in 1888; had strung its first million miles of wire in 1900; and had salon was fitted up in New York City to entice people into the habit taught to substitute the telephone for travel. A special long-distance arrived, he was escorted over Oriental rugs to a gilded booth, draped period of expansion, that by 1905 they had swept past all European By 1892 Boston and New York were talking to Chicago, Milwaukee, were within talking distance of each other. The THOUSAND-MILE TALK had as many. Such was the plunging progress of the Bell Companies in this actual number of telephones in use. This, too, without a cent of public To describe this growth in a single sentence, we might say that the first million of surplus in 1885. It had paid out its first million for countries combined, not only in the quality of the service but in the bureau. legal expenses by 1886; began first to send a million messages a day ceased to be a fairy tale. Several years later the western end of the of talking to other cities. Cabs were sent for customers; and when one each other. money, or the protection of a tariff, or the prestige of a governmental Boston to be heard in Omaha. Slowly and with much effort the public were line was pushed over the plains to Nebraska, enabling the spoken word in twice as many miles of wire as the Western Union, and in 1905 FIVE TIMES Bell telephone secured its first million of capital in 1879; its first million of earnings in 1882; its first million of dividends in 1884; its popular and indispensable of all the agencies that put men in touch with many cobwebs of wire as the mighty Western Union itself; by 1900 it had installed its first million telephones in 1898. By 1897 it had spun as Pittsburg, and Washington. One-half of the people of the United States