The Fight to Break the Phone Monopoly

The Sunset Telephone company, which now enjoys a monopoly of the telephone business in Tacoma, is making a great effort to prevent the granting of a franchise to an independent telephone company. Literature, several years old, showing the alleged failure of independent telephone companies is being circulated broadcast. Some of the figures quoted may have been correct when the circulars were first issued, but at the present time they are very much out of date. A well known business man sizes up the situation like this: 'Tacoma has been sort of a one-corporation town long enough. Here is a chance to get in a competing telephone company, and we ought to do it. The talk about an independent telephone company increasing the expense to business men is rot. The experience of other cities shows that where a second telephone company comes in, competition soon puts the rate where two telephones cost no more than one. If an independent telephone company is permitted to come in here, a large percentage of the many thousands of dollars that will be expended in installing the system will be spent for labor and material in this city.' The Sunset company is violating the provisions of its franchise in several parts of the city by not painting its poles and keeping them sightly. In South Tacoma, especially, public sentiment is strongly in favor of the independent company.