Transcriber’s Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

THE
PROPOSED UNION
OF THE
TELEGRAPH AND POSTAL SYSTEMS.

STATEMENT

OF THE

WESTERN UNION TELEGRAPH COMPANY.

CAMBRIDGE:

WELCH, BIGELOW, AND COMPANY,

PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY.

1869.

CONTENTS.

REVIEW
OF
HON. E. B. WASHBURNE’S PAPER ON THE UNION OF THE TELEGRAPH AND POSTAL SYSTEMS.

In the second session of the Fortieth Congress, 1868, a bill was introduced and a paper submitted by Hon. E. B. Washburne, of Illinois, relating to the “Union of the Telegraph and Postal Systems” in the United States, which has naturally attracted public attention, and especially of that large class of our citizens who are identified with the Telegraph interests of the country. The paper bears upon its face such evident marks of care, and the case is presented with so much earnestness and apparent sincerity, notwithstanding the frequency of its errors and the illusory character of its appeals to the practice and experience of foreign nations, that it cannot fail to produce upon the public mind an unjust impression that the usefulness of this great invention is injuriously restricted, and its operations unfaithfully managed, by the organizations having it in control.

To correct these erroneous impressions by calmly and respectfully criticising the statements thus presented, and proving the honesty and fidelity with which the Telegraph service is performed in this country, is the object of this paper.

A MERITED COMPLIMENT TO PROFESSOR MORSE.

In the acknowledgment made by Mr. Washburne, in the opening of his paper, that “the world is indebted to the genius of a citizen of the United States for the practical development of the electric telegraph as a means of communication,” we heartily concur. That citizen is still a member of the Company to which his great discovery gave birth, and on whose success he largely depends for support. To it he gives his ripened genius and matured wisdom, justly priding himself upon the success of his invention, and desiring for it the largest and widest use.

But Professor Morse needs more than the simple honor of making a great discovery and of placing it at the disposal of his fellow-men throughout the world, and when it is considered that the effect of the system proposed to be inaugurated by Mr. Washburne’s bill would be the inevitable destruction of all existing telegraph investments, and possibly the impoverishment of the great inventor himself, the compliment seems a barren one indeed.

CONGRESSIONAL AID.

Congress, it is true, aided the introduction of the Telegraph by an appropriation of thirty thousand dollars for a public experiment and test of its capacity. But it may well be questioned whether this appropriation was not, after all, an injury rather than a benefit, both to the inventor and the people. It left no property to enrich its possessors, and no models to guide them in erecting new structures, while it was obtained by sacrifices which have cost the inventor infinite sorrow, and clouded a score of years with litigation. The time occupied by Congress in the consideration of the offer of the invention to government for one hundred thousand dollars (which was rejected) consumed nearly two years of the patent, and exposed the inventor to the endurance of a most annoying uncertainty.

Government, however, most effectually insured its successful extension, when, contrary to the practice of European powers, it declined to assume the control of the Telegraph, and referred its inventor, after the thorough investigation of the Postmaster-General, to the people as the proper recipients of his discovery. It was the healthy act of a government which recognized its duty to protect, instead of absorbing, the enterprises of its citizens. That duty is as clear to-day as it was then.

When government rejected the control and ownership of the Telegraph, although offered for so paltry a sum by the inventor, it was accepted by the people as a legitimate enterprise, and they have given to it all the capital, skill, and labor required for the fullest development of its usefulness.

Although many years elapsed after the introduction of the Telegraph in this country during which it maintained but a feeble existence through numerous weak and limited organizations, that rendered the business expensive and precarious, it now begins to crystallize into strength and harmony; and the projectors and promoters of the enterprise feel that they have a right to expect the fruit of their labors, in the proper and legitimate return which the humblest citizen receives for his work, and which government was, in part at least, organized to secure. We therefore pronounce the Washburne bill an unwarranted and unjust measure, which, while proposing an ostensible public good, essays to provide it by the destruction of vast private interests for which it proposes no compensation.

ERRONEOUS CHARGES AGAINST THE AMERICAN TELEGRAPH SYSTEM.

To the charges made by Mr. Washburne, in the prefatory sentences of his paper, against the management of the Telegraph system of the United States, little need be said. They are without the shadow of proof, and require no other answer than an explicit denial. Yet American telegraph companies may justly complain that a public man, while ostensibly performing a service in the interests of the people, should deem it necessary to traduce a vast interest by the use of terms so broad as to attract to it, even without proof of their justice, unwarranted disparagement and suspicion.

Mr. Washburne’s statement that “the telegraphic system has made less progress toward perfection, and has been practically of less value to the masses of the people in our country, than in any other civilized country on the globe,” is so sweepingly erroneous as to excite our profound astonishment, which is increased by the still broader assertion that, “while in nearly every country in Europe the telegraph has become a speedy, certain, and economical medium of communication, the inestimable benefits of which are extended to the inhabitants of small towns and communes as well as to the great centres of trade, in this country telegraphic communication has always been uncertain and expensive, and limited to chief towns and cities.”

BRIEF STATEMENT OF FACTS.

In reply to the above we desire to present the following facts.

The population of Europe at the last authentic census was 288,001,365, nineteen twentieths of which belonged to the Caucasian race. It contains thirty-nine cities, each possessing more than one hundred thousand inhabitants, and the accumulated wealth of nearly two thousand years of civilization.

The United States has a population of only 31,148,047, and contains but ten cities of one hundred thousand inhabitants, while its utmost civilized history reaches back scarcely two and a half centuries, and the accumulated wealth of its civilization cannot average fifty years throughout its cultivated area.

The population of Europe being nearly ten times greater than that of the United States, as is also its accumulations of years of civilization, while, according to Mr. Washburne, its telegraph facilities vastly outstrip ours, it should, of course, possess far more than ten times the number of telegraph offices.

But, in truth, there is not even an approximation to this provision of telegraphic convenience based on population; for while the United States alone possess 4,126 telegraph offices, all Europe contains but 6,450, of which 2,151, or more than one third of the whole number, belong to Great Britain, where the telegraph has heretofore been free from government control.

It is significant of American enterprise that continental Europe, with a population of 260,000,000, possesses but one hundred and seventy-three more telegraph offices than the United States, with her 31,000,000 of widely scattered people. While in the United States there is a telegraph office to every 7,549 of its inhabitants, in continental Europe there is only one to every 60,249!

The following table will serve to show the proportion of telegraph offices to population in the principal countries of Europe and of the United States, the number of miles of line, and amount of telegraph business of each.

[1]. From the Annual Cyclopædia. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1868.

In large sections of the United States the proportion is much greater. Thus, the Pacific States embrace an area of 600,000 square miles; Belgium, 11,000. The former provide an office to every 2,500 of their population; the latter, one to every 12,416. Thus, the Pacific States sustain five times as many offices in proportion to population as Belgium, to say nothing of the great disparity in the condition of service by the vast range of wild territory occupied by the one, and the fine roads and cultivated area of the other.

In view of the facts shown in the preceding table, how can it be said that in America the telegraph is less practically provided to the people than in any other civilized country on the globe?

THE COMPLAINT OF INDIFFERENCE TO PUBLIC CONVENIENCE WITHOUT FOUNDATION.

“Instead of an auxiliary to the postal system, controlled, like it, by the state, sought, like it, to be made useful to the great masses of the people without regard to the pecuniary profit to be secured, as in nearly every civilized country in the world, we see the system in this country in the hands of rival companies, anxious only for profit, extending their lines only to prominent places where such profits are to be secured, and too indifferent to the public convenience. In short, the popular verdict of the people of this country, if it could be heard, would be that the telegraphic system, in view of what it is in other countries and might become in this, is practically a failure.”

