forty square miles of houses, has one-quarter of these, and is gaining It undertook to start a second system in London, and in two years private companies. As might have been expected, the ablest company met its Waterloo in the telephone. It spent one million, eight hundred licensed company, and threw open the door to a free-for-all competition. by jealous regulations. It was compelled to pay one-tenth of its gross hundred thousand telephones in use. London, with its six hundred and six months' notice. And as soon as it had strung a long-distance system and finally quit. Even Glasgow, the premier city of municipal ownership, to five cities that demanded municipal ownership. These cities set out for a time at a loss, and then sold it to the Post Office in 1906 for all private companies on New Year's Day, 1912. The bureaucratic muddle, as the Post Office has given notice that it will take over and operate bravely, with loud beating of drums, plunged from one mishap to another, one million, five hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. But the muddle continued. In order to compel competition, according Then, in 1900, the Post Office tossed aside all obligations to the thousand dollars on a plant that was obsolete when it was new, ran it of wires, the Postmaster General pounced down upon it and took it away. discovered its blunder and proposed to cooperate. It granted licenses been a "comedy of errors." There are now, in the two islands, not six company might have given good service, but it was hobbled and fenced in to the academic theories of the day, licenses were given to thir-teen at the rate of ten thousand a year. No large improvements are under way, earnings to the Post Office. It was to hold itself ready to sell out at So, from first to last, the story of the telephone in Great Britain has quickly swallowed the other twelve. If it had been let alone, this