806t u mr ivd 
 
THE CHIEF CAUSES OF THE FAIL- 
 URE OF MUNICIPAL TELE- 
 PHONES IN GLASGOW 
 
 BY 
 
 V. M. BERTHOLD 
 
 reprinted from 
 
 The Quarterly Journal of Economics 
 
 Vol. XXII., February, 1908 
 
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 CONTENTS FOR NOVEMBER, 1907 
 
 I. MORTGAGE TAXATION IN WISCONSIN ....... T. S. Adams 
 
 II. THE NATURE OF CAPITAL: A REJOINDER E. Bohm-Bawerk 
 
 III. THE RENT CONCEPT, NARROWED AND BROADENED Frank T. Carlton 
 
 IV. AN ILLUSTRATION OF THE CONTINUITY OF THE OPEN 
 
 FIELD SYSTEM P. Vinogradoff 
 
 Appendix : Court Roll of an Oxfordshire Manor 
 
 V. THE TAXATION OF THE UNEARNED INCREMENT IN GER- 
 MANY Robert Brunhuber 
 
 Appendix : The Cologne Ordinance levying an Increment Tax 
 
 VI. .THE TEXAS STOCK AND BOND LAW AND ITS ADMINIS- 
 TRATION E. T. Miller 
 
 NOTES AND MEMORANDA: 
 
 Political Economy and Business Economy: Comments on Fisher's 
 
 Capital and Income J. R. Commons 
 
 The Meetings of British and of American Economists T. N. Carver 
 
 The Massachusetts Inheritance Tax of 1907 F. W. Taussig 
 
 RECENT PUBLICATIONS UPON ECONOMICS. 
 
 CONTENTS FOR FEBRUARY, 1908 
 
 I. PROFESSOR CLARK'S EC6NCMICJS . Thorstein Veblen 
 
 II. THE TAXA:i.iaN Qf.INTi^NG-IF.LE WEAL-TH IN MARYLAND . Jacob H. Hollander 
 
 III. MACHINERY** AfVo*' :rHE.LABO^]sjR.s\.,_ T.N.Carver 
 
 IV. THE STREET RAILWAYS OF PHILADELPHIA .... Frank D. McLain 
 
 V. THE COST AND THE PROFITS OF STEEL-MAKING IN THE 
 
 UNITED STATES J. Russell Smith 
 
 VI. THE QUANTITY THEORY AS TESTED BY KEMMERER . Warren M. Persons 
 
 VII. HOARDING IN THE PANIC OF 1907 A. P. Andrew 
 
 NOTES AND MEMORANDA: 
 
 A Proposal for securing the Maintenance of Bank Reserve . . Charles W. Mixter 
 
 The Chief Cause of the Failure of Municipal Telephony in Great 
 
 Britain V. M. Berthold 
 
 RECENT PUBLICATIONS UPON ECONOMICS. 
 
THE CHIEF CAUSE OF THE FAILURE OF MUNIC- 
 IPAL TELEPHONY IN GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 Mr. A. N. Holcombe has recently discussed in this Jour- 
 nal* the reasons that led to the abandonment of munici- 
 pal telephone service in Great Britain. Having explained 
 the situation antecedent to the establishment of municipal 
 exchanges, governed largely by the vacillating policy of 
 the British Post-office, which might be fitly described as 
 having played a game of "blind-man's-buff" both with the 
 National Telephone Company and the municipal corpora- 
 tions, the author reaches the following conclusion: **the 
 general abandonment of the municipal telephone under- 
 takings (thus) cannot be adequately explained by any 
 technical or financial weakness for which their managers 
 are responsible, but that the explanation must be sought 
 elsewhere." 
 
 The "elsewhere" in the opinion of the writer of the above, 
 or the real cause of the failure of municipal telephone 
 service, was its discouragement by the British government 
 through the failure of the Post-office to enter into an active 
 competition with the National Telephone Company, which, 
 it will be remembered, was its lawfully created licensee and 
 representative. 
 
 I do not desire to deny that the action of the British 
 Post-office hurt the municipal telephone traders. But 
 it served only to accentuate the troubles in which they 
 found themselves and hastened the final step, — the abandon- 
 ment of an unprofitable and losing business. In other 
 words, the managers of the Post-office soon perceived that 
 municipal telephone service was neither a financial nor 
 technical success, and that a triple service would impede 
 instead of assisting the development of telephony in Great 
 Britain. 
 
