The possibilities of the Post Office Telephone Service when fully developed are enormous. In the United States, for instance, there are to-day more telephones in use by farmers than the whole number in use by commercial and all other classes in the United Kingdom. And these telephones are found to add to the profits and comfort of the farmers to an extent which makes the cost of the telephone seem negligible.
The British Post Office, following the American example, has arranged that if a sufficient number of subscribers living on or near a country road leading to a town where there is a telephone exchange will agree to use one line, they can telephone as much as they please to people on that exchange for the moderate charge of £3 a year.
A British farmer can speak from his farm to all the country round. The telephone saves him inconvenient and expensive journeys to neighbouring towns, while he and his family can talk to their friends and neighbours and can arrange social functions.
The proverbial dulness of the country-side may be relieved considerably by the development of the telephone system, and curious results may eventually be seen in our national habits in the future. With a talking instrument installed at every post office and perhaps every house, the whole nation may gradually accustom itself to social intercourse over the wires. The Scotsman may lose some of his reserve, and the Englishman much of his class feeling. On the other hand, the Irishman will find increased opportunities for his natural eloquence.
Shall we require in such circumstances to visit one another so frequently? Will railway receipts fall off? Will the taxi-cab wait in vain for a call? There is one certain thing the popularising of the telephone will effect—it will test the sincerity of our friend who protests that he is anxious to see us, and to be in our company. If this sentiment, as is often the case, arises merely out of a desire to hear himself talk, the man may simply use the telephone. We, too, have an advantage: we can cut him off.
CHAPTER XIV
ENGINEERS, STORES AND FACTORIES
(a) The Engineers
In writing of the activities of the General Post Office, it is difficult to know where to stop, or in that slaughter of the innocents which must always take place when space is not available, to decide who is to be spared. We certainly cannot leave out the Post Office engineer. He often works unseen and unappreciated by the general public, but he has this consolation, that he is indispensable, and in the Post Office of the future he may become the most important man in the service. Sometimes, perhaps, our eye may have been arrested, when passing along a street, by the spectacle of a man apparently attempting acrobatic feats on the top of a telegraph pole, and he will often attract the same curious attention from a London crowd as a fallen horse or a motor car in difficulties. He is probably an employé of the Post Office, and belongs to the Engineer's Department.
For several centuries the Post Office was simply a carrier of letters, and it is difficult to realise that a larger portion of its effective work depends at the present day on the skill of the engineer. Since 1870 a sum of over £100,000,000 has been expended in the purchase, maintenance, and extension of telegraph and telephone business, and the expenditure on telephone maintenance alone up to the end of 1908 amounted to nearly £8,000,000.
The engineers have during recent years provided a large mileage of underground wires, connecting London with Edinburgh, with the west of England, the Midlands and the south-eastern counties. The need for the engineer's work in the postal service is felt more and more every day. All round our coasts he is erecting and maintaining stations for wireless telegraphy, and if the aeroplane becomes the carrier eventually of our letters, the engineer will be the chief official in the postal as well as the telegraph work of the Post Office. Even now there is an increasing demand for mechanical appliances in postal work. There are the conveyors and stamping machines used in sorting office work, and new developments in this direction are probable in the future.