suspects that he has within him hidden springs of oratory.

Some managers make a mistake right at the start; they try to break in on Bill Jones's speech, the speech that he has been composing on the way to the office. Does that make Bill Jones feel any kindlier toward the manager and the blankety-blank company? No, gentle reader, it does not. Why should it? Put it down as Rule I that every subscriber has a right to his say. Take this as Rule II: Every complaint is presumed to be a just one until its injustice is disproved.

man.

Bill Jones-by Bill Jones we refer to the average subscriber-is normally a peaceable He does not seek trouble. It is quite reasonable to presume that he would not deliberately imagine troubles which never occurred. Then why try to argue with him that he has no just cause for complaint? Mr. Jones says that he tried three times yesterday afternoon to talk to his wife over the telephone, and was told every time that she did not answer, when she was right there, by George! all the time, by George! If the manager makes the bold assertion that Mrs. Jones was not at home when the telephone bell rang, do you think that on his unsupported assertion, Mr. Jones will believe him and not the wife? No, he will not. But the manager can suggest, ever so carefully, that Mrs. Jones might have stepped across the street three times, and he can bolster this contention by anecdotes of similar occurrences. If a soft answer turneth away wrath, a reasonable answer converteth the wrathful. The power to pacify is surely a requisite to complete success in the telephone business. None of us is entirely successful in this or in anything else, but continual striving will help.

And here is Rule III. Rule III is brief; it consists of two words and these two words are: FIX IT. No amount of courtesy, persuasion, diplomacy, necessary as these are, will avail if not followed by action, and the action can not come too quickly. Investigate the complaint thoroughly, find out who was to blame, stop the trouble, and then see that it does not happen again.

Some Facts About Mr. Bush

The frontispiece of this issue of THE PACIFIC TELEPHONE MAGAZINE is a reproduction of a photograph of Mr. G. B. Bush, General Contract Agent. Born and raised in Fall River, Massachusetts, Mr. Bush entered the telephone business in the Auditing Department of the Pacific Company in 1895, and one year after entered the Construction Department. Shortly thereafter he was assigned to the position of manager of West Exchange, San Francisco. In 1899, Mr. Bush was given the management of Portland Exchange, then numbering less than 3000 subscribers, a year later taking the position of District Manager at Spokane. In 1901, when Mr. J. I. Sabin accepted the temporary presidency of the Central Union Telephone Company, Mr. Bush accompanied him in the capacity of Division Manager at Columbus, Ohio, returning to the Pacific Company in 1903 as Division Manager at Spokane. In 1905 Mr. Bush was appointed to his present position.

a man who comes out strongly in praise of that humble utility, the telephone pole. This man, a writer in the London Daily Telegraph, says that he has known men to plant poles merely for the artistic effect. In part he says:

"A man who can not see the nobility of the long line of tall giants crossing the bare shoulder of a distant hill has little of the artist and nothing of the poet in his constitution. Silhouetted against a sunset, they have their own especial value, and modern artists have not failed to see their beauty in less obtrusive places. They form a black thread in the embroidery of Nature, and only those who have studied embroidery know of what infinite use that black line is in art. It must be used sparingly, as sparingly as gold, but its effect is as noble, and far more refined. . . No artist, except your early Victorian dilettante, would dare to leave the poles out. I have known men willfully and with vast wisdom aforethought put them in where they never were."

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was

came to $6. "Why," the engraver asked, "if it costs practically as much to make a small cut as a large one is there not a reduction in the inch price in cuts over a certain size?" But the engraver did not know. It was a rule, and a rule was a rule, and that was all there was to it. Investigation developed the fact that all the engravers in town ran their business by the same rule and explanation was not forthcoming.

The incident above was related to illustrate a point which has been brought out previously in these pages: that it is absolutely necessary to know one's business thoroughly if one is to talk intelligently and convincingly about it. There probably is some reason, justified by business usage, for the apparently arbitrary price of engraving in San Francisco, but it seems impossible to find out what this is, and the casual purchaser of cuts is necessarily disgusted. There are several charges made by the Telephone Company which sometimes seem unreasonable to users of telephone service; for example, the charge made for moving a telephone and the charge made for printing an extra name in the directory. There are reasons for each of these charges and good ones. Any Manager who does not know why the Company charges the subscriber for moving his telephone and why it charges him the apparently unreasonable price of 50 cents for printing an additional name would better find out at once. If you don't understand the reason for these charges, for any other charges made by the Telephone Company, ask your boss!

FORWARD!

THE PACIFIC TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH COMPANY HAS UNDERTAKEN TO EXTEND THE USE OF THE TELEPHONE TO EVERY CITY, TOWN, AND VILLAGE IN THE PACIFIC STATES, AND TO MAINTAIN UNIFORMLY COURTEOUS AND EFFICIENT SERVICE, WHICH, UNDER COMPARABLE CONDITIONS, WILL NOT BE EXCELLED ANYWHERE IN THE COUNTRY.

(The question of rates is a problem which always present serious difficulties to public service corporations. There are some exchanges in the territory of The Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company which for years have not paid the cost of operation, and it is manifestly unfair that other cities should be made to earn profits enough to make up the loss in these few instances. A similar state of affairs exists in Indiana, and the announcement of a raise in rates in a small town recently resulted in a massmeeting which was addressed by a local manager. His address was so full of logic and so attractively presented that it is printed in part below.-Editor.)

