This advertisement is from 1915. The text of the ad is reprinted below:

Neighborizing the Farmer

One of the most significant facts of our telephone progress is that one-fourth of the 9,000,000 telephones in the Bell System are rural.

In the days when the telephone was merely a “city convenience,” the farms of the country were so many separated units, far removed from the centers of population, and isolated by distance and lack of facilities for communication.

But, as the telephone reached out beyond cities and towns, it completely transformed farm life. It created new rural neighborhoods here, there and everywhere.

Stretching to the farthest corners of the states, it brought the remotest villages and isolated places into direct contact with the larger communities.

Today, the American farmer enjoys the same facilities for instant, direct communication as the city dweller. Though distances between farms are reckoned in miles as the crow flies, the telephone brings every one as close as next door. Though it be half a day’s journey to the village, the farmer is but a telephone call away.

Aside from its neighborhood value, the telephone keeps the farmer in touch with the city and abreast of the times.

The Bell System has always recognized rural telephone development as an essential factor of Universal Service. It has co-operated with the farmer to achieve this aim.

The result is that the Bell System reaches more places than there are post offices and includes as many rural telephones as there are telephones of all kinds in Great Britain, France and Germany combined.

American Telephone and Telegraph Company
And Associated Companies
One Policy         One System         Universal Service

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