Ogden Daily Standard | 1913-11-24 | Page 7 | Vail's Plan of Monopoly Told

MIL'S PLAN OF ! MONOPOLY TOLD j President's Scheme Was to Control Telephone in All Big Cities. TO KILL COMPETITION Independents to Be Driven Out of Business or Absorbed Ab-sorbed by A. T. & L. Chicago, Nov 24 Testimony that the American Telephone & Telegraph Tele-graph company in 1911 proposed to the Independents that the field be divided between them was given to- hfM day by Richard Valentine, general manager of the Rock County tWls-censiu) tWls-censiu) Telephone company, at the anti trust hearing here today. j Valentine said that the proposition 1 was made by H. P. Davison of J. P. t Morgan & Co., and Theodore N Vail, j president of the American Telephone j & Telegraph iouipan, at a meeting in Chicago of the Independents Non-Competltlvc Plan Pays. i The Independents were informed, according to the witness, that hundreds hun-dreds of millions of dollars were be H Ing lost by competition, and that under un-der non competitive conditions the capitalisation of the telephone busl-nesi busl-nesi might be Increased ' Mr Vail s plan." said the witness, "was that his company 6hould monopolize mon-opolize the business in sections where they had a present preponderance of It. and that the Independents wore to have a monopoly where they were In the ascendant. "Mr. Vail was n-ked what was to become of the independents who were to be driven out of business by this scheme, and he said that the company was prepared to purchase all companies which could be absorbed ab-sorbed or which were to be wiped out. He was asked also ho wthe unfair competition of hi company could bo stopped, and be said agreement agree-ment to the merger was the only "In a general way Vall's plan was to control all the big cities leaving 8 fairly free rein to the Independent lc the country.