 ' In Quarterly Journal of Economics for AugUEt, 1907, p. 645. 
 
 273050 
 
:/: 
 
 4»<> « 
 
 « « .> C 
 
 Mr. Holcombe's conclusion, that the general abandon- 
 ment of the municipal telephone undertakings cannot be 
 adequately explained by any technical or financial weakness 
 for which the managers were responsible, is a new message 
 to those who have watched and followed the rise and fall 
 of the British municipal telephone service. The inception 
 of that service was not as enthusiastic as might have been 
 inferred from the charge of pronounced and general dis- 
 satisfaction with the existing system; for after the pasage 
 of the Act of 1899, when any municipality could have 
 apphed to the Post-office for a telephone, only 59 out of 
 the possible total number (1,334) wrote to the Post-office 
 for information, 41 after searching investigation abandoned 
 the scheme, 13 took out a license, and only 6 of these actually 
 proceeded to establish a telephone exchange. Of the latter 
 Tunbridge Wells sold out to the National Telephone Com- 
 pany after an experience lasting but a little over a year. 
 
 Of Glasgow, as the largest municipality and making 
 the largest investment and possessing weaknesses common 
 to the other five municipalities, the question may specifi- 
 cally be asked, what were the technical or financial weak- 
 nesses for which the managers of the municipal telephone 
 business were directly responsible? Briefly, the answer 
 is: — 
 
 (1) Errors in organization. The adoption of exchange 
 system and equipment long discarded as inefficient by 
 progressive telephone engineers. 
 
 (2) Errors in estimates and plans. Here the most 
 glaring mistake was the underestimations of the cost of a 
 subscriber's line, — an error due to the advice of the expert, 
 Mr. A. R. Bennett, who in 1896 figured the average cost 
 of a subscriber's line as £17, and changed later on to £18.16. 
 
 In May, 1904, the cost per subscriber's line had grown to 
 £34 in the Glasgow exchange. 
 
 (3) Errors in rates. Again relying upon the same 
 expert, the municipalities adopted an annual flat rate of 
 £5.5, about one-half that charged by the National Telephone 
 Company. At the Glasgow Telephone Inquiry held by 
 
Sheriff Jameson (September 28-October 4, 1897) Coun- 
 cillor Alexander, member of the Glasgow Corporation Tele- 
 phone Committee, deposed that: — 
 
 Before making the application for a license, the CJorporation Com- 
 mittee had laid before them expert information which satisfied them 
 that an efficient telephone serAice could be supplied in Glasgow for 
 £5 within a mile. 
 
 In response to a question by Mr. Ashe, M.P., if the com- 
 mittee intended to supply this telephone service without 
 imposing any burden on the rates, the committee answered 
 ^'Itis."i 
 
 (4) Errors in providing none or insufficient amounts for 
 depreciation and sinking fund. 
 
 The managers were not without warning, for as early as 
 December, 1901, when the Glasgow exchange had been in 
 operation but seven months, the Marquis G. de la Touanne, 
 a well-known telephone engineer of the French Telegraph 
 & Telephone Department, also a foreign member of the 
 Institute of Electrical Engineers of London, wrote as 
 follows to the London Electrical Review (December 13, 
 1901):— 
 
 The statement of Mr. Provand in the Times of November 30, that 
 Glasgow is earning a profit on £5.5 subscription leads us of the metier 
 to seek further information, for no other large city has been able to 
 maintain so low a rate. . . . £5.5 less 10% Post-office royalty leaves 
 £4 14s. Qd. net. I take the ultimate capital cost per subscriber 
 as given by Mr. Provand at £16, but I think no telephone manager 
 will accept 3A% per annum as a sufficient depreciation. My expe- 
 rience is that if the service is to be kept up to the mark, the instru- 
 ments and switchboards must be replaced every eight years, which 
 means, say, 12% depreciation. ... A little more arithmetic shows that 
 every (Glasgow) subscriber who calk forty-seven times daily uses up 
 his subscription price in operator's wages alone. 
 
