Postmaster General suddenly proclaimed that the telephone was a species
of telegraph. According to a British law the telegraph was required to
be a Government monopoly. This law had been passed six years before
the telephone was born, but no matter. The telephone men protested and
argued. Tyndall and Lord Kelvin warned the Government that it was making
an indefensible mistake. But nothing could be done. Just as the first
railways had been called toll-roads, so the telephone was solemnly
declared to be a telegraph. Also, to add to the absurd humor of the
situation, Judge Stephen, of the High Court of Justice, spoke the
final word that compelled the telephone legally to be a telegraph, and
sustained his opinion by a quotation from Webster's Dictionary, which
was published twenty years before the telephone was invented.

Having captured this new rival, what next? The Postmaster General did
not know. He had, of course, no experience in telephony, and neither had
any of his officials in the telegraph department. There was no book and
no college to instruct him. His telegraph was then, as it is to-day, a
business failure. It was not earning its keep. Therefore he did not dare
to shoulder the risk of constructing a second system of wires, and at
last consented to give licenses to private companies.

But the muddle continued. In order to compel competition, according
to the academic theories of the day, licenses were given to thir-teen
private companies. As might have been expected, the ablest company
quickly swallowed the other twelve. If it had been let alone, this
company might have given good service, but it was hobbled and fenced in
by jealous regulations. It was compelled to pay one-tenth of its gross
earnings to the Post Office. It was to hold itself ready to sell out at
six months' notice. And as soon as it had strung a long-distance system
of wires, the Postmaster General pounced down upon it and took it away.

Then, in 1900, the Post Office tossed aside all obligations to the
licensed company, and threw open the door to a free-for-all competition.
It undertook to start a second system in London, and in two years
discovered its blunder and proposed to cooperate. It granted licenses
to five cities that demanded municipal ownership. These cities set out
bravely, with loud beating of drums, plunged from one mishap to another,
and finally quit. Even Glasgow, the premier city of municipal ownership,
met its Waterloo in th