ninger methods."

Railways and steamships had begun this work of binding man to man by
"nobler and cunninger methods." The telegraph and cable had gone still
farther and put all civilized people within sight of each other, so that
they could communicate by a sort of deaf and dumb alphabet. And then
came the telephone, giving direct instantaneous communication and
putting the people of each nation within hearing distance of each
other. It was the completion of a long series of inventions. It was
the keystone of the arch. It was the one last improvement that enabled
interdependent nations to handle themselves and to hold together.

To make railways and steamboats carry letters was much, in the evolution
of the means of communication. To make the electric wire carry signals
was more, because of the instantaneous transmission of important news.
But to make the electric wire carry speech was MOST, because it put
all fellow-citizens face to face, and made both message and answer
instantaneous. The invention of the telephone taught the Genie of
Electricity to do better than to carry mes-sages in the sign language of
the dumb. It taught him to speak. As Emerson has finely said:

"We had letters to send. Couriers could not go fast enough, nor far
enough; broke their wagons, foundered their horses; bad roads in Spring,
snowdrifts in Winter, heat in Summer--could not get their horses out
of a walk. But we found that the air and the earth were full of
electricity, and always going our way, just the way we wanted to send.
WOULD HE TAKE A MESSAGE, Just as lief as not; had nothing else to do;
would carry it in no time."

As to the exact value of the telephone to the United States in dollars
and cents, no one can tell. One statistician has given us a total of
three million dollars a day as the amount saved by using telephones.
This sum may be far too high, or too low. It can be no more than a
guess. The only adequate way to arrive at the value of the telephone
is to consider the nation as a whole, to take it all in all as a going
concern, and to note that such a nation would be absolutely impossible
without its telephone service. Some sort of a slower and lower grade
republic we might have, with small industrial units, long hours of
labor, lower wages, and clumsier ways. The money loss would be enormous,
but more serious still would be the loss in the QUALITY OF THE NATIONAL
LIFE. Inevitably, an untelephoned nation is less socia