One which had printed fifty million dollars of stock for sale was sold at auction in 1909 for four hundred thousand dollars.

All told, there were twenty-three of these bubbles that burst in 1905, twenty-one in 1906, and twelve in 1907.

So high has been the death-rate among these isolated companies that at a recent convention of telephone agents, the chairman's gavel was made of thirty-five pieces of wood, taken from thirty-five switchboards of thirty-five extinct companies.
A study of twelve single-system cities and twenty-seven double-system cities shows that there are about eleven per cent more telephones under the double-system, and that where the second system is put in, every fifth user is obliged to pay for two telephones.

The rates are alike, whether a city has one or two systems.

Duplicating companies raised their rates in sixteen cities out of the twenty-seven, and reduced them in one city.