One statistician has given us a total of three million dollars a day as the amount saved by using telephones.
This sum may be far too high, or too low.

It can be no more than a guess.

The only adequate way to arrive at the value of the telephone is to consider the nation as a whole, to take it all in all as a going concern, and to note that such a nation would be absolutely impossible without its telephone service.

Some sort of a slower and lower grade republic we might have, with small industrial units, long hours of labor, lower wages, and clumsier ways.

The money loss would be enormous, but more serious still would be the loss in the QUALITY OF THE NATIONAL LIFE.