OCR Text |
Show TELEPHONE INCREASE SHOWN IN REPORT Statement Estimates There Are 20,-248,326 20,-248,326 Miles Of Wire In Use And Over 13,000,000,000 ,' Messages In 1012 . 'Washington, March 21. Statistics issued by the census bureau today show 20,248,326 miles of telephone wire In use In 1913 a gain ot 15, 349,-875 349,-875 In a decade or 313.2 per cent. There were 8,729,592 ,telephonea In use, 6,358,548 more than In 1902, an increase of 268.2 per cent. Tho number reported by the Bell Telephone system Increased by 137.8 per cent from 1902 to 1907 and 62.4 per cent from 1907 to 1912, while tho number reported by all other companies com-panies Increased by 183.4 per cent and 22 per cent, respectively. In 1902 tho Bell system controlled 69.1 ,por cent of the wire and 5.6 per cont of tho telephones in uao. In 1912 it controlled 74.7 per cent of tho wlro and 58.3 per cent of tho telephones. Tho proportion of tho total wlro mllo-ago mllo-ago and number ot telephones owned by tho decado whllo that owned by tho Independent companies has do-creased. do-creased. . It la estimated that there woro 13-Vgk 13-Vgk 735,658,245 messages sent over th jjnijA telephone lines of companies with an A incomo of at least fC.OOO during 1912. It was Impossible to obtain oven on cstlmato of tho numbor of conversations conversa-tions over the prtvato branch wires and tho party lines. No estimates were requlrod of tbe 1.402,844 tolo-phones tolo-phones of small companies which had an income cf less than $5000 during 1912. Messages for thoso smaller systems sys-tems were Included to some extent at the census ot 1902; theieforo the sta tlstlcs ot messages reported for the three years are not strictly compara-able compara-able and should not be considered as representing the total amount ot business bus-iness transacted by: telephone systems ot the United States during the year 1912. |