The above complaint is without the least foundation. In no country in the world is there so vast a system of lines under one control as in this; in no country is the business done so well or so cheaply; and nowhere else has there ever been so earnest an endeavor made to serve the people faithfully and satisfactorily.

A great majority of the towns in this country having even less than five hundred inhabitants are already supplied with offices, and they are rapidly increasing. During the past two and a half years more than one million of dollars have been spent by the Western Union Telegraph Company alone in the construction of new lines, and during the same period it has opened more than eight hundred new offices. This it is constantly doing, as much to satisfy existing public wants as for the promotion of its own future interest. Over one hundred offices have long been sustained at a loss, because needed to protect the lines built through comparatively desert regions to reach distant points of intercourse, and several hundred more are maintained which barely pay expenses. In fact, it is a standing rule of the company to open and maintain a telegraph office at all places in the United States reached by its lines, on a guaranty that the receipts shall be equal to the necessary expenses; and, by associating the duties of the telegraphic service with other productive labor, they are often rendered extremely light. It also offers to extend its lines to any place not reached by existing lines, where the inhabitants will advance the cost of building them, the money so advanced to be refunded to the contributors in telegraphing at ordinary tariffs. Under this arrangement a large number of offices have been opened and extensive lines built, to the satisfaction of all parties.

Into such arrangements the government could not enter with any similar rapidity, or by so healthy and economic processes accomplish a like amount of substantial benefit to the people. The fact that there is scarcely a community to be found anywhere in America where the people are unable to meet these offers of the Telegraph Company, is the best reason why government should not furnish at public expense what the people are so able to provide for themselves.

In reply to the statement that our company is anxious only for profit, and that its charges are exorbitant as compared with those of other countries, we respectfully call attention to the following table, showing the average cost of telegrams in Europe and America for the year 1866.

[2]. The Commercial and Financial Chronicle gives the lowest price of gold in 1866 as 124⅞, and the highest 167¾, making the average 148, which we have adopted as the standard value for that year.

[3]. These are exclusive of railroad messages, of which this company sends many millions per annum. In fact, the safety of all the roads in the United States is largely due to the free use of our wires in running trains.

The total receipts of the Western Union Telegraph Company for the above year were $6,568,925.36; but of this amount $521,509 were received for transmitting regular press reports on contract, and $308,788.40 from other sources,—leaving only $5,738,627.96 for telegrams.

Of the 10,067,768 messages sent during the year, 8,004,770 were on commercial and social matters, and 2,062,998 containing special press news, the latter amounting to 75,359,670 words.

Of the regular reports there were delivered to the press 294,503,630 words, which, allowing 20 words to each message,—the European standard,—would amount to 14,725,181 telegrams, in addition to the number given in the table. The average telegraphic tolls on these reports were three and one half cents for a message of 20 words, or one and seven tenths of a mill per word.

THE ASSERTED UNION OF THE POSTAL AND TELEGRAPH SYSTEMS IN EUROPE AN ERROR.

In referring to the action of European governments, in their early recognition of the telegraph system, Mr. Washburne says:—

“At once, after the invention and successful establishment of electric telegraphs, every government in Europe where lines were built, except that of Great Britain, established a telegraphic system in connection with its postal system. Anticipating, as they might well do, that in private hands it might be so constructed as to draw to it, by its speed, safety, and economy, a large proportion of the correspondence, and thus become a rival of the post, these governments, acting in the interests of the people, have made the system part and parcel of the postal system, and have thrown around it all the safeguards which in every civilized country the postal system enjoys.”

The above statement, with the exception of that portion printed in italics, is remarkably incorrect.

In no country in Europe does it appear that the telegraphic administration is connected with the post-office.[^[4]] In France and Spain the telegraphs are under the control of the Minister of the Interior. In Russia, Prussia, and Italy they belong to the Ministry of Public Works. In Belgium the telegraph, railways, and the post-office form a general division under the Minister of Public Works, but are kept distinct. In Austria the administrations of the telegraphs and the post-office were at one time united, but it was found expedient to separate them. In Switzerland the telegraphic organization is nearly the same as Prussia’s; the post-office, customs, and private establishments supply the elements of an auxiliary staff, but all the persons employed in the transmission or delivery of telegrams depend on the administration of Telegraphs for their compensation, and in the annual budget an appropriation is made for that service distinct from the post.

[4]. Telegraphic Journal, (London: Truscott, Son, & Simmons,) Volume XI. page 131.

An effort was made in France in 1864 to consolidate the post-office and telegraph service, but, owing to the strong opposition evinced on the part of the chief functionaries of both services to such amalgamation, it was relinquished.

It was not until several years after the introduction of the electric telegraph in America that it was opened to the people by any European government. Even in France the electric telegraph was established as late as 1851, and its spread throughout the empire was exceedingly slow. The semaphore telegraph, a defective and inefficient system of conveying intelligence by the exhibition of signals,—introduced by Napoleon at the beginning of the present century,—was still in use, and, notwithstanding the manifest advantages of the electric telegraph, as shown by Arago to the House of Deputies, government long refused to employ it, and, when finally adopted, it was for some time used in connection with the old system.

THE SHORTCOMINGS OF BRITISH TELEGRAPHS.

Mr. Washburne says of the British telegraph:—

“In Great Britain, as in the United States, the telegraph was left to private enterprise and competition. Only a few weeks since, after a twenty years’ trial of the system in the hands of private companies, the people of the British islands, with singular unanimity, demanded to have the telegraphic system placed under the control of the postal authorities, and a bill was introduced by the present government for that purpose.”

It is complained of Great Britain, which provides one quarter of all the telegraph offices in Europe, that the telegraph companies there have left eighty-eight places in England and Wales having a population of two thousand and upwards, and even whole districts, without an office.

Whatever may be true of the meagreness of the provision of telegraphic facilities by English companies, and which these companies vigorously deny, no such complaint can, with justice, be made in the United States, notwithstanding the vast ranges of territory which must be traversed to meet the communities which need and ask for them.

Without intending any disrespect to the postal authorities of the United States, it may be said that the post-office system of Great Britain, because of the superior character of the control which long and careful study has enabled it to secure, is far in advance of our own. In fact, there is nothing more apparent to an English visitor than the low status of our postal arrangements, as compared with that of his own country. It is natural, therefore, seeing the postal system so admirably managed, that English merchants, whose tendencies are all toward governmental direction in matters of this character,[^[5]] should desire to see the experiment of a similar control of the telegraph. In fact, it is only this class of citizens who have asked for the change, the memorial having gone solely from the different Chambers of Commerce throughout the kingdom, no appeal on the subject having ever been made to or by the people of Great Britain, and therefore the assertion that the people with singular unanimity demanded it is not sustained by the facts.

[5]. Witness the proposition recently so much discussed in England, that the government should assume control of the railways also.

THE TELEGRAPH SYSTEM OF THE UNITED STATES UNPARALLELED FOR ITS EXTENT AND EFFICIENCY.

Mr. Washburne says, “There is abundant reason to believe that the telegraphic system of Great Britain, which is declared a failure on such high authority, is, in all respects, greatly superior to our own”; but he fails to give any of his reasons for this belief, and we are compelled to assert that it has no intelligent explanation except in a strangely morbid hostility to this company, which exhibits itself on every offered occasion. In all respects the telegraph lines of this country are equal to those of any other, and in some important ones superior. They extend from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, connecting in one unbroken chain more than four thousand cities and villages, forming a system by which every event of importance happening in any section of our vast territorial limits is published within a few hours in every other; through which verbatim reports of the speeches in Congress are transmitted from the capital to the metropolis, and full abstracts of them to every considerable town in the nation, on the day of their delivery; which supplies the metropolitan journals with more telegraphic news every day than is contained in the combined press despatches of Europe. Such a system, in its vastness, skilful manipulation, and the rapidity of its unceasing development, we believe merits the public approbation, and is not unworthy of the American name.

