This universal trend toward consolidation has introduced a variety of problems that will engage the ablest brains in the telephone world for many years to come. How to get the benefits of organization without its losses, to become strong without losing quickness, to become systematic without losing the dash and dare of earlier days, to develop the working force into an army of high-speed specialists without losing the bird's-eye view of the whole situation,--these are the riddles of the new type, for which the telephonists of the next generation must find the answers. They illustrate the nature of the big jobs that the telephone has to offer to an ambitious and gifted young man of to-day.
"The problems never were as large or as complex as they are right now," says J. J. Carty, the chief of the telephone engineers. The eternal struggle remains between the large and little ideas--between the men who see what might be and the men who only see what IS. There is still the race to break records. Already the girl at the switchboard can find the person wanted in thirty seconds. This is one-tenth of the time that was taken in the early centrals; but it is still too long. It is one-half of a valuable minute.
It must be cut to twenty-five seconds, or twenty or fifteen.
There is still the inventors' battle to gain miles. The distance over which conversations can be held has been increased from twenty miles to twenty-five hundred. But this is not far enough. There are some civilized human beings who are twelve thousand miles apart, and who have interests in common. During the Boxer Rebellion in China, for instance, there were Americans in Peking who would gladly have given half of their fortune for the use of a pair of wires to New York.
In the earliest days of the telephone, Bell was fond of prophesying that "the time will come when we will talk across the Atlantic Ocean";but this was regarded as a poetical fancy until Pupin invented his method of automatically propelling the electric current. Since then the most conservative engineer will discuss the problem of transatlantic telephony. And as for the poets, they are now dreaming of the time when a man may speak and hear his own voice come back to him around the world.
The immediate long-distance problem is, of course, to talk from New York to the Pacific.
The two oceans are now only three and a half days apart by rail. Seattle is clamoring for a wire to the East. San Diego wants one in time for her Panama Canal Exposition in 1915.
The wires are already strung to San Francisco, but cannot be used in the present stage of the art.
And Vail's captains are working now with almost breathless haste to give him a birthday present of a talk across the continent from his farm in Vermont.
"I can see a universal system of telephony for the United States in the very near future," says Carty. "There is a statue of Seward standing in one of the streets of Seattle. The inscription upon it is, `To a United Country.' But as an Easterner stands there, he feels the isolation of that Far Western State, and he will always feel it, until he can talk from one side of the United States to the other. For my part," con-tinues Carty, "I believe we will talk across continents and across oceans. Why not? Are there not more cells in one human body than there are people in the whole earth?"Some future Carty may solve the abandoned problem of the single wire, and cut the copper bill in two by restoring the grounded circuit.
He may transmit vision as well as speech. He may perfect a third-rail system for use on moving trains. He may conceive of an ideal insulating material to supersede glass, mica, paper, and enamel. He may establish a universal code, so that all persons of importance in the United States shall have call-numbers by which they may instantly be located, as books are in a library.
Some other young man may create a commercial department on wide lines, a work which telephone men have as yet been too specialized to do. Whoever does this will be a man of comprehensive brain. He will be as closely in touch with the average man as with the art of telephony.
He will know the gossip of the street, the demands of the labor unions, and the policies of governors and presidents. The psy-chology of the Western farmer will concern him, and the tone of the daily press, and the methods of department stores. It will be his aim to know the subtle chemistry of public opinion, and to adapt the telephone service to the shifting moods and necessities of the times. HE WILL FITTELEPHONY LIKE A GARMENT AROUND THE HABITS OF THEPEOPLE.
Also, now that the telephone business has become strong, its next anxiety must be to develop the virtues, and not the defects, of strength.
Its motto must be "Ich dien"--I serve; and it will be the work of the future statesmen of the telephone to illustrate this motto in all its practical variations. They will cater and explain, and explain and cater. They will educate and educate, until they have created an expert public.
They will teach by pictures and lectures and exhibitions. They will have charts and diagrams hung in the telephone booths, so that the person who is waiting for a call may learn a little and pass the time more pleasantly. They will, in a word, attend to those innumerable trifles that make the perfection of public service.
Already the Bell System has gone far in this direction by organizing what might fairly be called a foresight department. Here is where the fortune-tellers of the business sit.
When new lines or exchanges are to be built, these men study the situation with an eye to the future. They prepare a "fundamental plan," outlining what may reasonably be expected to happen in fifteen or twenty years.
Invariably they are optimists. They make provision for growth, but none at all for shrinkage.
