Roughly speaking, there are now ten million telephones in all countries, employing two hundred and fifty thousand people, requiring twenty-one million miles of wire, representing a cost of fifteen hundred million dollars, and carrying fourteen thousand million conversations a year.

All this, and yet the men who heard the first feeble cry of the infant telephone are still alive, and not by any means old.
No foreign country has reached the high American level of telephony.

The United States has eight telephones per hundred of population, while no other country has one-half as many.

Canada stands second, with almost four per hundred; and Sweden is third.

Germany has as many telephones as the State of New York; and Great Britain as many as Ohio.