Our system of telegraphy is unique. Nowhere else can there be found such an extent of lines under one control. The lines of the Western Union Telegraph Company, extending throughout the United States and portions of the Dominion of Canada, enables it to transmit messages between every section of the country, without undergoing the delay of checking or booking at intermediate points; and between most of the large cities without retransmission. This work, over a territory so vast, although only two years have elapsed since the confederation of lines was effected which made it possible, is fast assuming, under increased care and enlarged experience, the certainty and uniformity of mechanism. In all its effective features, the world may safely be challenged to produce anything to compare with it. The extent of lines and wire belonging to the Western Union Telegraph Company is more than twice that of France, three times greater than that of Prussia, and equals the aggregated systems of Austria, Prussia, and the lesser German States, Italy, Spain, Belgium, and Switzerland, and it is increasing in larger ratio than any European system. The Western Union Telegraph Company alone has added to its lines, during the year 1868, more than five thousand miles of wire, or as much as the entire system of Belgium, leaving unsatisfied demands for an equal extension in the year to come.

ASSERTED EFFECT OF GOVERNMENTAL CONTROL ON BELGIAN TELEGRAPHS.

Mr. Washburne says:—

“In Belgium, where the telegraph has always been under the control of the government, the charge for telegraphing twenty words throughout the kingdom is half a franc, or, say ten cents of our money. In Switzerland the charge is the same. In both these countries offices are opened in nearly every town and village; in both telegraphing is reliable and certain; complaints of delays and errors are almost unknown, and the lines in both countries yield large profits.[^[6]]

[6]. See official acknowledgment of inefficiency on pages [18] and [19]; also, on page [96], an admitted loss in performing the service at established rates.

“In Belgium, in the year 1853, with an average charge of 5 francs and 7 centimes, or say $1.02 for twenty words to any part of the kingdom, the number of messages sent was 52,050, yielding, francs, 265,536. In the year 1866, with the charge reduced to about 17 cents for twenty words, the number of messages had increased to 1,128,005, yielding, francs, 962,213. The same remarkable increase is found in the statistics of the telegraphic system of all countries where the telegraph is under government control.”

If by the latter clause of this statement it is designed to convey the idea that government control, per se, stimulates the use of the telegraph, or that even a reduction of rates, without this control, is incapable of producing this result, it may justly be challenged as utterly unsustained by the telegraphic experience of this country. The coupling together of these two influences seems designed to prove that the one necessarily involves the other, whereas the question of rate is altogether independent of management, whether government or individual.

EARLY BELGIAN RATES CONTRASTED WITH AMERICAN.

Respecting the Belgian tariff of 1853, of $1.02 in gold per message, for a distance not exceeding fifty miles, it must be regarded as prohibitory, except to those whose necessities compelled its use. The American charge at the same period for even greater distances was twenty-five cents. Instead, therefore, of any surprise at the comparatively limited use of the telegraph by the Belgian people under the circumstances, it may well be regarded as extraordinary that it was used so much.

Had private companies in the United States attempted to impose such a tariff at the period named, public opinion would have compelled an immediate reduction. While there can be no doubt that, within certain limits, a diminished tariff will usually be followed by an increase in the number of messages, experience has demonstrated that this cannot be relied on as invariably true, except where the charge has been unreasonable or exorbitant. It must be remembered that, when a tariff has been reduced one half, there must be an increase of more than one hundred per cent in the number of despatches, to yield the same revenue, meet the cost of added labor, and provide the necessary additional means of transmission. So great an addition in the number of messages, unattended with a corresponding increase of wires and operators, would result in such delay and inaccuracy as to render the service of no value.

NATURAL INCREASE IN TELEGRAPHY.

It should be remembered, too, that an increase follows the supply of more ample facilities, when these have been inadequate to the wants of the communities for which they are provided.

There is also a large natural increase, altogether irrespective of the charges for transmission, which must be allowed for, before the legitimate effect of the inducements presented by cheapness, or the opportunities furnished by the multiplication of wires or increased capacity in the machinery, can be estimated. Thus, in December, 1848, which in the United States bears a fair comparison with Belgium in 1852 as to date of telegraphic introduction, at the office in Buffalo, N. Y., the receipts amounted to $330.54; while in the same month of 1867, with no decrease in the tariff, the receipts were $5,392.07,—an increase of over 1,600 per cent, and exceeding by 400 per cent that which in Belgium was caused, as claimed, by reducing the tariff from $1.02 to 17 cents, but which, in Buffalo, resulted from simple natural increase caused by the growth of the country and enlarged telegraphic facilities. The annual gross receipts of the Magnetic Telegraph Company, extending between New York and Washington, were as follows:—

Up to the close of 1848 the above company had a monopoly of the telegraph service between these two cities, but in March, 1849, the House Printing Line commenced operations between New York and Philadelphia, and, together with Bain’s Chemical Telegraph, was continued through to Washington in the autumn of that year, so that from 1848 to 1852 the above statement only shows the receipts of one of the three lines doing business between these places. If the receipts of the other two companies were as large, it exhibits the remarkable increase in the amount of business done, in five years, of more than 900 per cent, without any reduction in rates.

The number of messages transmitted by the Magnetic Company in 1852 was 253,857, at an average cost, according to the receipts, of forty cents each.

The average cost of the French telegrams for the same year, according to the official tables furnished by Mr. Washburne, was 11.28 francs, or $2.25 each.

For the year ending November 1, 1868, the Western Union Telegraph Company transmitted over the same territory embraced by the lines of the Magnetic Company in 1852, 1,556,004 messages, the gross receipts upon which were $546,262.05, being an average of thirty-five cents per message. There are two rival companies operating lines between New York and Washington at the present time, so that the comparison between the business for the past year and that of the previous year above given is quite complete.

The gross receipts of the New York and Boston Magnetic Telegraph Association for the year ending

In 1848 the above company had a monopoly of the business between these places, but in 1849 two rival companies constructed lines over this route and divided the business with it.

In 1848 the tariff between New York and Boston was fifty cents for the first ten words, and three cents for each added word; and to intermediate points twenty-five cents for the first ten words, and two cents for each added word.

UNFORTUNATE EFFECTS OF LOW RATES AND COMPETITION.

In 1849 the rate was reduced between New York and Boston to thirty cents, in 1850 to twenty cents, and in 1852 to ten cents. None of the lines, however, paid their working expenses from the time of their construction up to 1853. Even in 1848, when there was no opposition, the expenses exceeded the receipts by $1,199.00. One of the three lines was sold at public auction twice within three years after its construction, to pay the debts incurred in operating it. In 1853 two of the lines were united under one control, and an amicable arrangement entered into between the two remaining companies, by which the rates were advanced approximately to those of 1848, and they remained unchanged for the next ten years.

AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN RATES COMPARED.

In 1851, when the tariff between New York and Boston was twenty cents, the average French rate was $1.56, and the Belgian, for less than one third the distance, $1.56.

When the Belgian lines were opened to the public, an act of the legislature, dated March 15, 1851, established a charge of 2½ francs for a message of twenty words, if transmitted within a circle of 75 kilometres (i.e. 50 cents in gold for a distance of about 46½ miles), and five francs (one dollar gold) for any distance beyond the limit of 75 kilometres.

