Interdependence of Capital, Labor, and Consumer

Individual necessities, comforts, and conveniences as now enjoyed are the product of accumulated capital and labor, represented in modern organization, transportation, great factories, distant farms, tropical plantations, the trappers of the frozen northlands, tho fishermen of the seas, and delivered daily to our homes by an army of tradesmen who administer, to our wants and are in turn dependent upon us for their livelihood. The telephone. - No better illustration of interdependence can be found than in the story of that all-necessary convenience, the telephone) It is difficult to imagine the diversified labor, the problems of transportation, the world-wide accumulation of materials, and the tremendous outlay of capital required in the manufacture of this marvelous instrument which receives and transmits the human voice regardless of distance. Men toiling in the mica mines of India, in the platinum fields of the Ural Mountains, in the forests and jungles of far-off Asia, Africa, and South America, in the great forests of the Northwest, in the iron, copper, and lead mines, and the great steel works of the United States, produce the materials that go into the making of your telephone and the exchange controls. The following raw materials, gathered literally from the four corners of the world, are used: Platinum, gold, silver, copper, zinc, iron, steel, tin, lead, aluminum, nickel, brass, rubber, mica, silk, cotton, asphalt, shellac, paper, carbon . With the assembling of raw materials, and their fabrication in great factories into the completed instrument, there is added the work of organization and administration required in obtaining capital, franchises, building lines and conduits, installation of switchboards, and training personnel. Your telephone call to all points of the compass is made possible by these materials and the labor of nearly1400,000 employees in the United States alone.