s side of the Atlantic.
I have heard telephones in this country speak infinitely better than
anything that I have heard on the other side of the Atlantic. But they
transact their business in America infinitely better than we do; and there
is one great reason for this, which is, that in America the public itself
falls into the mode of telephone working with the energy of the telegraph
operator. They assist the telephone people in every way they can; they
take disturbances with a humility that would be simply startling to
English subscribers; and they help the workers of the system in every way
they can. The result is, that all goes off with great smoothness and
comfort. But the switch apparatus used in the American central offices is
infinitely superior to anything that I have ever seen over here, excepting
at Liverpool.

A new system has just been brought out, called the "multiple" system,
which has been very lately introduced. I saw it at many places, especially
at Indianapolis, at Boston, and at New York, where three exchanges were
worked by it with a rapidity that perfectly startled me. I took the times
of a great many transactions, and found that, from the moment a subscriber
called to the moment he was put through, only five seconds elapsed; and I
am told at Milwaukee, where unfortunately I could not go, but where there
is a friend of ours in charge, Mr. Charles Haskins, who is one of our
members, and he says he has brought down the rate of working to such a
pitch that they are able to arrange that subscribers shall be put through
in four seconds.

You will be surprised to learn that there are 986 exchanges at work in the
United States. There are 97,423 circuits; there are nearly 90,000 miles of
wire used for telephonic purposes; and the number of instruments that have
been manufactured amounts to 517,749. Just compare those figures with our
little experience on this side of the Atlantic. I have a return showing
the number of subscribers in and about New York, comprising the New Jersey
division, the Long Island division, Staten Island, Westchester, and New
York City, and the total amounts to 10,600 subscribers who are put into
communication with each other in the neighborhood of New York alone; and
here in England we can only muster 11,000. There are just as many
subscribers probably at this moment in New York and its neighborhood as we
have in the whole of the United Kingdom.

I am sorry to delay you so long. I