The increase from 52,050 messages in Belgium in 1853 to 1,128,005 in 1866 is, no doubt, in part justly attributable to the reduction of the prohibitory tariff of the former year, but it is not greater or more remarkable than the increase during the same period in America, where no reduction from the early rates has been made, and where, nevertheless, the business has improved year by year until it has grown into its present volume, exceeding that of any nation on the globe, on whatever basis the comparison be placed.

Belgium transmitted 14,025 messages in 1851 and 52,050 in 1853, being an increase of nearly 400 per cent in three years, although the tariff had been reduced less than 20 per cent. From 1853 to 1862 there was an increase of over 500 per cent, with a reduction of tariff of about 52 per cent. From 1862 to 1867 there was an increase of less than 400 per cent, although the average tariff had been reduced from 2.07 to 0.85 francs, or about 60 per cent.

Other suggestive illustrations are contained in the tables furnished by Mr. Washburne. Thus, in Switzerland, in 1853, at an average cost of 1.55 francs per message, the number sent was 82,586. In 1854, at an average cost of 1.62 francs, 129,167 were sent, showing an increase of 46,581 messages at a higher tariff. In 1855, when the cost per message was almost identical with that of 1853, the number had increased to 162,851, or about 100 per cent. In 1859, when the cost of messages was 1.48, as compared with 1.35 in 1858, the number had increased from 247,102 to 286,876, and in 1861, at the average charge of 1859, had increased from 286,876 to 333,933. In 1857 and 1862 the charges were exactly alike, yet the increase in the number of messages in the latter year was 113,288, or over 43 per cent over the former. The tables furnished by other countries show similar results. In Prussia, in 1852, 48,751 messages were sent at an average cost of 2.35, while in 1858, at a cost increased to 2.95, 247,292 messages were sent, or an increase of over 400 per cent.

The effect of the policies of the two nations thus shown to be so dissimilar are instructive.

When Belgium, finding it necessary to reduce her tariff to one franc, thereby first attempted to popularize the use of the telegraph, it was done, notwithstanding all its advantages of free rents, absence of taxes, and labor vastly cheaper than in the United States, at a loss to the state of 41,417.19 francs. And when, upon the idea that a still lower tariff might so develop the public use of the lines as to render them self-sustaining, the Belgian government in 1866 reduced the tariff one half, its expenditures were increased thereby from 653,280 francs in 1863 to 1,217,496 francs, entailing a loss of 255,282,000 francs, as shown by Mr. Washburne’s report. In the United States, by keeping the tariff at the lowest paying rates, the system has been extended to every part of the country, touching the extreme limits of civilization, and its realm of usefulness is yearly increasing.

THE PECULIARITIES OF THE BELGIAN TELEGRAPH SERVICE.

The telegraph business of Belgium is peculiar. Half of it only can be said to be Belgian at all, the other half being messages in transit, or international, which are sent at comparatively little cost, and for the transmission of which it makes terms with other nations. On the inland or Belgium business proper, the only class which can with any propriety be used in the argument in hand, there was, as has been seen, a loss in 1866 of thirty-four per cent, and in 1867 of thirty-seven and a half per cent. The greater cost of an inland message arises from the fact that it is received, forwarded, and delivered in the kingdom, requiring the various service connected with such duties; while transit messages simply pass through the state, and impose no expense for labor in transmission, reception, or delivery, and international messages require no delivery in the country sending them.

But besides its annual losses to government, there exists a serious drawback in the value to the people of the reduced tariff. The diminished rate in Belgium is accompanied by no promise of prompt delivery. Despatches at a half-franc each must take their chance of transmission, and submit to the delay caused by other service. Speed rates are established to compensate for loss by the reduced tariff. Thus, a message requiring immediate transit is charged three times an ordinary message, reversing the plan of the Western Union Company, which transmits promptly and indiscriminately at ordinary rates, but makes an immense reduction when the night hours can be used. Of course business men, to whom time is money, are obliged to pay an extra franc to secure that promptness and certainty of transmission without which the telegraph is of little value for all important transactions. The tariff has been, therefore, practically increased to one and a half francs, or forty-two cents for distances which cannot average more than seventy-five miles, and probably do not exceed fifty. The cheap messages take their chance. In America, a repeated message is charged half a rate more than the ordinary tariff. In Belgium it pays four single rates. Cipher messages are also charged four times the price of ordinary messages, while here they are received at ordinary rates.

Were the United States government to construct lines under the Washburne bill, and adopt this Belgian system, its tariffs between Washington and Baltimore—about the average distance of the Belgian service—would be, for prompt delivery such as our telegraph companies perform, forty-five cents, instead of the existing charge of ten cents; for messages to which no assurance of promptitude is given, fifteen cents; and for repeated messages, sixty cents, instead of our present rate of fifteen cents. If, now, with all its advantages of cheap labor and the profits arising from international and transit messages, the Belgian government, on these bases of charge, admits a clear loss in 1866 of 255,282 francs, how will it be possible for Mr. Washburne to secure a profit to government large enough in a few years to pay the cost of the line, on a common tariff of fifteen cents for all classes of messages?

BELGIAN OFFICIALS ACKNOWLEDGE THE IMPERFECTIONS OF THEIR SYSTEM.

As Mr. Washburne claims for European telegraphs speed, certainty, and economy, it is well to be able to read Belgian official testimony on the same subject. The last report of the Belgian department of public works has the following paragraph:—

“Imperfection has existed at all times and in all places. It is in vain to attempt to obtain equally rapid and exact transmission under all circumstances. Delay will occur, whatever may be done to prevent it, by the blocking up of lines, by a temporary influx of business; and, in a country where distances are short, that delay may equal, and sometimes even exceed, the time that would be occupied in transmitting by railway.”

Official truthfulness and modesty thus lifts the veil from a system held up for our admiration, and reveals its weakness.

INSTRUCTIVE HISTORY OF BELGIAN TELEGRAPHS.

The history of the use of the telegraph in Belgium is instructive.

During 1851, the first recorded year of its existence, there passed between the offices of the whole of that kingdom, as shown by Mr. Washburne’s tables, twenty-one messages per day. If we may suppose, what seems scarcely credible, that only five of her chief cities were at that time connected by the wires,—Ghent, Antwerp, Brussels, Bruges, and Liege,—it exhibited the remarkable spectacle of a telegraph line opened by government “in the interest of the people,” used to the extent of about four messages per day at each of her five chief cities!

Even after four years more had been used in the extension of her lines, the daily transmission only increased to fifty-five messages per day for the whole kingdom, showing how slowly and jealously the lines were given to public employment, and how utterly futile is the assertion that the public interest, at that time at least, controlled the state in their management.

The tariff, which had averaged during the first year $1.26 per message, and had not, so far, been practically reduced, showed still more clearly that only the rich used it, and that it was, on account of its cost, practically beyond the employment of the people. The truth is, as Mr. Washburne states, that the Belgian government, fearing its use in private hands, and suspicious that by private energy the telegraph would be made to rival, if not ruin, the Belgian post, seized and held it from popular control. There is certainly nothing in the first five years of its existence in Belgium which proves that government, as is claimed, desired to give the fruits of a great invention to the Belgian people. During all of these years, however, and in marked contrast to the lines under government management everywhere, hundreds of thousands of messages were passing over the telegraph lines in the United States, at a tariff which made them available to all its citizens, and showing a daily record in some of the smaller of its inland towns greater than that of all the Belgian offices combined.

