THE PACIFIC TELEPHONE MAGAZINE Volume 2 JULY, 1908. THE PACIFIC TELEPHONE MAGAZINE Published monthly at San Francisco for the benefit of its employées by The Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company. Address communications, queries, etc., to WILLIS BRINDLEY In this Number EDITOR Mr. John H. Corcoran, Division Superintendent-Frontispiece. Editorial: Volume 2, Number 1. 4 5 7 7 8 9 15 Volume 2 Number 1 This is Volume 2, No. 1, of THE PACIFIC TELEPHONE MAGAZINE. The idea of a magazine for the Telephone Company was agitated more than a year ago, and took definite shape in June, 1907, with the result that the first issue appeared about the middle of July. The magazine started as a 16-page publication with cover, and it was found necessary in a few months to increase the size to 24 pages. The first number of the magazine contained the following foreword: The magazine has several reasons for its existence which will appear from month to month. It intends, among other things, to preach the gospel of good cheer and good fellowship, to teach the people who work for The Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company some new things about the telephone business, and more than they can learn through any other agency, and to tell others something of the problems which a telephone company daily encounters. It will be the aim of the editor to make the magazine always interesting, so that a perusal of its pages may be a pleasure and, at the same time, an advantage. The magazine will attempt to cover rather carefully the whole Pacific Coast telephone field, and will welcome any news from any exchange that would be of general interest. There will be from time to time articles showing the progress of telephony on this coast and elsewhere, and articles bearing on telephony in gen23 eral. And in all of this work the editor Much Name, Little Talk.. Room for All on the Ladder... Some Capitalization Figures.... The Telephone and the Native Sons.. 6 $200,000,000 Manila Operators Have Chaperones. The Hundred-Point Man.... Successful Cut-Over at Palo Alto.. Notes from the Divisions... 10-15 New Public Offices at Ferry. Engineering Articles Cupid Corner ... 18 17 223 He held the position of Wire Chief in San Francisco in 1894 and 1895, was similarly employed in Los Angeles in 1895 and 1896 and in 1897 and 1898 was Manager at Santa Barbara. Mr. Corcoran became Manager of San Francisco South Office in 1898 and in 1899 was appointed Manager at San Jose. Early in 1900 he went to Honolulu as Superintendent of the Mutual Telephone Company, that company having requested President John I. Sabin to select one of his staff to fill the position. In 1902 Mr. Corcoran went East with Mr. Sabin to become Division Manager at Indianapolis with the Central Union Telephone Company, and in 1903, he returned to the Pacific Coast as Division Manager at Seattle. He has been in charge of the Puget Sound Division continuously since. that time. Much Name, Little Talk. The Oakland Transcontinental Aerial Telephone and Power Company-who would not suspect an organization with a name so pretentious?—is no more. The gaudily furnished offices are closed, the mail no longer carries the "literature" which told of riches ready to be grasped, and readers of the daily papers miss the familiar display type of the Oakland Transcontinental Aerial Telephone and Power Company's lurid advertisements. The trouble with the Oakland Transcontinental Aerial Telephone and Power Company's wireless telephone was simply that it was not wireless and would not telephone. The promoters exhibited. two boxes about the size and shape of a carpenter's tool chest which, set back to back on opposite sides of a thin wall, enabled one to talk, by the well-known principle of induction, for as much as two feet. If you picked up the tool chest telephone and faced the other way you could not talk, but as it did not occur to many people that this made any difference, the promoters disposed of a good deal of stock in their concern and only the vigilance of the postal authorities put a stop to their operations. Promotion schemes of doubtful merit are so numerous that it seems surprising that there are still people innocent and confiding enough to turn over their savings in exchange for a little talky argument. Telephone promotions of the ordinary sort seem to be somewhat out of fashion, perhaps because the man who promotes a telephone company has to spend a good part of the money that he gets in on apparatus and construction. But other promotion projects go merrily forward. It is asserted by one who claims to know the game that not more than ten per cent. of money subscribed to promotion schemes really goes into the business. A San Francisco mining company, it is asserted, has collected $80,000 by sale of stock and has spent only $1000 for mining property. The procedure is sim ple: the promoter organizes a company, makes his friend Bill Jones president, his triend James Smith secretary and puts cther reliable persons on the board of directors. The board of directors holds a meeting, elects the promoter fiscal agent, agrees to give him 50 per cent. commission on the sale of stock and agrees that the advertising expenses shall be met from the remaining 50 per cent. If, after the officers and directors and the fiscal agent and the newspapers have been paid, there is still money in the treasury it may go into the business. S. E. Kiser of the Chicago RecordHerald points a moral from a side-light on a recent international billiard tournament, in which attention has been drawn Room For All On the Ladder. to the tactics of one of the contestants. "It appears," writes Mr. Kiser, "that he has developed wonderful proficiency in leaving the ball 'safe-that is to say, he manages it so that when he misses the Ealls are so placed that it will be exceedingly difficult for his opponent to tally. The result of this policy has been a low average in every game in which he has been a contestant. But it has not enabled him to win. By contriving to check the speed of his adversaries he has also kept himself back. His average was lower than that of any other player in the tournament and he was tied for the smallest number of victories. Isn't there a little sermon tied up in this billiard player's method? Does he who is continually scheming to keep his rivals back ever get very far ahead himself? And is there much honor in the occasional victories he achieves through such methods? The man who succeeds in getting highest on the ladder cannot afford to spend too much time trying to step on the fingers. of other climbers." Mr. Kiser is very right; it is encouraging also to know that the man who succeeds in climbing by stepping on the fingers of the other climbers is a vanishing type. There is room for all on the ladder. Some Capitalization Figures. At present the three large telephone and telegraph companies, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, the Western Union Telegraph Company and the Mackay Companies, says the Wall Street Journal, have outstanding a total of $343,682,280 stock, which, owned by upward of 45,000 shareholders, shows an average investment of over seventy-five shares per stockholder. Of this total of 45,000 shareholders, more than half, or, to be exact, 24,400, comprise the owners of the $152.484,855 outstanding stock of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. The average investment holding of telephone stock is 62.4 shares. Western Union is nearly as well distributed, its 14,500 shareholders owning an average of 68.8 shares each. The situation with the Mackay Companies is somewhat different, and indicates that the efforts to attract investors to the stock have been only partially successful. On March 17 the company had a total of 6,690 individual shareholders, an average investment of 130.5 shares, showing about half the distribution of American Telephone stock. It should be remembered, however, that the Mackay Companies is the newest of the three companies, having been organized but five years ago, in 1903. The comparative figures of the three companies are: Stock Outstanding. American Telephone $152,848,855 Western Union...... 99,817,025 Mackay Companies... 91,380,400 Total. Stock- Av. per holders. Holder. |