Telephone

Industries never tire of reciting their greatness. Occasionally the recital is an astonishing reminder of the size and complexity of social and industrial organization. Last week, for example, the American Telephone & Telegraph Co. issued a booklet of statistics on its busi- ness--just figures--but large ones: P: 20.5 billion telephone conversations a year in the U. S. P: 24.5 million telephones in use. P: 67.8 million miles of telephone wire strung from pole to pole. P: 63% of the world's telephones in the U. S.

P:Per capita conversations number 182 a year in the U. S. (Denmark, Nor- way, Sweden--124, 109, 95--follow next in order. Russia averages 4 conversations per capita annually.) P: The city with the most telephones per capita is San Francisco with 28.8 per 100 population. Other cities in order are: Omaha (28.3 per 100), Minneapolis (24.8), Stockholm (24.6), Washington (24.1), Chicago (23.8), Denver (22.7), Los Angeles (22), Toronto (21). P: Cities with less than five telephones per 100 population include : Amsterdam, Osaka, Buenos Aires, Brussels, Antwerp, Glasgow, Liverpool, Prague, Manchester, Marseilles, Birmingham, Tokyo, Milan, Shanghai, Naples. P: The world's prize nonuser of telephones is Ecuador. She has only 392 and only 125 miles of telephone wire.