discovered that the telephone is not an ear, but a nerve system; and Some of these duplicate companies built up a complete plant, and gave convention of telephone agents, the chairman's gavel was made of thirty-five pieces of wood, taken from thirty-five switchboards of have two telephones?" dollars of stock for sale was sold at auction in 1909 for four hundred cost, just as two fire departments or two post offices would. fancied that a telephone system was practically the same as a gas or thousand dollars. All told, there were twenty-three of these bubbles electric light system, which can often be duplicated with the result of still so young, it was so little appreciated even by the telephone officials and engineers, that the public regarded a second or a duplication began in most American cities. The telephone business was cheaper rates and better service. They did not for years discover that for deficiencies in equipment. One which had printed fifty million In this way, masked as competition, the nuisance and waste of that burst in 1905, twenty-one in 1906, and twelve in 1907. So high good local service, while others proved to be mere stock bubbles. Most that such an experiment as a duplicate nerve system has never been attempted by Nature, even in her most frivolous moods. Most people innovation. "We have two ears," said one promoter; "why not therefore This duplication went merrily on for years before it was generally third telephone system in one city as quite a possible and desirable thirty-five extinct companies. of them were over-capitalized, depending upon public sympathy to atone has been the death-rate among these isolated companies that at a recent two telephone companies in one city means either half service or double