Show telegraph selector now makes Phone doomed practical by RAYLE BRUCE WENTY FIVE years ago tho the man with the temerity to suggest hug T that tile telegraph would disappear from the rul rail ron roads within half a century would have been set down as a fool or erny today the railroad telegraph is ia on the brink of the alio abyss and a little shove will push it over thirty of the principal railroads of the united states are arc experimenting with a sub sti ute for the tole telegraph graph eighty have given serious consider aaion to the subject and a majority ma i arity have decided to begin the change these eighty toads roads operate miles of track 70 per cent of the count rys total and at the present time have miles equipped for the new experiment the nic new moans means of communication between stations is to be the telephone for several years railroad officials have been considering the telephone as a possible substitute for the key in the operation of trains nothing was done except in a small way because there was no way to prevent very every other person on the line from hearing tile the message the invention of the selector put the matter in a now light the which has been made practicable is ia an instrument that make it possible for the central office to communicate with any boffice eu unknown to all the other i cc s the sub offices to communicate wi th cash each other must do so through the central office office only one sot set of wires is used i I 1 I 1 recent events have added to the arguments in favor of the telephone 44 one of f the most effective was the decision by judg kenesaw M landis of alie e united states court upholding the nine hour law for railroad employees plo in order to obey this law the railroads must have an additional force of telegraph operators the estimated salaries of which would aggregate a year it would be far less difficult to secure competent telephone operators the advocates of the telephone train dispatching system contend because i it would world require not more than one fifth the time for them to qualify another economical argument in favor of the telephone is that in the country districts the offices could be manned by natives with just na as good if not better results than could be obtained by importing operators the residents would be willing to accept lower wages in order to livet jive at home it is estimated by esbine some of the leading railroads that a saying savin of from 16 15 to 46 per colit cent could bo be effected in this manner I 1 the recent in mexico of the national railways because of a strike of their american telf telegraph graph operators is pointed to as another argument ment in favor of the telephone the possibility of a general traffic prostration would have been averted the argument goes if telephones had bad been in use for the telephones could have been manned by residents of the country the perfection of the selector is believed to have met the former objection to the telephone that it would not be as ao safe as the telegraph with eve every phoned message from one station to another going through the central office a constant check would be kept on the operators and the trains |