 Then we have also management, technical staff, repairs, rent, light- 
 ing, heating, and all the multifarious expenses of a large business 
 enterprise still to come. But that is not all. The subscriber who 
 calls 20, 40, or 80 times daily costs more than £16 in plant. He may 
 cost 25 or 50, and the depreciation on that head is 12%, making 
 
 ' London Electrical Re\new, October 8, 1897. 
 
with interest 15%. The £5 subscriber will thus cost about £7 i>er 
 annum for interest and depreciation, say one and one-half times 
 his subscription fee. . . . 
 
 Let us now consider the several sorts of error more in 
 detail. 
 
 (1) Errors in organization. Immediately after the pass- 
 ing of the statute known as the Telegraph Act (1899), the 
 Corporation of Glasgow, which in 1893 had asked the Post- 
 master-General for a license, renewed its request for an 
 exchange to embrace the whole of the city of Glasgow and 
 four outlying districts, covering approximately 143 square 
 miles. This license was granted March 1, 1900, and (a 
 fact which should be well borne in mind) at the Corpora- 
 tion's own desire it was made terminable December 31, 
 1913. 
 
 Immediately thereafter the Corporation, under the 
 chairmanship of ex-Bailie James Alexander, an ardent 
 advocate of and believer in municipal telephone service, 
 organized a telephone department and appointed Mr. 
 Alfred II . Bennett chief engineer. By his advice the 
 committee adopted what is commonly known among 
 United States telephone engineers as the Law or call- wire 
 system, in which each subscriber does his own ringing up. 
 As operated in Glasgow, a maximum of twenty subscribers 
 used one wire in common for giving their orders to an 
 operator who, with a receiver held to the ear, watches for 
 calls and makes the desired connection, leaving, however, 
 the ringing up of the party called to the calling party. 
 Omitting a lot of technical troubles inherent in such a 
 system, it is evident to the layman that one line fault 
 might affect as many as twenty subscribers. The common 
 call wire left means of signalling at the mercy of irresponsi- 
 ble persons who considered it a joke to hamper operating 
 work as much as possible. Moreover, whenever the insula- 
 tion of a subscriber's line became even slightly defective, 
 his Hne was inoperative. 
 
 The Law system was well known in the United States, 
 
where it had been in use in several large exchanges, notice- 
 ably Philadelphia and St. Louis. On account of its tech- 
 nical defects it was speedily superseded by the common 
 battery system, with which the Philadelphia exchange was 
 reconstructed as early as 1897. Ever since the Law system 
 has been obsolete in the United States. 
 
 It took but two years to demonstrate the inefficiency of 
 the Glasgow plant. Driven by general complaints of bad 
 service, the Telephone Committee, as early as March, 1904, 
 let it be known that a general change of the sj^stem was 
 under contemplation.^ To carry out the reconstruction, 
 the Telephone Committee at the next meeting of the Cor- 
 poration recommended that they be authorized to borrow 
 an additional £250,000. 
 
 The reconstruction of the exchange became so imperative 
 and required such large unremunerative additional invest- 
 ment that the Telephone Committee^ (July, 1906) recom- 
 mended the sale of the undertaking to the Post-office for 
 £305,000, the actual expenditure at that date being £360,- 
 000. In spite of considerable political pressure the Post- 
 master-General refused to pay more than £305,000, and 
 added that he could not keep even that offer open for a 
 long time.^ 
 
 That the inefficiency of the plant was one of the main 
 causes that drove the enterprise on the shoals is corrobo- 
 rated by the remarks of Mr. James Alexander. In mov- 
 ing the adoption of the recommendation to sell the tele- 
 phone undertaking, he said: — 
 
 Another objection to the Corporation continuing to work the tele- 
 phone serN-ice was that it would be necessary to apply to the Secretary 
 of Scotland for power to borrow at least £100,000 in order to make 
 necessary alterations on the switchboard and to carry on the system 
 and meet the capital expenditure necessary in view of the increased 
 number of subscribers. ... At present the Postmaster-General would 
 acquire all the plant of the undertaking, but if the Corporation con- 
 tinued till 1913 the latter would buy only such plant as was suitable 
 
 > London Electrician, July 8, 1904. « Ibid., July 6, 1906. 
 
 ' Ibid., July 13, 1906. 
 
