A quiet revolution is taking place in Western country life, which promises to accomplish results within a year more important and far-reaching than any since the advent of the transcontinental railroads. Already the pioneer life of the isolated farm has disappeared and the tide of industrial and educational advance has swept over the Northwest. The national telephone system, which until recently extended its arms only to the large cities, has within a few months entered the houses of thousands of Western farmers and bound together city and country, producer and consumer, in bonds of actual contact and constant communication.

     To the economist the results of this extension through the rich farm lands of the Northwest are of most profound interest, and must be the basis of an entire revision of theories of the relations between producer and consumer. The immobility of the country is destroyed at a blow, and the farmer is raised from a passive agency to an aggressive economic force.

     To the sociologist the results are no less important, as the telephone does away with the seclusion of rural life, binds together scattered communities, creates social interests, and destroys the barrier between city and country. Henceforth the country is but a vast suburb, in touch with the metropolis of its neighborhood, unified by the voice of one leader.

     It is only within the past year that the farmer has opened his eyes to the possibilities of the telephone, but since he has recognized them there has been such a demand upon the telephone companies that it has been impossible to fill the orders, and local geniuses have built lines out of fence wire and china knobs. No farmer is considered up to date without his telephone. In the early morning the rattle of the bell arouses him to the day’s work, and he hastens to care for his cattle. After breakfast he calls the post office several miles away, and inquires for his mail. There he is sure to hear the news of the town and to have a talk with some of the gossips of the place.

     On the great ranches of the Southwest a use of the telephone more startling and really novel has been made. There, in the past few years, the vast free range of the early days has been checkered by the dreaded wire fence. Across the old trails of ante-railroad days, around the green-edged springs where wild herds used to water, and about the choicest pastures of the range, the wire fence — the enemy of cowboy and hunter, of wild beast and roving cattle — has drawn its magic circle. The ranchman of today has made this dreaded wire do him a noble service. He has made of it a line of communication across the barren hills from cattle round-up or sheep-dip to the ranch-house. He is a strange mingling of the old West and the new West, this rancher with the telephone.

     All the forces of rural society are organized and controlled by the little wire which bobs over the hills and down the shady lanes. Through the telephone it seems inevitable that the farmer will assume a new economic position. Keeping in touch with the market, he is able to dispose of produce directly to the city dealer or to the consumer with out the assistance of any middleman. Fluctuations in the market will be felt immediately by the producer, and he will be able to prevent any advantage being taken of him. He may talk to his town buyer and to his city broker the same hour and sell his produce at the top of the market.

     This was recently shown in the broom-corn district of Illinois in a most graphic way. This district, which lies in the southern part of the State, was visited by buyers who offered sixty dollars per ton for broom-corn. This was the ruling price at the end of the pervious season, and was generally accepted. The buyers had almost covered the district, buying the entire output, when an official of the telephone company, quick to see the possibilities of the corner, caused the farmers who had telephones to be notified that the price had risen and that they had better consult the market. These more enterprising farmers consulted the magnates of Troy, Ohio, the center of the broom-corn market, and, as a result, sold their crop for four times the price paid to their neighbors, two hundred and forty dollars a ton. This lesson of progress has sunk deep into the broom-corn district, and, needless to say, every farmer in the county has been convinced of the practical value of the telephone.

Transcribed by Kelly McCormick.