The Connecting Link Telephone Company

by Bob Brail

     To state that technology is rapidly changing the world around us would be an obvious understatement. Every day, it seems, new advances in technology become available to us. Consider, for instance, the telephone. Nowadays telephones not only provide audio communication via conventional phone lines, but can also provide visual communication, record movies, take photographs, give directions, and provide limitless information through internet access, all via satellite connections. Of course, there was a time when a person would have considered a simple telephone on a party line as a marvelous innovation. Such were the folks, living in and near Hamburg, Missouri, who were members of the Connecting Link Telephone Company in the 1920's and 30's.

     Independent telephone companies began to form in the last few years of the nineteenth century. Typically these small, rather informal organizations were formed by farmers who lived too far away from urban areas to have phone service from large companies like Bell Telephone. These telephone cooperatives, or mutuals, became more and more common in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Small groups of farmers and other rural residents would combine their sources and purchase a switchboard, poles, line, and telephones. Brass insulators would be screwed to wooden brackets, poles installed, wires strung, and the company would be in business. The most common rural telephone was called the magneto set. This very large phone hung on the wall. There were usually several mutual members hooked to the same circuit. In order to make a call, a person turned a generator crank, which resulted in the switchboard operator plugging into the line and asking what person the caller wanted. Each phone on the line had its own distinct ring. However, party lines quickly became the best way to learn what was going on in the neighborhood since anyone could pick up the phone and listen, regardless of whose ring had been made.

     Several independent telephone companies like this were formed in the Boone-Duden area in the years following World War I, including the Vine Hill Telephone Exchange. This mutual had six lines connecting Schluersburg, Matson, Defiance, Vine Hill, Cappeln, and New Melle. Another mutual was the Elk Telephone Company operated in the Femme Osage area.

     By 1927 there were about six thousand independent telephone companies in the United States. However, because of poor maintenance, inferior bookkeeping, and unpaid dues, these phone companies would often fail, and “poor service became the standard in rural America.” It was especially difficult to maintain lines during the Depression. Eventually many rural Americans began calling their telephones “whoop and holler” sets, since the poor maintenance necessitated shouting into the phone in order to be heard. By 1940 there were actually fewer telephones in rural America than in 1920; forty percent of farms had phones in 1920, but only twenty-five percent in 1940.

     It was during the 1920's that the Connecting Link Telephone Company (CLTC) was formed. The Boone-Duden Historical Society has a file for this organization in its archives. The file contains several dozen documents, including canceled checks, receipts for purchases from local stores, government forms, handwritten receipts for work completed for the company, and correspondence. The earliest document is dated 1922 and the latest 1939. The list of shareholders at the end of this article was compiled from these documents.

     The papers in the file indicate that the Connecting Link Telephone Company was never large, and its members were largely responsible for its maintenance. It appears that the CLTC had two major lines, one running west out of Hamburg and then north to Howell and perhaps a mile or two beyond. Another line apparently ran from Hamburg west to the area of the present day intersection of Highways 94 and DD before turning north, climbing Old Colony Road and ending near the intersection of Highways DD and D. A store receipt refers to the “Creek Line” and the “Colony Line,” and a comparison of shareholders' names with plat maps from 1930 and 1940 evidences the existence of these two lines. Their combined distance would be close to the ten miles of telephone line (connecting twenty-four telephones) the CLTC claimed in its 1932 federal telephone census form. The 1927 and 1937 telephone censuses are missing from the file (the census was done every five years).

     File documents indicate that telephone service was rather inexpensive compared to today, even during the Depression. CLTC yearly assessments were as follows (some years are missing):

               1926 - $1.75 1931 - $1.25 1932 - $3.00 1933 - $1.50 1934 - $1.00

               1935 - $1.00 1938 - $1.10 1939 - $1.10 1940 - $2.00

Theodore Seib, CLTC secretary for several years, wrote on one bill, “This was figured to pay the expense of repairing and keeping up the line which was done [the previous year].” Many shareholders paid their assessments by performing maintenance on the telephone lines. Every bill for labor the file contains, beginning in 1925 and ending in 1939, indicates the person was paid twenty cents per hour. This means a person could pay one year's bill by eight hours of work ($1.60) for the CLTC. Several individuals chose to pay their telephone bills by supplying the phone company with telephone poles at the rate of forty cents each. In other words, four telephone poles would cover a year of telephone service ($1.60). For example, Omer Cork in 1938 billed the phone company for seventeen hours of labor, from which was deducted his yearly assessment of $1.10. Today, even at the rate of twenty dollars an hour, it would take a person several weeks to work off his annual telephone expense.

