Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 71.djvu/154

148 holdings; 1,145 shares were used to take up the convertible notes issued; 1,500 shares were sold by the trustees in open market-for $332,935.75, and 1,050 shares were held by the trustees to use in liquidating future claims.

The new company occupied offices at 95 Milk Street, Boston, and at the first meeting the following officers and directors were elected:

The successful launching of the American Bell Telephone Company, notwithstanding that the three earlier companies had never paid a dividend, was a splendid tribute to the intelligent persistence displayed by the pioneer advocates in promoting so serviceable a public utility, as well as to their executive and financial ability. And the magnitude of the task of merging all these interests into one comprehensive organization may be more clearly realized in the brief statement that in its consummation there were involved about five million dollars in cash, and a million in property and patents. In 1880, six millions was a sum relatively many times greater to financiers, when million-dollar corporations were more scarce, than at the present time, when a hundred millions may be a fair and a necessary capitalization.

In his annual report for the first fiscal year, ending February 28, 1881, President Forbes of the parent company said:

After two years passed in a struggle for existence, and a third largely devoted to the settlement of disputes inherited from that contest, the owners of the telephone patents, at the beginning of their fourth year, for the first time find themselves free from all serious complications, with nothing to prevent the company from directing its whole working force to the development of the business, and with a well-defined policy for its future operations, which seems to be working well in all parts of the country. . ..

A large amount of work has been done in the electrical and experimental department, both in examining new inventions and testing telephones and apparatus, and in studying the question of overhead and underground cables, and the improvement of telephones and lines, for both short and long-distance service. This work is expensive, but it is of the first importance to our company, and must be continued.

Much of the electrical and legal work of these first years of the company, and, indeed, some of our expenses incurred in studying and classifying the business, are substantially for the establishment of the property, and might be charged to construction and capitalized, but the directors have preferred the more conservative policy of charging everything to operating which could reasonably be put there, although the result upon the books appears less favorable, in consequence, than the business prospects might warrant us in exhibiting.