When in 1866 the Belgian government, by the radical reduction of the tariff to half a franc, endeavored to render the service more generally useful to the people, it did so at the expense of the public treasury; since on each of the 2,180 inland messages transmitted per day a loss of thirty-eight centimes, or more than two thirds the established rate, was sustained; and, as we have elsewhere stated, this loss would have been much greater, but for a profit derived from international and transit messages, which went to the credit of the whole service.

SINGULAR IDEA THAT A SMALL TELEGRAPH SYSTEM IS MORE DIFFICULT TO MANAGE THAN A LARGE ONE.

“It appears to be tolerably clear,” says Mr. Washburne, “that, in order to assert the superiority of a system on a small scale, it requires even more care and greater attention to cope with an increased traffic than an establishment whose ramifications embrace a larger sphere.”

This remark is made with reference to the necessity of great promptitude in the delivery of messages in Belgium, where the places connected are contiguous, and conveyance by railroad rapid and frequent. It is made also to show that it is more difficult under such circumstances to cope with an enlarged use of the telegraph than in the United States, where, by reason of distance and the comparative infrequency of transit by railroad, the necessity of promptitude is presumably less urgent.

At first the argument seems fair, but when examined, it has no foundation except in the general fact that distance and infrequent transit by rail may render the telegraph valuable and desirable, even without the promptness essential where transit is rapid and frequent.

The weakness of the argument is evident when it is seen that, as distances decrease, all the elements of cost and maintenance of lines and the difficulties arising from elemental disturbances, lessen in the same proportion. This admits of easy illustration. Look for a moment at Belgium, of which Mr. Washburne treats so copiously. Located centrally in that kingdom, in the form of a triangle, and separated from each other by about thirty miles each, are her three chief cities, Ghent, Brussels, and Antwerp. To connect either two of these a line of telegraph thirty miles long is required, which government builds upon its own property and protects by its own police. However thoroughly built, its cost is necessarily small. There is no trouble or uncertainty in working it. Its very shortness renders its perfection in the use of all the appliances which science and experience have shown desirable readily and cheaply attainable, and it is easily kept in order. When increased public use imperils promptness by the limited provision of wires, ten men, in a single week, can erect another. In all this the very proximity of the points to be connected facilitates and economizes every step required in meeting the enlarged necessities.

The management of such lines, short, well-guarded, and permanent, is almost solely confined to the arrangements for transmission and delivery.

In Belgium, therefore, which contains only two thirds as many offices as the Western Union Telegraph Company maintains in the State of New York alone, with her commercial centres near together, with an average of less than three wires on her poles, with her 2,232 miles of line on government property and protected by its authority, want of promptness would be inexcusable, because so easily effected. Were New York and Chicago only thirty miles apart, and all the messages of the United States, now approximating thirteen millions per annum, required to be passed between them at the rate of 36,000 per day, and within an average of fifteen minutes from the time of their reception, as is now done between the Chambers of Commerce of these cities, it could be accomplished with comparative ease, and especially so were the land which the wires traversed the property of the company, and the lines guarded by the nation. Once render it easy and inexpensive to provide a reliable outward structure, and the work of the telegraph becomes a matter of simple internal organization, except as competition and the necessities of extension in a land so vast as ours adds to the ordinary cares of administration. The immense distances between our centres of commerce, the multitude of far separated radiating centres of business, the great exposure and defective protection of our lines, and constantly increasing system of wires which are constructed as rapidly as new demands for their extension are made, render the management of this company one of the most arduous and complicated of private enterprises. There is nothing in Europe or elsewhere which bears any proper resemblance to the American telegraph system, nor with which it can be properly compared.

Between the systems of Belgium and the United States we witness the following marked contrast. The companies here have only one tariff for transmission, and all take their turn. The payment of an extra franc cannot, as in Belgium, purchase priority, or give one advantage over his neighbor. This is an imposition of the government, similar to, and even less defensible, than that which in England requires four postages to secure the safety of a letter. Here the companies offer to guarantee the public against error by an extra payment of one half the ordinary tariff; but the public, because of their confidence in the company, do not avail themselves of this provision, to an extent of one in ten thousand! Messages sent in cipher, for which no extra charge is made in the United States, can only be sent in Europe by the payment of four ordinary tariffs, and in some states in Europe, and among others France, the government will not permit their being sent at all.

NECESSITY FOR THE UNIFICATION OF THE TELEGRAPH SYSTEM.

It is curious to observe that the reasons assigned for the advantages to be gained by governmental control are precisely the same which led to the consolidation under one management of the great mass of the American lines, and which has led to the unjust charge of monopoly as the work of unification has progressed.

Mr. Scudamore says: “When I began to collect the information on which this report is based, I was not free from doubts as to the propriety of the scheme; but, after patiently collecting and considering all the data which I could obtain, I found myself driven, by the mere force of facts, to the conclusion at which I have arrived. This conclusion, indeed, is almost identical with that to which the directors of the Electric and International Telegraph Company came in the year 1852, and which they thus stated to their stockholders:—

“The delays, inaccuracies, and expense of the continental telegraphs are an exemplification of the great advantage to the public of the administration being under a single management. This circumstance alone admits of the establishment of a low and uniform tariff.... The telegraph has already become a most powerful and useful agent, and has, in a measure, been adopted as a means of communication by persons employed in commercial pursuits, but, owing to the want of proper arrangement and facilities, and the fact of the management of the lines being divided by several companies, without unison in action or interest, the public generally have been debarred from benefiting by the immense accommodation and advantages the telegraph is capable of affording.”

In presenting the same idea, Mr. Washburne, with a looseness of statement for which we know of no proper justification, remarks as follows:—

“There can be no doubt that the superiority of the continental system over every other is due to the fact that the telegraph there is a government institution, while in this country it is left to private enterprise. Individual and associated effort have done much, but, with the confusion of our telegraphic system before us, it would be folly to shut our eyes to the inherent weakness of all joint-stock enterprises. Absence of responsibility, waste of labor, irresolute councils, expensive management, want of effective control over subordinates, are among the evils of such associations, to say nothing of the imperative demands of stockholders that dividends shall be made and that none shall be hazarded. Under government control one governing body would do the work now done by twenty, and the obligation to realize profits would not interfere to prevent the reduction of rates or the proper extension of the system.”

Passing over the charges of “waste, irresponsibility, and irresolute councils,” which serve to round the paragraph in which they occur, the focal idea is the efficiency secured by a united control. That is the very basis of this company’s organization. Discarding as false and perilous any general assumption of the enterprises of the people by the government, and accepting its refusal to attach the telegraph to its administration, when offered to it by its inventor, as for the best interest of the nation, this company early saw that united action between the extremes of our territorial limits was as essential to its own success as to public convenience. With numerous companies, of limited jurisdiction, and tariffs on all bases,—which had to be added and dovetailed to each other whenever a despatch passed between two distant places,—there was neither certainty of correctness, promptitude, nor the possibility of a low and uniform tariff. To secure all of these the leading telegraph organizations combined. It was a step necessary alike for public usefulness and success, and is accomplishing all that could be desired. The system has penetrated farther, and compassed more territory than separate organizations could have attempted or than even government itself would have been willing to undertake. Its administration is vast, harmonious, liberal, exact, economical, and just. It uses its revenues largely to extend its realm of usefulness to the people of every section of the country. It seeks to secure the highest skill and character in its employees. Its aim is to give the wires to the use of the whole people on the lowest terms consistent with proper self-support and the just return which capital and skill demand. It will accomplish all the nation requires of it, if allowed to solve its own problem, making the wires the accepted right arm of the public industries, and the emblem of universal unity and good-will.

ESTIMATE OF THE COST OF BUILDING TELEGRAPH LINES.

