Against Telephone - 1913

People of Culver Bive their Prostests Against the Bell Company's Shortcomings.

The proposed raise of 25cents a mont on the party lines of the Central Union to take effect April 1 prompted a call for a meeting of the Commercial club on Thursday night.

Notwithstanding a thunder storm early in the evening at least 40 citizens and farmers gathered at the town hall.

Nearly everybify was full of the subject and the discussion took the form of an indignation meeting in which the shortcomings of the company's service were ventilated in outspoken terms.

Aside form the protest against the raise, which the speakers pronounsed to be unjustifiablem and which was stated, would be resented by a wholesale ordering out of phones on the country lines, the grievances were voised as follows:

The company has fooled us. At a public meetin in 1906, with the telephone's company's representatives present, when an independent company was seeking a franchise and there was a strong disposition to drop the Bell peope and let the independent come to Culver, the Bell officials promised to extend their lines in any direction to cover the territory within a radius of 5 miles of Culver wherever two farmers to the mile could be secured. This agreement had been carried out only in part; we are still without connection in a good deal of territory not more than 3 miles away.

Repairs are not promptly made. In our neighbor the wire was prectically on the ground for six months. The company lept promising to fix it, and finally som eof us went out and fastened it in to a fence and there it hangs now.

A Culver business man said: My phone has been out of order for more than a week. I can't get Central. They keep promising to fix it but don't do it.

I went out and spliced my own wire that had broken down after the last sleet.

The company doesn't care for local buisinees; all it wants is the toll traffic and it intends to keep up its local system just enough to hold the toll business.

Parties hald a mile north of Burr Oak want phones and can't get the. One or two parties had to agree to pay $1.50 a monthbefore the company would run a line 40 to 60 rods.

One main in Culver has been begging the company to give him a phone so long that he says he was guit and will never ask again.

We are losing trade that belongs to Culver because the farmers can't get phones

The business men of Culver have bee sitting around like bumps on a log, doing nothing in this matter, trusting to the promises of the compant to treat us right, until now, even if the company was disposed to give us what we want it can't do it because the independents have come in and occupied the territory and if we want to reach our customers we have got to get hooked up with the independent phones.

Whether there is good cause for it or not the farmers are prejudiced against the Bell company and many of them won't have a Bell telephone under any conditions, while others will throw out the Bell as soon as an independent company gets into Culver

We don't complain of the switchboard service in Culver; the o[erators are all right and we admit that we can hear better over the Bell line than we can over the indepentdent.

The Winona company gives free service to any of the exchanges in the county.

Every farmer I have talked to says he will order out his phone if the company raises the rate.

The foregoing expression indicate the complains and protests of the people, both in town and county, against the service.

It was the feeling of the meeting that some steps must be taken at once to temedy the conditions

It nnounced that one company had stated that as soon as the Culver people decided they wanted to do business with an independent compant it would be glad to run its lines in here and open an exchange.

The secretary of the Commerical club was instructed to notify the town board that any action the board might take toward granting a franchise to an independent company would be heartily endorded by the club.

It was moved and carried that a committeeof five - one from Culver and one from each of the four points of the compass in the vivinity of Culver - be appointed to get into communication with independant companies with a view to securing connections throughout the surrounding territory, and that the committe report to a meeting to be called for the purpose of receiving the report.

The following committe was appointed" Dr. Parker, Chairman; B. D. Brouse; Simon Hatten; W. P. Castleman and J. W. Currens. - - March 20, 1913