Great Dream

From Lawrenceville, N. J. to Buenos Aires is 5,300 miles. Not many people in Lawrenceville have frequent occasion to telephone to Buenos Aires, though Thornton Niven Wilder, who teaches school there, might have liked to telephone Peru while writing The Bridge of San Luis Key. Nevertheless, the telephone operators of Lawrenceville may expect many a call for Buenos Aires to go through before long. Arrangements were made last week for International Telephone & Telegraph Co. to hook its telephone-subscribers to its short wave radio station at Buenos Aires and for American Telephone & Telegraph Co. to hook U. S. telephone-users to its short wave stations at Lawrenceville.

When the first call goes through, the event will mark not only a noteworthy technical achievement. It will be even more likely to nourish financial hopes among holders of telephone company stocks. All summer long A. T. & T. stock, usually conservative in its behavior, has been booming along in the stock market at prices up to 292, which is 23 times earnings. The hopefulness of the speculators has not been based on expected revenue from telephone conversations with Buenos Aires. The point is that A. T. & T. is in a position to take the lead in any major telephone merger that may develop, and every time A. T. & T. and I. T. & T. do something together a great dream is revived.

The event that started the dream was a great communications merger in England, the formation of Cables & Wireless Ltd., the stock of which was traded in for the first time last month. Into that merger the British poured four great cable systems (including one government-owned), the government beam wireless system and the great British Marconi Co. The merger has a huge liquid capital. It owns cable and wireless systems which girdle the globe.

The only U. S. company which rivals this British monster of communications is I. T. & T. This company started out to become another A. T. & T., but in foreign parts. It brought together telephone systems in Cuba, Porto Rico, Spain, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil. Then able Colonel Sosthenes Behn went a step further. He added to I. T. & T. first the All American Cables, then the Mackay System (Postal Telegraph, Commercial Cables, Mackay Radio). Now he does business by telephone, cable and radio in most parts of the world. He has arranged to acquire, if and when Congress permits, the radio telegraph service of Radio Corp.

The two great U. S. communications companies besides I. T. & T. are Western Union and A. T. & T. The great dream of business matchmakers and romantics begins with the nuptials of the two great T. & T.'s. In their imagination the romantics can already see the ceremony with two handsome groomsmen. Sosthenes Behn, tall, dark, native of the Virgin Islands, and Walter Sherman Gifford, slender, reserved, native of Salem, Mass. It is Mr. Gifford, although only 44, three years Col. Behn's junior, whom they see as godfather and president of the monster offspring, if and when born.