The telephone was, in fact, a new social nerve, so new and so novel that very nearly twenty years went by before it had fully grown into place, and before the social body developed the instinct of using it.
Not that the difficulties of the telephone engineers were over, for they were not.

They have seemed to grow more numerous and complex every year.
But by 1896 enough had been done to warrant a forward movement.

For the next ten-year period the keynote of telephone history was EXPANSION.
Under the prevailing flat-rate plan of payment, all customers paid the same yearly price and then used their telephones as often as they pleased.

This was a simple method, and the most satisfactory for small towns and farming regions.

But in a great city such a plan grew to be suicidal.