Call the Doctor!

Like many another country doctor, Dr. Leander C. Bryan of Rutledge, Tenn. (pop. 518) had fumed & fussed for years over poor telephone service. Things came to a head in 1936 when the dilapidated telephone system was threatened with a complete shutdown. Nobody else wanted to buy the decrepit concern, with only 36 subscribers, so Dr. Bryan took it over himself for $600 in order to keep in touch with his widely scattered patients.

Many of the company's poles had rotted and fallen; much of its wire had corroded and snapped. Dr. Bryan hired a young lineman to put in new poles and wire, spotting the bad breaks in the system himself as he drove around the countryside on his calls. He bought a secondhand switchboard for $100, installed it in a room beside his office, and got his secretary to operate it. Since then he has installed up-to-date dial phones for his 330 subscribers in mountainous, sparsely settled Grainger County, can tie them in with the Bell system for long-distance calls.

For years Dr. Bryan paid for all the improvements by plowing profits back into the business. But last week, faced with rising costs, he was forced to petition the Tennessee Public Utilities Commission for a raise in rates. The country folk, grateful to Dr. Bryan for operating so successfully on their dying communications system, would have little cause for complaint. He was asking permission to charge one-party business subscribers only $4.50 a month (up from $3), and party-line residential subscribers only $1.75 (instead of $1.50), with a distance surcharge for maintaining those miles of poles running to Bean Station and Joppa.

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