“For Edward D. Jones & Co., it’s as if the Internet revolution never happened,” writes Susanne Craig in today’s Wall Street Journal.

“The securities firm, based in St. Louis, vows it will never offer online trading. During the tech craze it refused to push technology stocks. Managing partner John Bachmann concedes he hasn’t turned on his personal computer in at least four years. The 62-year-old shuns cellphones and carries a rectangular L.L. Bean clock in his pocket. He scrawls out responses to e-mail with a pen, leaving it to an assistant to type and send them.”

“Jones brokers operate in solo offices, going door-to-door to drum up business. They don’t have e-mail accounts; the post office delivers their handwritten notes to clients. Jones recruits brokers from local churches rather than business schools. Jones customers hold mutual funds an average of 20 years.”

“How hopelessly out of date.”

“Except that Jones, one of the last privately held securities firms, has managed to thrive while many of its white-shoe competitors are pulling back. The nation’s seventh-largest securities firm based on number of brokers opens nearly four new offices each business day and plans to have 25,000 brokers on board by the end of the decade, up from 7,653 today. At the same time, many of its Wall Street rivals are laying off staff.”

“Last year, the private partnership posted a pretax profit of $230 million on net revenue of $2.1 billion. For the first three months of the year, Jones’s pretax return on equity was 25%, exceeding the industry average of 20%.”

” ‘Someone once said we shot ourselves in the foot,’ says Mr. Bachmann. ‘Well, I guess we missed.’ “

“But this decidedly not-com company is at a crossroads. Jones’s 1980s-era technology is finally having trouble keeping pace with the company’s growth rate. In an industry that prides itself on the latest technology, this puts Jones way behind. For instance, an extensive satellite-dish system that ties thousands of Jones brokers in remote areas of the U.S. and Canada to the head office — providing everything from trade executions to investor video seminars — lacks the bandwidth to deliver many applications, even e-mail. Brokers complain it is prone to outages in bad weather. Concedes Mr. Bachmann: ‘We have a massive paper chase on our hands.’ “