thousand dollars on a plant that was obsolete when it was new, ran it licensed company, and threw open the door to a free-for-all competition. It undertook to start a second system in London, and in two years been a "comedy of errors." There are now, in the two islands, not six six months' notice. And as soon as it had strung a long-distance system earnings to the Post Office. It was to hold itself ready to sell out at of wires, the Postmaster General pounced down upon it and took it away. hundred thousand telephones in use. London, with its six hundred and and finally quit. Even Glasgow, the premier city of municipal ownership, So, from first to last, the story of the telephone in Great Britain has bravely, with loud beating of drums, plunged from one mishap to another, Then, in 1900, the Post Office tossed aside all obligations to the as the Post Office has given notice that it will take over and operate met its Waterloo in the telephone. It spent one million, eight hundred all private companies on New Year's Day, 1912. The bureaucratic muddle, at the rate of ten thousand a year. No large improvements are under way, But the muddle continued. In order to compel competition, according private companies. As might have been expected, the ablest company company might have given good service, but it was hobbled and fenced in one million, five hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. discovered its blunder and proposed to cooperate. It granted licenses for a time at a loss, and then sold it to the Post Office in 1906 for to the academic theories of the day, licenses were given to thir-teen forty square miles of houses, has one-quarter of these, and is gaining quickly swallowed the other twelve. If it had been let alone, this by jealous regulations. It was compelled to pay one-tenth of its gross to five cities that demanded municipal ownership. These cities set out