For five cents whoever wishes has an entire wire-system at his service, a system that is kept waiting by day and night, so that it will be ready the instant he needs it.

This system may have cost from twenty to fifty millions, yet it may be hired for one-eighth the cost of renting an automobile.

Even in long-distance telephony, the expense of a message dwindles when it is compared with the price of a return railway ticket.

A talk from New York to Philadelphia, for instance, costs seventy-five cents, while the railway fare would be four dollars.

From New York to Chicago a talk costs five dollars as against seventy dollars by rail.