6 
 
 for actual requirements at that time of the Post-office. They must 
 therefore keep in view the fact that if they did not now sell to the Post- 
 office, the Postmaster-General in 1911, when he acquired the entire 
 National Company's undertaking, . . , might say to the Corporation 
 that the greater portion of their plant was not suitable for the actual 
 requirements of the Post-office at that date, and that therefore he 
 was not going to acquire it." i 
 
 (2) Errors in estimates and plans. As has been stated 
 heretofore, the municipal expert had figured at first the 
 cost per subscriber or subscriber's line at £18.16. This 
 appears from the evidence given by Mr. Bennett, in June, 
 1898, before the Select Committee on Telephones. ^ In 
 spite of the firm persuasion of the municipal expert, the 
 actual cost per subscriber's line after two years' operation 
 of the exchange had risen to £35,^ exceeding the original 
 estimate by nearly 100 per cent. And at that time the 
 Telephone Committee was already seriously considering the 
 reconstruction of the obsolete system! 
 
 On May 31, 1905, the London Electrician pubhshed a 
 complete analysis of the Accounts of the Glasgow Corpora- 
 tion Telephone department from 1901 to May 31, 1904, 
 showing that the capital account stood at £350,273, and 
 remarked that ''the capital expenditure has, therefore, 
 risen to £36.13 per subscriber, as against £35.8 on May 
 31, 1904. This increase is intrinsically small, but if the 
 matter is looked into close it is more significant." 
 ^ (3) Errors in rates. The biggest feather in the munici- 
 pal telephone cap has always been the offer of a low flat 
 annual subscription. Indeed, without this it is very 
 doubtful whether even the Scottish rate-payers would 
 have taken kindly to the novel experiment. No one person 
 has more persistently advocated low flat rates and asserted 
 that these are remunerative to municipal exchange work 
 
 1 London Electrician, July 13, 1906. 
 
 r * See the Minutes of Evidence taken before the Select Committee on Telephones, 
 June[l4, 1898. 
 
 3 London Electrician, March 11, 1904. 
 
than Mr. Bennett, and it is due to his advice that Glasgow 
 adopted the £5.5 flat rate for unlimited use. 
 
 Referring to the first annual report of the Glasgow 
 Telephone Committee (September 11, 1903), Mr. Russell 
 seriously warned his fellow-members: — 
 
 Last year's working expenses reached £21.000, making a total ex- 
 penditure of £47,000 i^er annum. Now last year's revenue was 
 £35,000, and assuming that they could increase this year's revenue 
 by £5,000 without any increase in the working expenses, they would 
 only bring this year's revenue up to £40,000, leaving a deficiency of 
 £7,000 per annum. Mr. Bennett in Hull, which was a much less 
 expensive place to telephone than Glasgow, recommended the Cor- 
 poration to make some such annual charge as £5.15 or £5.17, but the 
 Corporation of Hull were going to charge £6.6. It must be evident 
 that it was quite impossible to continue supplying the telephone at the 
 present rental, except at a serious loss to the rate-payers. He advised 
 an advance to £6.6 or £8.8 per annum instead of £5.5 at present.^ 
 
 Again, at the March meeting of the Glasgow Telephone 
 Committee (1904) the subject was forced by Mr. Russell 
 upon the unwilling ears of his fellow-members, the speaker 
 affirming that "the accounts had been kept in a way that 
 even the auditors, for their own credit, had to protest 
 against it."^ A few months later (February, 1905) the 
 palpable inefficiency of the plant made a new loan for 
 reconstruction imperative, and here Mr. Bruce Murray 
 came to the front, exposing the situation:^ — 
 
 The whole method adopted by the committee from the day they 
 began had been one of secrecy from both the Corporation and the 
 pubHc. . . . They expected to distract attention from the gross inac- 
 curacies of their preliminary estimates and from the fact that the 
 £5 rate ivas not paying. 
 
 The same urgent demand that the Telephone Committee 
 *' should immediately give notice of an increased rate" 
 to avoid a serious loss on the undertaking was reiterated 
 
 1 London Electrician, September 11, 1903. - Ibid., March 11, 1904. 
 
 5 Ibid., February 3, 1905. 
 
by Mr. Russell at the meeting of the Glasgow Corporation 
 (September, 1905), and, as usual, went unheeded. 
 
