Union N.Bethell, now in Cutler's place at the head of the New York Company, has been the operating chief for eighteen years.

He is a man of shrewdness and sympathy, with a rare sagacity in solving knotty problems, a president of the new type, who regards his work as a sort of obligation he owes to the public.

And just as foreigners go to Pittsburg to see the steel business at its best; just as they go to Iowa and Kansas to see the New Farmer, so they make pilgrimages to Bethell's office to learn the profession of telephony.
This unparalleled telephone system of New York grew up without having at any time the rivalry of competition.

But in many other cities and especially in the Middle West, there sprang up in 1895 a medley of independent companies.

The time of the original patents had expired, and the Bell Companies found themselves freed from the expense of litigation only to be snarled up in a tangle of duplication.