largest user of
this equipment in this country. From latest information, over 55
railroads have entered this field, with the result that the telephone is
now in use in railroad service on over 29,000 miles of line.

=Causes of Its Introduction.= The reasons leading to the introduction of
the telephone into the dispatching field were of this nature: First, and
most important, was the enactment of State and Federal Laws limiting to
nine hours the working day of railroad employes transmitting or
receiving orders pertaining to the movement of trains. The second, which
is directly dependent upon the first, was the inability of the railroads
to obtain the additional number of telegraph operators which were
required under the provisions of the new laws. It was estimated that
15,000 additional operators would be required to maintain service in the
same fashion after the new laws went into effect in 1907. The increased
annual expense occasioned by the employment of these additional
operators was roughly estimated at $10,000,000. A third reason is found
in the decreased efficiency of the average railway and commercial
telegraph operator. There is a very general complaint among the
railroads today regarding this particular point, and many of them
welcome the telephone, because, if for no other reason, it renders them
independent of the telegrapher. What has occasioned this decrease in
efficiency it is not easy to say, but there is a strong tendency to lay
it, in part, to the attitude of the telegraphers' organization toward
the student operator. It is a fact, too, that the limits which these
organizations have placed on student operators were directly
responsible for the lack of available men when they were needed.

=Advantages.= In making this radical change, railroad officials were
most cautious, and yet we know of no case where the introduction of the
telephone has been followed by its abandonment, the tendency having been
in all cases toward further installations and more equipment of the
modern type. The reasons for this are clear, for where the telephone is
used it does not require a highly specialized man as station operator
and consequently a much broader field is open to the railroads from
which to draw operators. This, we think, is the most far-reaching
advantage.

The telephone method also is faster. On an ordinary train-dispatching
circuit it now requires from 0.1 of a second to 5 seconds to call any
station. In cas