Since his death the Government has entered the field with a duplicate system, and a war has been begun which grows yearly more costly and absurd.
Asia, as yet, with her eight hundred and fifty million people, has fewer telephones than Philadelphia, and three-fourths of them are in the tiny island of Japan.

The Japanese were enthusiastic telephonists from the first.

They had a busy exchange in Tokio in 1883.

This has now grown to have twenty-five thousand users, and might have more, if it had not been stunted by the peculiar policy of the Government.

The public officials who operate the system are able men.