1911 - Letter from the fiscal officer of a new long-distance telephone company reporting on his attendance at a recent Chicago convention where he proposed to establish a long-distance service between Chicago and Detroit

St. Louis, Missouri, 1911. Envelope or Cover. Very good. This two-page letter from Samuel Quinn, the fiscal officer of the International Gradolph Electric Company, a newly formed long distance telephone company headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri is datelined "February Fourteenth / Nineteen Eleven." It is contained in an illustrated advertising cover postmarked two days later.

It was sent to Horace King of Robinson, Illinois, perhaps a potential investor. It is typed on impressive letterhead illustrated with a globe showing world-wide telephone connections over a slogan that reads, "Long Distance Transmission of Speech & Power."
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Although telephone service between the 1880s and 1911 had been dominated by the American Bell Telephone Company and its successor American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), scores of small independent telephone companies operated throughout the country. In January, 1911 they met together at a convention of the National Independent Telephone Association, "the most important and best attended meeting of independent phone men ever held." While the purpose of the convention was to crystalize resistance to mergers with the "American (Bell) Telephone & Telegraph Company and J. P. Morgan & Company," attendees also promoted their ongoing and proposed projects. Quinn and his boss, William F. Gradolph, attended and believed they were quite successful as many attendees

"Expressed very enthusiastic appreciation of our determination to construct a line through Lake Michigan, and commence operations between Chicago and Detroit, and intervening towns. This [he noted] we are now planning to do." He also reported that "Mr. Harold B. Stroud . . . will undertake to do the work for us [and] has given me some very interesting figures on the immediate financial returns. . .. The construction will cost less than $1,000,000 [while] income for the first year will exceed $2,000,000. . .." . This grandiose plan never reached fruition as there is no online mention of the company activities once World War One began.

(For more information, see "William F. Gradolph" in Stevens's St. Louis: History of the Fourth City 1763-1909.). (Inventory #: 010347)