I've learned something here tonight, and I am going to put it into practice. This suit of clothes cost me eight dollars more than the last one I bought. I'm going to get up a mass-meeting, and-you'll be there, Mr. Macy-all of the clerks and school teachers and corporation employées will come, and we will demand that we get better clothes for less money.

The boarding-houses all over town have raised their rates. Where I board the raise has been two dollars per week. They say butter and eggs and meat and milk and rents have gone up. But we'll fix them. We'll hold a mass-meeting. You'll read about it in the papers, and we'll demand a lot better board for a little less money than we paid three years ago.

When you pay your telephone bill, and hand Mr. Macy a dollar, don't you know that you are getting something that costs him a great deal more than $1? You have been getting, every one of you, for your dollar something that costs the telephone company about $1.44. The 44 cents each month these stockholders are simply contributing to you, as surely as if they handed you the change. Yet, I'll bet you never gave them anything. What is it you want now, "A good deal better service for a little less money?" That is, you are not

satisfied with a gift of 44 cents a month, but you want 25 cents more.

Mr. Macy ought not to be compelled to give you his figures, but he will let me make some pretty accurate statements, I guess. His gross income is $462 per month. His running expenses $416 per month. This leaves $46 for interest on the investment and for depreciation. Now, some folks who talk the loudest never heard of depreciation -they don't know whether it is a political party or an island in the Philippines. But the manufacturer knows all right, and every electrical man knows to his sorrow.

The fact is that real estate in town or country doesn't depreciate, it appreciatesgoes up. If you bought a hundred acres of land ten years ago at $50 per acre and spent $5000, you haven't got $5000 of land-your land has nearly doubled in value, and is worth maybe $10,000. And, in the meantime, it has paid you a big profit almost every year in the corn and hay and grain and stock and butter and eggs and chickens and turkeys and, maybe, timber which you have marketed.

But what has been the experience of these stockholders in the Mooresville Telephone Company? They have put their $20,000 into this telephone plant instead of into farm land or town property. It would have bought a nice row of houses and lots here in town, or a good-sized block in the city, or three or four hundred acres of farm land. But they have put it into a telephone plant, intending to make a profit, just as you would do, and at the same time to do this community a service. Have these stockholders got thirty or forty thousand dollars' worth of property now, as they should have, to be as successful as you folks? You know yourselves that they offer this property at $16,000-$4000 less than they put into it. And you got that $4000. It all went to your benefit and nobody else's. And, in the meantime, not a single bushel of potatoes, or mess of beans, or pound of but

ter, has come out of this $20,000 worth of property for these stockholders or their families. Not a single head of stock or bushel of corn have they got the profit on. All the benefits went to you to the public.

Now, do you see what interest and depreciation mean? Interest on a bonded plant or dividends on a stock are the profits which the investors are entitled to. The interest ought to be, at least, what the investors could get without risk by loaning the money-say 6 per cent. Depreciation is the loss on the investment, to cover which a fund must always be set aside.

In general, you can say that a telephone plant must be entirely renewed about every six or seven years. Say, then, that it wears out 14 per cent each year, or 98 per cent in seven years. Then, in order to be making a living on their investment these stockholders should have 20 per cent each year above expenses, or $4000 in this case per year, which is $333 per month.

Did you, any of you, ever know a man who made money by putting his money into the telephone business? The Bell Company wishes it never had seen Indiana—and particularly Brooklyn.

We have never made a cent in this old State, and down here at Brooklyn we have dumped all of $5000 which we might better have given the town in a check and saved this monthly drain of $75 or so outside money to meet expenses.

If you want "a whole lot better service" than the telephone companies can afford to give "for a little less money" than twothirds of the cost, there is nothing to prevent you from going after it. But don't blame me if you get a lemon.

And if you don't take this chance to invest your money-or if you do remember this, and mark my words: rates are going higher yet some day, and if your money is tied up in the business at that time you will be mighty thankful for it. The rates which Mr. Macy has named are barely enough to meet expenses, and expenses are sure to go up.

Life is not so short but that there is always enough time for courtesy.-Emerson.

Philosophones.

Don't imagine that the service is perfect just because complaints are few; keep looking for trouble.

Systematize everything-your work, recreation, finances. This is the way to cut out unnecessary drudgery, unnecessary indulgences that have ceased to amuse and only do you harm, and unnecessary leakages in your expense account.-Holman.

q"Energy is the salesman's greatest asset. You can't be energetic without having health." And right living is good health insurance.

If you feel that you have been abused rather more shamefully than usual, work a little harder. The lazy people are always the ones with the hard-luck stories.

There is a vast difference between wishing and winning; many a man has failed because he had his wish-bone where his back-bone should have been.-Judicious Advertising.

The mule doubtless thinks this is an obstinate world. If you can not convince the other fellow, hunt the reason in yourself.Hubbard.

Don't let it worry you because a man you know has worked for the company eighteen years in the same position-that's his worry, not yours. Didn't you ever see an old man and a boy shoveling sand into the same wagon?

How many things are looked upon as quite impossible until they have been actually effected.-Pliny.

There are two ways to handle a letter— one is to file it; the other is to answer it. If the letter calls for an answer, make the answer brief, pointed, and make it soon. Neglect of correspondence is inexcusable. ¶Nature gives us facts, but it is for man to distill truth from facts. All violence of direction is fatal to truth. Fear, hate, and prejudice deprive a person of the power to arrive at correct conclusions.-Hubbard.

Get your happiness out of your work or you'll never know what happiness is.-The Philistine.