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automatic circuits are being extended all over the country and are
proving extremely valuable in handling the constantly growing volume
of telegraph traffic.

What has thus been achieved in developing the technical side of
telegraph operation must be attributed in part to that impulse toward
improvement which is constantly at work everywhere and is the most
potent factor in the progress of all industries, but in large
measure it is the reflex of the growing--and recently very rapidly
growing--demands which are made upon the telegraph service. Emphasis
is placed on the larger ratio of growth in this demand in recent years
because it is peculiarly symptomatic of a noticeably wider realization
of the advantages which the telegraph offers as an effective medium
for business and social correspondence than has heretofore been in
evidence. It means that we have graduated from that state of mind
which saw in the telegraph something to be resorted to only under
the stress of emergency, which caused many good people to associate
a telegram with trouble and bad news and sudden calamity. There are
still some dear old ladies who, on receipt of a telegram, make a rapid
mental survey of the entire roster of their near and distant relatives
and wonder whose death or illness the message may announce before they
open the fateful envelope, only to find that up-to-date Cousin Mary,
who has learned that the telegraph is as readily used as the mail and
many times more rapid and efficient, wants to know whether they can
come out for the week-end. When Cousin Mary of to-day wants to know,
she wants to know right away--not only that she has her arrangements
to make, but also because she just does not propose to wait a day or
two to get a simple answer to a simple question.

Therein she embodies the spirit of the times. Our ancestors were
content to jog along for days in a stuffy stage-coach; we complain
that the train which accomplishes the same distance in a few hours is
too slow. We act more quickly; we think more quickly. We have to if we
want to keep within earshot of the band.

This speeding up makes itself quite obviously most apparent in our
business processes. No body of business men need be told how much
keener competition is becoming daily, how much narrower the margin by
which success must be won. Familiar phrases, these. But behind them
lies a wealth of tragedy. How many have fallen by the way? It is
estimated that someth