“Many a farmer’s wife would gladly pay 25 cents a month merely for the luxury of hearing a neighbor’s voice at will.”

The invention of the telephone promised to make the world smaller, but service for rural Americans wasn’t easy to come by initially. An article from the August 1, 1901 Brooklyn Daily Eagle about the efforts of farmers to enjoy this modern miracle:

“The loneliness of farm life, which has been considerably reduced by rural mail delivery, has been still further lessened in a number of Western communities by the introduction of the telephone.

The chief obstacle to the wider use of this great modern convenience has been the high rates charged by the regular companies. Several plans to obviate this difficulty have been tried. The simplest is the actual building of a line and the installation of a small circuit by those who wish to use it.

Groups of Western farmers have themselves cut and set the poles and strung the wires for their own line, and after buying receivers, insulators, batteries and other material, have divided the cost and shared the expense of the maintenance.

Lately another plan has been tried with excellent results in a number of Wisconsin towns. A stock company is formed of those who desire to use the service. The shares sell for a uniform price of $50, the average cost for installing each telephone in a good exchange; but no stock is sold to any one except those who rent a ‘phone,’ and only one share is allocated for each receiver in use.

The charges are so regulated that the stockholders receive a dividend of 1 per cent a month. This is applied to the reduction of the regular rental. In one of the Wisconsin towns, for instance, the rent for a phone in a business office is $2.25 a month, and in the residence $1 a month. The dividends averages 75 cents a month, so that the actual cost to the ‘consumer’ is only $1.50 for a phone in an office and 25 cents for one in the home. This is less than half the usual cost.

Many a farmer’s wife, tied to her work and cut off from social opportunities, would gladly pay 25 cents a month merely for the luxury of hearing a neighbor’s voice at will; and the farmer himself, if he is alert, finds constant advantage in closer connection with his markets.”