     Materials cost very little. The file's store receipts are from the Schlueter and Vogler general store in Defiance and the Seib and Wackher general store in Hamburg. Items purchased included spikes, brackets, nails, sleeves, and insulators. The brackets were only five cents each, and an insulator cost a dime. Wire was five cents per foot and nails a nickel per pound.

     The records in the Connecting Link Telephone Company file are obviously incomplete, but it is possible to conclude that some years involved more maintenance on the lines than others. For example, 1933 seemed to involve more maintenance than usual. During that year Richard Mound (ten hours of labor), G. V. Yost (twenty), John W. Keller (ten), John Lay (twelve), George Lay (four), A. J. Keller (twelve), Herbert Keller (six), and W. S. McKinney (eighteen hours) were all paid for work, a total of ninety-two hours. However, the Muschany brothers, Ed, Louis, and William, who lived on Muschany Hollow Road, combined that year for seventy-five hours of labor for the CLTC. During that same year, C. E. Fridley (thirty-five poles), John Lay (fifty-seven), and Arlie Leimkuehler (twenty) all supplied the CLTC with telephone poles.

     Another interesting year was 1936. G. V. Yost of the Defiance Motor Company billed the TLTC $3.40 for replacing three poles on the “Colony Line” and “Creek Line.” Someone wrote on the bill, “There are about 12 poles in need on the creek line.” Apparently the previously mentioned Muschany brothers later did that maintenance, as they billed the Connecting Link Telephone Company for twenty-eight hours labor for “digging post holes” and replacing nine poles, “from Scott's Spring to Keller's Corner.” This section of the Muschany Hollow Road was practically right outside the Muschanies' front door.

     Today Americans often take for granted the many technological luxuries available to them, including their remarkable telephones. There was a day, however, in the not-too-distant past when the very best phone service rural Americans could have meant a simple telephone, inconsistent service, and the ever-present reality of being overheard by eavesdropping neighbors. Yet most rural Americans with phone service, including the members of the Connecting Link Telephone Company, no doubt gladly paid their annual dues, happy to have the luxury of access to a magneto set.

Partial list of likely shareholders in the Connecting Link Telephone Company, 1926-1939 approximately. An asterick indicates the individual was paid for doing maintenance on the line or supplying poles.

*Harvey and Clara Bacon
*Arthur and Agnes Bassett
Wahnita Blize

Dwight Castlio
Mabel Castlio
*Omer and Bonnie Cork

Walker Cunningham
*Harry and Bertha Demien
 Juanita Dixon

Ada Fridley
*Currier and Inez Fridley
Les and Bertha Fulkerson

Pauline Fulkerson
Marvin Hoefner
Claude and Alverta Howell

Elvira Howell
*Ora and Talitha Johnson
Julia Keithly

*A. J. and Bertie Keller
Ed and *Herbert Keller
*Gilbert Keller

*John W. Keller
*George Lay
*John M. and Pearl Lay

*Arlie and Linnette Leimkuehler
Joseph and Elsie Link
*William and Metilla Link

Ed and Emma Linnenbringer
John and Edgaretta Lowry
*T. J. and Leona Mades

Henry McCormick
Linton and Vasta McCormick
*W. S. and Sallie McKinney

Lee Mette
John and Katie Moellering
*Richard and Alma Mound

*Ed, *Louis, and *Wm. Muschany
*Louis and Meta Nadler
 Dennis and Maybelle Pitmann

King and Gertrude Pugh
Milton and Mary Schlueter
Theodore and Anna Seib

Arnold and Hilda Siefker
Walter and Esther Siefker
John Stewart

Mabel Stewart
Jim and Annie Sutton
Vernon and Daisy Sutton

Herbert and Verna Thoele
Robert and Maude Tyler
*C. T. and Mary Vogt

Louis and Lydia Wackher

Sources: “Connecting Link Telephone Company” file (Boone-Duden Historical Society archives); Cracker Barrel Country, Vol. 1 (Bill Schiermeier); Crossroads: A History of St. Charles County, Missouri (Steve Ehlmann); Familysearch.org; “Missouri Death Certificates” (sos.mo.gov); “NCTAA – The Rural Broadband Association” (ntca.org/about-ntca/history-of-rural-telecommunications.html); Plat Book of St. Charles, Missouri (cdm.sos.mo.gov/cdm/ref/ collection/moplatbooks); Rural Telephones in the United States (Don F. Hadwiger and Clay Cochran); St. Charles Cosmos-Monitor (St. Charles City-County Library System); “University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives” (reic.uwcc.edu/telephone).