Although the telegraph is an American invention the United States and Canada have never used it so extensively as have many European countries. At present the number of messages sent per year by the Western Union Telegraph Company, which is by far the largest in the United States, amounts to somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 000,000 or more per year. In proportion to the population the one and a half million miles of telegraph wire in the United States and the quarter of a million in Canada give those countries quite as large a telegraph system as those of the countries of Europe. In proportion to area, however, France and Germany each with about half a million miles and Great Britain with a quarter of a million are many times as well equipped as the American countries. Moreover, the European lines are kept busy more steadily than those of the United States. The chief reason why the telegraph is used less in America than in Europe is the tele phone.
With the introduction of wireless telegraphy a new set of problems confronts the world. Here, just as in the case of the airplane, the prob lem is who shall use the air and how. When amateur radio operators by the thousands began to send their messages into the air it became necessary to impose restrictions so that the air should not be loaded down with messages which interfered with one another. The result has been a gradual tendency to assign different wave lengths to different types of messages. Before many years the laws of the air will probably be as closely defined as those of the earth's surface.
The Telephone as an American Product.—The telephone ranks with the automobile as preeminently American. In the United States at the beginning of 1921 there were 13,113,000 telephones or 12.3 for every hundred people, while Canada had 856,000 or 9.8 for every hundred people. The only other countries where the numbers at all approach these figures were New Zealand with 7.5 telephones per hundred people, Sweden, 6.6, Norway, 4.9, and Australia, 4.3. Even in so advanced a country as Belgium there is less than one telephone for every hundred people. In fact, throughout much of Europe, the telephone is a rarity found only in the homes of the rich, in business offices, and in public places.
In the United States the number of telephones is greatest in almost exactly the places where the automobile is most used. This means that the greatest users of both the automobile and the telephone are the prosperous farmers of the Middle \Vest and of the Pacific coast. T seven states ranking highest in automobiles and telephones in pro Lion to their population in 1921 were as follows: Automobiles. Telephones.
1. Iowa 1. Iowa 2. South Dakota 2. Nebraska 3. Nebraska 3. Kansas
4. California 4. California 5. Kansas 5. Illinois 6. Colorado 6. Oregon 7. Oregon 7. Minnesota One of the interesting features of systems of communication and e a less degree of transportation is the way in which they tend to becom concentrated in the hands of a single company. The post office wa• originally run by individual companies, but one reason for its nationali zation was in order to secure uniform service. The express busines. began with numerous individual local companies, hut gradually thes have coalesced into a few large companies. During the Great Wa these were run as a single organization and to a large extent this metho still survives. Each individual company has its own territory, but al work as a unit. In the same way the telegraph business is largely i the hands of the Western Union while the only other large company, the Postal Telegraph, works in cooperation with its larger rival.
In the telephone business even more than the others the presence of more than one company makes a great deal of trouble. The great advantage of a telephone is that it puts everyone in the closest any easiest. communication with other people no matter where they may live. Where two telephone companies are in operation, as frequently hap pened in the old days, there is a steady demand that the companies 13 united. Hence most of the smaller companies have disappeared , While the telephone companies of different parts of the United State. go under different names, most of the large ones are subsidiaries of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, the Bell System as it is called. Nevertheless in 1917, 53,000 other telephone systems were in existence, a large part of which were purely local lines owned 1.3, farmers. The great Bell System with 225,000 employees and a capita: of $2,000,000,000 is distinguished by having more stockholders thar any other company in the world, 186,000 in 1921, of whom nearly 26,001 were employees. The number of telephone calls is about 35 million per day or 12 billion per year. In order.to supply all the telephone: about 27 million miles of wire are needed or nearly 20 times as mud-, as for all the telegraph lines. Judged by the number of employees and by the expenses and capital the telephone system of communication in the United States is four or five times as important as the telegraph system.
It is hard to realize that conveniences so universal as the telephone, telegraph, parcels post, post office, automobile, trolley car, railway, and steamship were all unknown not much more than a hundred years ago, while no longer ago than 1900 the automobile, wireless, airplane, and the parcels post system were practically unknown in the United States.