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912 JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS [Mar. 18,
principal cities in the United States, and a comparison
ought to be made with these cities in fairly deter
mining; the course that ought to be pursued in arriv-
ing at a conclusion upon this subject.
Your Committee has been informed that there is
dissatisfaction with these rates in the city of New
York and in other cities, but the fact remains that the
Legislatures of the different States in which higher
rates are charged, have refused to reduce such
rates, and that they continue to be charged; the
fact, however, that higher rates for telephone service
are charged in other cities than are charged in
Baltimore, did not release your committee from the
obligation to consider whether telephone charges in
Maryland were excessive and disproportionate, and
ought to be reduced and regulated by law.
Your committee find that there are in fact only two
telephone companies in Maryland, and that these two
practically operate in our territory as one company:
these two companies referred to are the Chesapeake
and Potomac Telephone Company and the Chesapeake
and Potomac Telephone Company of Baltimore city;
these companies have the same president and auditor;
a statement of their joint receipts and expenses sworn
to by the president and auditor has been filed with
your committee, and is appended herewith as a part
of this report.
These telephone companies, by reason of disagree-
ments between them and some of their patrons, have
lost many subscribers.
If we take the number at three hundred subscribers
thus lost, each paying the present charge of one hun-
dred dollars ($100) a loss of gross receipts for the year
1892, amounting to ($30,000) thirty thousand dollars
is at once shown. It is contended that this loss is
diminished to some extent by the corresponding de-
creases in expenses. It seems to us that when an ex-
tensive plant has to be kept up and the business man-
aged, the expense in caring for nineteen hundred
subscribers will be little less than it would have been
if there had remained the twenty-two hundred sub-
scribers, the number stated to have been connected
with the telephone exchange in 1891.
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