Mr. Washburne says:—

“Any one at all familiar with the prices of materials and labor in the various countries will see that, as to materials for the construction of lines, they are cheaper here than in any European country, and that the whole cost of constructing telegraphic lines must be less here than in Belgium or Switzerland. In the latter country a large proportion of the lines are erected upon iron posts, the prime cost of which with the stone base is from $6 to $9 each, or from five to seven times the cost of the posts usually employed in America.

“As to the exact cost of constructing lines in the United States it is difficult to procure reliable data. There are few questions apparently so simple upon which so many conflicting opinions have been printed. So simple a matter as the cost of posts, say thirty feet long, the placing of them in the earth, furnishing and placing the necessary iron wires and insulators and the fitting up of stations with instruments and furniture, ought not, one would suppose, to be a difficult thing to fix. Yet persons claiming to be experts, and even authorities in all matters relating to telegraphs, have differed very widely. Mr. Prescott, a telegraph superintendent, and the author of a work on ‘Electric Telegraphs,’ estimates the cost of a mile of telegraph, built as they ordinarily are, at $61.80[^[7]]....

[7]. This statement was written in 1859, and the object of the author was to show the inferior manner in which a majority of the lines were constructed at that time.

“This is about the cost of construction of a majority of our lines, but if built as they should be, they would cost $150 per mile. If additional wires are added, each wire put up would be, per mile, $32.80.”

Mr. Washburne’s statement, that telegraph lines can be built cheaper in the United States than in Europe, is entirely incorrect. Labor, wire, machinery, insulators, and every appliance peculiar to the telegraph, are very much cheaper in Europe than in America, and large importations of wire are constantly being made from Belgium and England, notwithstanding the heavy duty.

The difference in the cost of labor in Europe and America is very great. The most recent authentic publication on the subject[^[8]] states that the general average rates paid for all kinds of labor in the United Kingdom are as follows: For adult males, in England, $4.96 per week; in Scotland, $4.52; in Ireland, $3.16. For boys and youths, under twenty years of age, in England, $1.44; in Scotland, $1.70; in Ireland, $1.38. For adult women, in England, $2.76; in Scotland, $2.32; in Ireland, $2.06. For girls, under twenty years of age, in England, $1.88; in Scotland, $1.80; in Ireland, $1.62. These rates are stated to be high, as compared with other countries in Europe.

[8]. Wages and Earnings of the Working Classes. By Leone Levi, F. S. S., F. S. A., Professor of the Principles and Practice of Commerce in King’s College. London: John Murray. 1867.

In Belgium, coal-miners earn from 33 cents to $1.00 per day, the average being 56 cents. In iron-furnaces, a puddler earns from 92 cents to $1.10, and the under hands from 50 cents to 62 cents per day. In iron-foundries, a moulder earns from 44 cents to 62 cents per day. In Paris, the average for adult male labor is 76 cents per day, and for women 38 cents; but in the interior of France the price is much less. In Prussia, first-class engineers earn $1.10, and second-class 83 cents.

Among the working classes in the United Kingdom are included all who, whether as workers for others or as workers for themselves, are employed in manual labor, be it productive of wealth or not; and they are divided into five classes, viz. professional, domestic, commercial, agricultural, and industrial. The total number of workers is estimated at eleven millions, and the average weekly earnings in the United Kingdom are: Men, under twenty, $1.59; from twenty to sixty, $4.18; women, under twenty, $1.72; from twenty to sixty, $2.41. Average weekly earnings from every avocation in Great Britain and Ireland, $3.16.

Thirty per cent of the people of the United Kingdom live in houses the rental of which is less than $31 per annum, and seventeen per cent in those under $45 per year.

In the preparation of the following table we have consulted Professor Levi’s work on Wages and Earnings in England; “Government and the Telegraphs” (London, 1868); “Special Report on the Electric Telegraph Bill”; “Publications of the Statistical Bureau at Washington”; and the official records of the Western Union Telegraph Company.

[9]. The number of letter-carriers employed by the British Post-Office Department for the year 1866 was 11,449, and the total expenditures for the same $2,664,000, being an average of $232.68 per annum for each man.

The number of letter-carriers employed by the Post-Office Department of the United States for the year 1866 was 863, and the total expenditures for the same $589,236.41, being an average of $682.77 for each man.

[10]. The cost of labor of telegraph employees is obtained by dividing the total amount paid for labor by the number of persons employed of all kinds. The average price per day for operators in the United States is $2.25, and in England 62 cents.

With a knowledge of the great difference in the cost of labor and material in Europe and America which the above statistics show, we cannot comprehend the propriety of Mr. Washburne’s assertion that the whole cost of constructing telegraphic lines must be less here than in Belgium or Switzerland.

Even our poles are purchased in the Dominion of Canada, and paid for in gold. The cost of transportation from the St. Lawrence to New York cannot be much, if any, more than the cost of their delivery at London, Havre, or Brussels.

In the United States, telegraph-poles are of cedar or chestnut,—more generally of the former. In England, the larch is the most common; in Russia, the pine; in France, pine, alder, poplar, and other white woods; and in Germany, spruce and pine.[^[11]]

[11]. Telegraph Manual.

The cost of a telegraph line depends, like the cost of a house or any other structure, upon how it is built, but Mr. Washburne, or any other intelligent man, ought to know that the price appropriated in his bill for a four-wire line from Washington to New York cannot possibly build it, even should government build such a structure as those which a dozen years ago cursed the enterprise, and made it a reproach and shame. When government builds a line of telegraph on the plea of public necessity, it should require that its structures at least be equal to those of its citizens. It is not strange that, with the crude and cheap ideas formed by Mr. Washburne of telegraph structures, he disparages and undervalues the properties of the existing companies, and ridicules the estimates furnished Congress in their communications.

DOUBTS REGARDING THE ESTIMATES OF TELEGRAPH EXPERTS AS TO COST OF CONSTRUCTING LINES.

We quote from Mr. Washburne’s paper:—

“In February, 1866, when, in view of the establishment of an experimental government line of telegraph, the Postmaster-General was called upon for information ‘in regard to the feasibility and usefulness of establishing, in connection with the Post-Office Department, telegraph lines,’ &c., ‘to be opened to the public at minimum rates of charge, ... and such statistics and exhibits predicated on cost of construction and capacity of transmission as will best illustrate its practicability,’ he sent to Congress lengthy statements, all of them prepared by persons believed to be interested in or officers of existing companies, in which the cost of a telegraphic line with six wires is put down by one writer at $1,400 per mile, by others at $665, exclusive of river cables and lines through cities.

“Among other statements so furnished is an amended one by Mr. Prescott, whose statement, when made part of a work intended as authority in telegraphic matters, is quoted above. For reasons not explained his views underwent a marked change between 1860 and 1866, and he makes haste to refute his own previous statements. His revised statement is as follows:—

“‘It is well known by every person who has any knowledge of telegraphy in this country previous to the publication of my work in 1860, that comparatively few lines had been at that time even tolerably well constructed; and one object which I had in view in writing it was to call attention to this prevailing fault, and endeavor to get a better system inaugurated.

“‘Since then there has been a very marked improvement in the construction of telegraph lines in this country. Small poles, of inferior wood, which required renewing every few years, have given place to large and more enduring ones of chestnut and cedar, and small iron wire, which offered great resistance to the passage of the electric current, has given place to zinc-coated wire of larger size and greater conductivity.

