end of their meditations, they went to the director and said:

"We have heard that in all tropical countries the vegetation grows so rank and the floods are so severe as to make the transmission of messages by wires all but impossible. You who can send messages over the hills and water and into all places where ether penetrates can transmit messages even through the tropical jungles. Establish your stations in South America, in Africa, and in India and send us the expense bill. We have no investment there. You might, in those places, serve the railroads, which must use the telegraph but cannot now depend upon it."

The director was overjoyed because by this commission he would become a world-power in telegraphy. He dreamed of the power he would wield and of the honors which would come to him. In time, he had finished the new stations and went to ask the bankers to send out representatives to inspect the finished work. But, when he reached the door of the bank, he met a deputation from those who lend money in London, in Paris, in Berlin, and in St. Petersburg. They had crossed the .ocean quickly in their airships to say to the money lenders of New York:

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"Are we not members of one profession, safeguarding the interests of each other? When you were in need money, have we ever refused it? Why do you reward our kindness as you have just done? We had spent millions of dollars to keep open the telegraph lines in India, Africa, and Brazil. When the floods and rank vegetation carried away our conduits, or broke down our wires, we spent more money for new ones. Now, when we have spent all we can afford and when our venture is about to return its first profit, your wireless telegraphy comes to pick the fruits for which we planted."

The New York bankers were worried by what they heard, for they knew that the men from Europe spoke the truth.

The period from the building of the stations in the interior to the expansion into the foreign countries is called the third era in the history of wireless telegraphy.

From the beginning of the fifteenth, to the end of the sixteenth year of the history of wireless telegraphy-which was from the end of nineteen hundred and twenty-six to the end of nineteen hundred and twenty-eight--there arose another development. The director of the company, early in the year nineteen hundred and twenty-seven, went to the money lenders to make his report for the preceding year.

"We prospered last year," he said, "more than we had reason to hope. We increased our business with the ships of the sea. We have added the business of the ships of the air. Africa and South America have patronized us increasingly.

"But a new demand has been made upon us that calls for vast sums of money. From our stations, today, a wireless current radiates for thousands of miles in all directions. Any one who chooses may tune his instruments to our wave lengths and steal all of our messages. One newspaper may steal a dispatch intended for its rival. One business man may, in this way, know the business secrets of his competitor. Outlaws of all descriptions traffic in our messages. For this reason, there is a demand for more secrecy.

"This is a reasonable demand, but to satisfy it, we must purchase the new equipment which but recently has been invented. We must send our electrical currents in straight lines instead of permitting them to radiate in a circle. This calls for new apparatus in all plants. We must install delicately-keyed instruments which will give every man secrecy, even though his next-door neighbor be operating upon the same current. This calls for a new style of instrument. To buy this new outfit will take all of the profits of last year and all we expect to earn for some years to come."

The money lenders only smiled at the misgivings of the director and replied to him:

"Men have confronted such situations. since the world began. They have solved them all in the same way. They have put the old profits in their pockets; they have borrowed money with which to buy the new thing, and they have charged rates which would make profitable both