late King of Belgium. To string it was probably the most adventurous piece of work in the history of telephone linemen. There was one seven hundred and fifty mile stretch of the c

Islands. Roughly speaking, there are now ten million telephones in all countries, employing two hundred and fifty thousand people, requiring twenty-one million miles of wire, representing a cost of fifteen h

nd, with almost four per hundred; and Sweden is third. Germany has as many telephones as the State of New York; and Great Britain as many as Ohio. Chicago has more than London; and Boston twice as m

tters and one telephone message a week; while the average American family sends five telegrams a year, and seven letters and eleven telephone messages a week. This one na-tion, which owns six per cent of

s better service than France. The Belgian telephones have cost the most-two hundred and seventy-three dollars apiece; and the Finnish telephones the least-eighty-one dollars. But a telephone in Belgium earns three times as much as

ne system is a highly complex and technical problem, much more like a piano factory or a steel-mill. And so, wherever a group of citizens established a telephone service, the government officials looked upon it with jealous eyes, and usually snatched it away. The teleph

and any nation that rises to a proper conception of the telephone, that dares to put it into competent hands and to strengthen it with enough capital, can secure as alert and brisk a service as heart can wish. Some nations are already on the way. China,

, is gaining ground. A faster long-distance service, at double rates, is being well patronized. Slow-moving races are learning the value of time, which is the first lesson in telephony. Our reapers and mowers now

in China to every hundred people will mean an outlay of three hundred million dollars. To give Europe as fit an equipment as the United States now has, will mean thirty million telephones, wit

hority on telephony. It may be called in to rebuild or operate the telephone systems of other countries, in the same way that it is now supplying oil and steel rails and farm machinery. Just as the wise bu