he telephone
business as soon as the pioneer work had been done by private citizens.
In 1889 it practically confiscated the Paris system, and after nine
years of litigation paid five million francs to its owners. With this
reckless beginning, it floundered from bad to worse. It assembled
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 only to
large cities, was put in force in small places. The girl operators were
entangled in a maze of civil service rules. They were not allowed
to marry without the permission of the Postmaster General; and on no
account might they dare to marry a mayor, a policeman, a cashier, or a
foreigner, lest they betray the secrets of the switchboard.

There was no national plan, no standardization, no staff of inventors
and improvers. Every user was required to buy his own telephone. As
George Ade has said, "Anything attached to a wall is liable to be a
telephone in Paris." And so, what with poor equipment and red tape,
the French system became what it remains to-day, the most conspicuous
example of what NOT to do in telephony.

There are barely as many telephones in the whole of France as ought
normally to be in the city of Paris. There are not as many as are now
in use in Chicago. The exasperated Parisians have protested. They have
presented a petition with thirty-two thousand names. They 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 the day of the panic
in 1907," said George Kessler. But the Government clears a net profit
of three million dollars a year from its telephone monopoly; and until
1910, when a committee of betterment was appointed, it showed no concern
at the discomfort of the public.

There was one striking lesson in telephone efficiency which Paris
received in 1908, when its main exchange was totally destroyed by fire.
"To build a new switchboard," said European manufacturers, "will require
four or five months." A hustling young Chicagoan appeared on the scene.
"We 'll put in a