“‘But while the quality of the lines has greatly improved under the experienced and liberal management of the telegraph companies, the cost of constructing lines has kept pace with the increased cost of everything else, and has more than doubled within the past six years, so that lines which could have been built in 1860 for $150 per mile could not now be constructed for twice that amount. A substantial telegraph line, constructed on the line of a railroad, with cedar or chestnut poles thirty feet in length, and six inches at the top by twelve at the butt, set forty to the mile, with most improved form of insulator and best galvanized wire, would cost $400 per mile for a single wire. If forty-foot poles were used (which would be necessary if many wires were to be placed upon one set of poles), it would cost $600 per mile for a single wire. When fifty-foot poles are used, the cost is very greatly enhanced.

“‘Mr. Brown estimates the total cost of all the telegraph property in the United States at “a little more than $2,000,000.” Now, if we estimate the present cost of the lines and their equipment at the moderate price of $300 per mile, and the number of miles of wire in the country at only 150,000, we have a total cost of $45,000,000, without reckoning the value of the patents, franchises, &c.

“‘Mr. Brown states that “telegraphs properly constructed, the timber well prepared and wire protected, will last for 20 years.” This may be true, but it remains to be proved.’”

We fail to discern any refutation by Mr. Prescott of his previous statements. His reasons for a change in the estimates for building a telegraph line in 1866 over those of 1860 hardly need be stated. If the results of the intervening years of civil war, by which a million of able-bodied men were cut off from the fields of labor, the industries of the country burdened with enormous taxes before unknown, and prices inflated by the issue of hundreds of millions of paper dollars, do not suggest them, there is small hope of profit from the practical lessons of the times.

INCORRECT ASSERTION THAT AMERICAN TELEGRAPHS ARE NOT CONSTRUCTED ACCORDING TO SPECIFICATIONS.

Mr. Washburne says:—

“The officers of the telegraph companies, whose elaborate statement is also forwarded by the Postmaster-General, estimate as follows:—

“‘Cost of construction, including engineering, patents, and franchises, per mile: one wire—six wires.

“‘The cost of building lines varies according to locality, timber, method, nature of the ground, and the wires to be borne.

“‘A line from New York to Washington should be of the best class, and would be represented by the following figures:—

“‘The cost of franchises and patents cannot be given.

“‘Such a line built by government, carefully, and with reference to permanence, with six wires, would cost $250,000.

“‘If, however, it is seriously contemplated by the government to construct lines along the great commercial routes, and if it be the design in so doing to remove from the system, by every attainable appliance or improvement, all its ascertained defects, a structure of larger poles, and wires of superior conducting qualities, will be built. Such a line should be constructed of the most solid and durable wood, such as the black locust, so that masses of sleet or moist snow, so destructive to present lines, would leave it uninjured. Heavier wires also, which, by their increased conducting capacity, would give greater facility and certainty to transmission, should be used.

“‘These improvements, with greater care taken in the execution of the work than in that of ordinary structures, will, of course, increase its cost in proportion to the care bestowed. And should the government determine to provide facilities equal to those now proffered by private companies, it would be necessary to erect at least five lines of poles bearing six wires each, that being the number (thirty in all) now in use between New York and Washington by all the companies.

“‘A common wire line, intended to bear one, and not more than two wires, can be built for $150 to $180 per mile, the wire being number nine, galvanized, the poles of limited size, and costing not over $1.25 each.’

“It nowhere appears that such lines as all these writers insist shall be built by the government have ever been built in this or any other country. They seem to have taken it as matter of course that the government, if the experiment proposed should be tried, will depart from the usual method of construction and build the novel and costly structures for which their estimates are made. One looks in vain in the communication sent to Congress by the Postmaster-General for any reliable information as to the cost of a telegraphic line, constructed as such lines are in this and other countries, and such a line as the government, if it should be determined to build an experimental line, would probably build.”

COST OF AMERICAN TELEGRAPHS ESTIMATED BY EUROPEAN DATA.

In reply to Mr. Washburne’s statement that no such lines as all these writers insist shall be built by the government have ever been built in this or any other country, we respectfully, but firmly, assert that he is mistaken. This company possesses thousands of miles of telegraph lines constructed after the specifications given above, and costing as much as the estimates which he so emphatically distrusts. In order, however, to set this matter of cost at rest, we will endeavor to establish it by comparison with those of all other countries of which we have been able to procure official data.

Mr. Frank Ives Scudamore, one of the assistant secretaries of the British Post-Office, and the gentleman who furnished the reports and data by which the British government were induced to monopolize the telegraph in that country, and who shows no disposition to overvalue the property or services of private telegraph companies, testified before the select committee of the House of Commons, July 9, 1868, that the total number of miles of telegraph in operation in Great Britain in 1866 was 16,000, and that the companies expended in constructing the same about £2,300,000.[^[12]]

[12]. Special Report, Electric Telegraph Bill, ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 16 July, 1868. See testimony on pages 149 and 150.

The capital stock of the various companies represented a larger sum than this, and Mr. Scudamore himself acknowledges that he has got the amount under the mark rather than over it; therefore we presume that Mr. Washburne will allow this to be a fair estimate. Now £2,300,000 sterling is equal to $11,132,000 in gold, or $16,475,360 in United States legal money. This sum, divided by 16,000 miles of line, gives us $1,029.71 as the cost per mile.

The Belgian system comprised, at the end of 1866, 3,519 kilometres of telegraph lines, equal to 2,187 English miles. The cost of constructing these lines, up to December, 1866, amounted to 2,055,083 francs, equal to $411,016.60 gold, or $608,304.56 currency; which would give $274.14 for each mile of line. It must be borne in mind, however, that the Belgian government, owning all the railroads, could transport all the telegraph material free, and in many other ways greatly reduce the cost of the lines; of course the right of way cost them nothing, and with us this is an important item.

Bavaria has 2,115 miles of line, which cost for construction 843,207 florins, equal to $340,092.28 gold, or $503,338.35 in our currency. This would make the cost per mile $240. The same conditions, however, which reduced the cost of construction in Belgium tended to the same result in Bavaria.

In France there are 20,028 miles of lines costing 23,800,791 francs, equal to $4,760,158.20 in gold, or $7,045,034.13 in currency, making the average cost of each mile of line $351.75.

VALUE OF WESTERN UNION TELEGRAPH PROPERTY, BASED ON EUROPEAN DATA.

The number of miles of line belonging to this company is 50,760, and the number of miles of wire is 97,416.

Taking the average cost per mile of telegraph line in England as a basis for a calculation of the cost of the lines of the Western Union Telegraph Company, we have a total value of $52,166,079.60. If we estimate the cost of our lines by the average cost of all the telegraph lines in Europe of which any statistics can be obtained, we have a total value of $31,002,177.60.

Much has been said respecting the alleged unreasonably large capital of the Western Union Telegraph Company. This company was organized in the year 1851, with a capital of three hundred and sixty thousand dollars, and constructed a line of electric telegraph from Buffalo, N. Y., to Louisville, Ky., distance about six hundred miles. The cost of the line, on a gold basis, was thus $600 per mile. The present extent of line belonging to this company, if estimated by the cost of the original line, and forty per cent be added for the premium on gold, would give us $42,638,400 as its value. On the basis of the cost of the lines of the Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Company, the capital of the Western Union Telegraph Company would be about $100,000,000, and, on that of some other rival lines, nearly $200,000,000.