 Finally, in July, 1906, came the denouement. The 
 London Electrician (July 13, 1906) editorially commented 
 on the sale of the exchange as follows: — 
 
 From the reports that have now come in, it appears that the Corpora- 
 tion has been in a difficult position. . . . From the negotiations that 
 hiave taken place it appears that the Glasgow Corporation have a deep- 
 rooted objection to anything in the shape of a private monopoly. . . . 
 It is a question, however, whether the objection is worth paying 
 for; at least heavily. The purchase price to be given by the Post- 
 office for the telephone system is £305,000, involving the Corporation 
 in a loss of about £15,000, whereas the National Telephone Company 
 seems to have made an offer to buy the system at such a price that 
 no loss would fall on the Corporation. But the idea of the municipal 
 telephones forming part of a private monopoly was not to be tol- 
 erated, . . . and the Corporation are to sell at a loss.i 
 
 There is but one other fact worth mentioning, that the 
 Postmaster-General refused point blank to bind himself 
 to continue in future the low flat rate, the great drawing 
 card of the Municipal Telephone Committee, the corner- 
 stone of the enterprise.* 
 
 (4) Errors in providing none or insufficient amounts 
 for depreciation and sinking funds. That a body of 
 Town Councillors, entirely unacquainted with the intri- 
 cacies of managing a telephone exchange service, should 
 have erred in neglecting to provide a proper depreciation 
 is not astonishing, though the expert adviser would have 
 done well to instruct the Telephone Committee. On the 
 other hand, it was Mr. Bennett who decided on the period 
 for which the sinking fund should be calculated. At the 
 Glasgow Telephone Inquiry (October 5, 1897) he was asked 
 by Mr. Salvesen, the attorney for the Corporation: — 
 
 "What was the sinking fund which you had in view to cover?" 
 Answer. — "It was intended to cover the capital expenditure at the 
 end of twenty-one years." 
 
 Q. by Mr. S. — "But the license had only fourteen years to run?" 
 
 ' London Electrician, September 14, 1906, p. 869. 
 
9 
 
 Answer. — "But it is not regarded as probable that at the expiry 
 of the license the Corporation's plant would become valueless. It is 
 not at all certain that the Post-office would refuse to take over the 
 Corporation's plant at a reasonable charge." 
 
 As a matter of fact, the license, as has already been men- 
 tioned; at the request of the Corporation, had been made 
 terminable December 13, 1913. In spite of this the Tele- 
 phone Committee wrote down the enterprise on the basis 
 of a thirty years' sinking fund.^ The necessity of a proper 
 depreciation and sinking fund was clearly pointed out by 
 Bailie Burrell, at the discussion of the first Annual Report 
 of the Telephone Committee (September, 1903).^ He called 
 attention to that clause in their license which contained 
 the conditions of purchase by the Post-office of the plant 
 of the licensee December, 1913. The Postmaster-General 
 bound himself to buy only such plant as would be suitable 
 for the actual requirements at the expiration of the license. 
 The speaker then asked the pertinent question: — 
 
 Were the Government, for instance, likely to take over the switch- 
 boards, which, as the engineer informed them, had a Hfe of but 10 
 years? The corporation had exactly 10 years of their Ucense to run. 
 The hfe of the instruments might also be well placed at 10 years 
 But the cost of their present switchboard and instruments was £80.000, 
 and for this they could not reasonably expect to get anything from 
 the Government. Figuring in other similar items, the total amounted 
 to £101,000 for which not a single farthing might be received at the 
 sale of the plant. Deducting this from the Capital Value £271,000 
 left £170,000, and how much of that sum might the Government 
 find suitable in 1913? By that time the plant would be 10 years 
 old. Taking the average at 11 years, and applying a depreciation 
 but 3% over 11 years, this meant a reduction of 33%, and deducting 
 one-third as depreciation (57,000) left £113,000, and this amount 
 they might expect to receive from the Government in 1913. Con- 
 sequently, they should write off between 1903 and 1913 in some way 
 the difference between the cost of the undertaking £271,000 and the 
 amount they were likely to receive. In other words, they should 
 write off £158,000 or £15,800 on an average for 10 years. The accounts 
 for the year showed that they had but £9,800. How then could they 
 do that out of the profits of the undertaking? Surely the time had 
 
 ^ London Electrician, March 11, 1904. ^ Ibid., September 11. 1903; 
 
10 
 
 come when either a depreciation fund ought to be started or a much 
 more adequate amount be placed to reserve. 
 
