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. By their
advice, there is now twenty-five million dollars' worth of reserve plant
in the various Bell Companies, waiting for the country to grow up to it.
Even in the city of New York, one-half of the cable ducts are empty,
in expectation of the greater city of eight million population which
is scheduled to arrive in 1928. There are perhaps few more impressive
evidences of practical optimism and confidence than a new telephone
exchange, with two-thirds of its wires waiting for the business of the
future.

Eventually, this foresight department will expand. It may, if a leader
of genius appear, become the first real corps of practical sociologists,
which will substitute facts for the present hotch-potch of theories. It
will prepare a "fundamental plan" of the whole United States, showing
the centre of each industry and the main runways of traffic. It will
act upon the basic fact that WHEREVER THERE IS INTERDEPENDENCE, THERE
IS BOUND TO BE TELEPHONY; and it will therefore prepare maps of
interdependence, showing the widely scattered groups of industry and
finance, and the lines that weave them into a pattern of national
cooperation.

As yet, no nation, not even our own, has seen the full value of the
long-distance telephone. Few have the imagination to see what has been
made possible, and to realize that an actual face-to-face conversation
may take place, even though there be a thousand miles between. Neither
can it seem credible that a man in a distant city may be located as
readily as though he were close at hand. It is too amazing to be true,
and possibly a new generation will have to arrive before it will be
taken for granted and acted upon freely. Ultimately, there can be no
doubt that long-distance telephony will be regarded as a national asset
of the highest value, for the reason that it can prevent so much of the
enormous economic waste of travel.

Nothing that science can say will ever decrease the marvel of a
long-distance conversation, and there may come in the future
an Interpreter who will put it before our eyes in the form of a
moving-picture. He will enable us to follow the flying words in a talk
from Boston to Denver. We will flash first to Worcester, cross the
Hudson on the high bridge at Poughkeepsie, swing southwest through
a dozen coal towns to th