The International Bell Company have Western Electric multiples at St. Petersburg (1,400 lines), Moscow (1,400 lines), and Warsaw (800 lines), with Gilliland boards at Lodz, Odessa, and Riga.

The principal Government exchanges are at Charkoff, Gatschina,

FIG. 110

Kazan, Libau, Nicholaieff, Nijni-Novgorod, Novorosisk, Novotcherkask, Pavlovsk, Selo, Taganrog, and Zarsko.

Through the kindness of Mr. C. Siegel the author is enabled to give some idea of the designs of Russian wire supports. Figs. 109 and 109A represent, in elevation and plan, the central station

standard at Rostoff-on-Don. Figs. 110 and 110A show a strongly constructed double standard, and figs. 111 and 112 respectively a single standard and a wall-bracket.

FIG. 112

STATISTICS

No returns later than 1892 are available. The following

XXI. SERVIA

THE State has reserved to itself the power to establish and work telephone exchanges, but, so far, none has been opened. Still a law regulating tariffs and general conditions has been prepared, and as soon as it has received the sanction of the legislature a commencement will be made with a central station at Belgrade. But the State, for official purposes, has erected metallic circuits of 3 mm. bronze between Belgrade and Nisch (250 kilometers), which line is in course of extension to Sibervcz, a further distance of 125 kilometers. These lines and a few others, which bring the total existing length up to 322 kilometers, will be available as trunks when the exchange system comes into operation. Most of the work has been carried out for the State by Mr. J. Berliner, of Hanover, through his agent in Vienna, Mr. Hax Hahn; and the instruments used are the Berliner transmitter with double-pole Bell receivers and magnetos. There are also twenty-four kilometers of private lines in Servia. Such lines require a licence from the Minister of Commerce, and have to pay an annual tax of 17. 125. for every three kilometers, or less, of wire erected, and of 27. 8s. if the length exceeds three and is not more than eight kilometers.

323

XXII. SPAIN

HISTORY AND PRESENT POSITION

A ROYAL decree, dated August 11, 1884, made telephonic exchange communication a Government monopoly ; but the experience gained during the next two years was so little to the taste of the officials that in June 1886 another decree entirely reversed the first one and provided that the exploitation of telephones in Spain should henceforth be left to private enterprise. In explanation of this change of front the decree said, 'So long as the telephonic service is administered by the State it can never develop and attain the proportions demanded by the necessities of modern life. Private enterprise, on the other hand, while adapting itself to public requirements, will find in this novel means of communication a vast field for activity in which apt initiative will be repaid by satisfactory development.'

While it is undoubtedly rather amusing to find the Spanish Government naïvely confessing itself so much behind the age as to be impotent to deal with the exigencies of modern life, there was certainly a strain of good sense in its argument. Government departments are generally very inelastic affairs, averse to innovation and desirous of running on in the grooves to which they have been accustomed. Such exceptions as may be cited are explainable by the unquestionable fact that good and energetic men-wishful to earn laurels for themselves and their country, and of force of character sufficient to overcome the inertia which pertains to Governments-must now and then come to the surface, even in a Government department and in defiance of its humdrum traditions and training. But such a good man, after having animated the