 Such sane counsel fell upon deaf ears, the chairman 
 of the Telephone Committee replying ''that all they were 
 called upon to do was to write down, by sinking fund, by 
 depreciation, or by reserve, a sum sufficient to meet such 
 depreciation as would exist in the opinion of the representa- 
 tives of the Government when the time for selhng came." 
 
 From the above it is evident that up to September, 1903, 
 the Telephone Committee had not seen fit to charge the 
 accounts of the enterprise with one cent of depreciation. 
 The London Electrician (October 23, 1903, p. 3) editorially 
 referred to this grave error, both in the case of the Hull and 
 the Glasgow municipal exchanges: — 
 
 The Hull Corporation should write off heavy sums for depreciation, 
 sufficient to pay off the greater part of its capital by 1911. But if it 
 does this it will be difficult, each j^ear, to make both ends meet, and 
 the undertaking will become a burden on the rate-payers, . . . This 
 difficulty has been evaded for the present in Glasgow, for instance, by 
 writing off nothing for depreciation (in fact there the capital account 
 was even swelled by including in it the cost of canvassing), but evi- 
 dently this is merely deferring the day when the rates will be called 
 upon to pay the cost of an unsuccessful experiment. 
 
 When the Glasgow Telephone Committee issued the Third 
 Annual Report of the undertaking for the year ended 
 May 31, 1904, the auditors felt compelled to state in their 
 certification as to the correctness of the accounts, ''The 
 foregoing Capital and Revenue Accounts and Balance 
 Sheets are correct, subject to the question of the sufficiency 
 of the provision for depreciation." * 
 
 After the issuance of the Annual Report of the Glasgow 
 Telephone Committee for the year ended May 31, 1905,, 
 the last report prior to the sale of the municipal exchange, 
 the London Electrician published a complete analysis 
 of the accounts of the Glasgow Corporation Telephone 
 
 ' The Corporation of Glasgow — Telephone Department — Capital Account 
 »nd Balance Sheet, 31 May, 1904, p. 10. 
 
Department. From this only a few lines need to be quoted: 
 ''Out of the balance of £20,746, £19,242 has to be paid 
 as Interest and Sinking Fund, leaving a net balance of 
 £1,504, which is all that is set aside as depreciation. This 
 is less than ^% of the Capital Expenditure." ^ 
 
 As has already been stated, the inevitable result due to 
 the failure of setting aside a sufficient annual depreciation 
 and sinking fund was a dead loss to the tax-paying com- 
 munity of £55,000. 
 
 The Glasgow Telephone Committee up to the last moment 
 refused to learn from the experience of expert telephone 
 engineers. In the words of their chairman, they "re- 
 gretted that the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Post- 
 master-General had not seen their way to give the Corpora- 
 tion back every penny of their money, but if the Corpora- 
 tion continued till 1913 the Postmaster-General would buy 
 only such plant as was suitable for actual requirements, . . . 
 and then in 1913 (he) might say that the greater portion 
 of their plant was not suitable for the actual requirements, 
 of the Post-office, at that date." ^ 
 
 It may now be left to the judgment of the reader whether 
 the general abandonment of the municipal telephone under- 
 takings in Great Britain can or cannot be adequately ex- 
 plained by any technical or financial weakness for which 
 their managers were responsible, and whether or not it is 
 necessary to seek an explanation elsewhere. No doubt 
 the shifting pohcy of the EngUsh government contributed 
 to hasten the ultimate result, but every careful student 
 of the origin and management of the municipal exchanges 
 in Great Britain will be driven to the conclusion that, 
 sooner or later, these enterprises were doomed to ruin on 
 account of the technical and financial weakness with which 
 they were launched. 
 
 Victor M. Berthold. 
 Needham, Mass. 
 
 ' London Electrician, September 15, 1905, p. 867. 
 2 Ibid., .July 13, 1906. p. 515. 
 
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