The gross receipts of the Western Union Telegraph Company from July 1, 1866, to November 1, 1868,—two years and four months,—were $16,088,498.86, and the gross expenses $9,862,272.31; leaving $6,226,225.75 as the net earnings, being an average of over seven per cent per annum on the capital of the company, which is $40,347,700. After applying $1,934,040.61 of the receipts of the past two years towards the construction of new lines, and the redemption of the bonds of the company, it has made, with one exception, regular semiannual dividends of two per cent. Such a property as this, if situated in England, or any other country in Europe, would be regarded as so valuable that its stock would be held at par, and yet it is selling in our markets at the present time at sixty-four per cent discount, or at thirty-six dollars per share! At this price the entire property, including payment of the bonded debt, would only cost $19,415,672.

Now what is the explanation of this singular distrust of the value of this great property as shown by its insignificant present market value? Less than four years ago the stock sold at above par, and its earnings and prospects were then inferior to what they are at the present time. An examination of the tables on page [39] will show that the gross receipts and net earnings have constantly increased during the past two and a half years, and there is every reason, so far as the management and prosperity of the company is concerned, why its market value should have increased instead of depreciating. The explanation for this singular state of things is to be found in the constant agitation in Congress of various schemes for the construction and operation of government telegraphs, at prices very much lower than the cost of the service. Let any industry be thus constantly menaced, and it must necessarily suffer in public estimation as a safe investment. We trust the subject will be effectually settled during the present session of Congress, and the incubus which has so long rested upon this important enterprise be removed.

ERRONEOUS ESTIMATE OF THE VALUE OF THE WESTERN UNION TELEGRAPH COMPANY’S PROPERTY.

Mr. Washburne says:—

“The statement furnished by the officers of the telegraph companies, for the information of the Postmaster-General, and by him forwarded to Congress as his reply to the call for information, is well calculated to remove all doubts as to the value of this kind of property. Among other items of information is the following:—

“The length of wire owned by the Western Union and United States companies is 60,000 miles.[^[13]] The average cost, as based on the now united capital, is $450 per mile. This embraces, besides the poles, wires, and apparatus, the following:—

[13]. This estimate was made before the consolidation of the American Telegraph Company and other properties with the Western Union Telegraph Company, and when its capital was only $27,000,000.

“It is remarkable that while the length of wire is given, the length of line nowhere appears.[^[14]] There is a vast difference between the cost of a telegraph line and a telegraphic wire. We have seen the cost of a line with a single wire estimated at $61.80, and each additional wire placed on the same posts, $31.80 per mile.

[14]. We have given the length of the lines, as well as the length of the wires belonging to the Western Union Telegraph Company, on page [32].

“In the absence of any exact information on the subject, we may fairly estimate that the lines of the companies named average three wires to each line. They possess, then, 20,000 miles of telegraph line, with an average of three wires thereon. They speak of ‘single wire lines costing $180 per mile.’ This estimate is too high for any line now in use; but if it be adopted as the basis of calculation, and an allowance of $45 per mile be made for each additional wire, we have, for the 20,000 miles of line owned by the companies named, a cost of $5,400,000, represented by a capital stock of $41,000,000! ‘The average cost’ per mile of each wire suspended on their lines, ‘as based on the now united capital, is $450 per mile.’ If ‘the united capital’ had been based upon the actual cost of the property of the company, it would have been nearer $4,000,000 than $41,000,000.

“The ‘information’ furnished to the Postmaster-General is compiled with the evident intent to discourage the experiment then contemplated. It is incomplete, and is compiled with an intent to mislead. To any one who will take the trouble to examine it carefully, and to apply the proper tests to its assertions, it furnishes additional arguments in favor of a careful experiment by the government in the construction and maintenance of telegraph lines under control of the Post-Office Department.”

To impugn the motives of an opponent is the weakest of arguments. If his statements are wrong, it is easy to show wherein, but wholesale denunciation convinces no one of the strength of the cause or the culpability of the assailed. We do not question Mr. Washburne’s honesty of purpose in making his unjust and extremely erroneous statements regarding the property or executive ability of the Western Union Telegraph Company, but we do say that he is most egregiously deceived upon all points which he has discussed.

In reply to the charges which Mr. Washburne brings against the Western Union Telegraph Company, of compiling information for the Postmaster-General with an intent to mislead, of exaggerating the cost of construction of lines, and misrepresenting the value of its own, we respectfully present the following facts respecting the organization of the company, the amount of its capital, the number of miles of line and the number of miles of route, together with a statement of the number of skilled persons in its employ.

THE ORGANIZATION OF THE WESTERN UNION TELEGRAPH COMPANY.

In the spring of 1866 there were three telegraph companies, covering vast areas of territory in the United States. Two of these companies operated lines over separate divisions of the country, but worked in connection with each other, while the third, which covered some portions of the territory of the others, was a competitor for the business of all sections. These three companies were the Western Union, with lines extending from New York to California, and throughout the Western States; the American, with lines extending from the Gulf of the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico, and through the lower Mississippi and Ohio Valleys; and the United States, with lines extending from Portland, Me., to Richmond, Va., and from New York to Kansas.

The necessity for direct communication between the East and the West, and the economy of one set of officers and employees instead of two, demanded the consolidation of the American and the Western Union; and the still greater saving to all the companies by the uniting of the lines and offices of the United States with those of the other two equally necessitated its amalgamation with the others.

The proportion of lines and wires to the capital varied with each company, the American company having the greater number; and in the terms of consolidation these differences were equitably arranged, and the capital stock of the consolidated company was established as follows:—

The greater portion of the debt of the Western Union Telegraph Company was incurred in the grand attempt to construct a line on the Northwest Coast, and across Behrings Strait to connect with the Russian line at the mouth of the Amoor River, known as Collins’s Overland Line to Europe, which was abandoned on the successful submergence and operation of the Atlantic Cable.

The financial condition of the Western Union Telegraph Company May 1, 1868, was as follows:—

STATIONS, LINES, AND EMPLOYEES OF THE WESTERN UNION TELEGRAPH COMPANY.

The Western Union Telegraph Company alone has

ENGLISH AND AMERICAN TELEGRAPHS COMPARED.

It has been shown that, several years before there is any record of regular public telegraph business in continental Europe, the system in the United States was in popular use. There can be no question that what restrained its use in Europe for so many years was governmental jealousy of its power, and not ignorance of its capacity. The subject was freely canvassed in the public prints, and was familiar to the learned men of all European nations. Even in England, whose government aided its introduction through private enterprise, the employment of the telegraph was hindered by a tariff so high as to shut it out from general use. Respecting this latter fact, so as to give in more marked contrast the early history of the telegraph on the two continents, a few details are given.

The Electric Telegraph Company of England was incorporated in 1846, and seems to have made its first work in the connection of the railway stations, post-office, police, admiralty, Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace, &c. As late as 1851 only eighty stations in the provinces, including the chief cities and outposts, had been opened. Priority of service was secured to the government, and the Secretary of State was empowered, on extraordinary occasions, to take possession of all telegraph stations and hold them for a week, with power to continue so to do.

The tariff of charges adopted was, for twenty words, including address and signature, one penny per mile for the first fifty miles; one half-penny for the second fifty; and one farthing for any distance beyond 100 miles. The lowest charge was 2s. 6d., sterling. This tariff existed as late as 1851. Compare these rates with those of the American lines at the same period.

From London to York, a distance of about 230 miles, the charge was 9s., equal to $2.25 gold.

From New York to Boston, a distance of 220 miles, the tariff for ten words, exclusive of address and signature, was twenty cents!

From London to Edinburgh, a distance of about 400 miles, the charge was 13s., or $3.25, while from New York to Buffalo, 500 miles, the charge was forty cents. On the English tariff of charges, a message from New York to New Orleans would have been $11.46; the actual tariff was $2.50.

ACKNOWLEDGED SUPERIORITY OF THE EARLY AMERICAN SERVICE.

On this subject we have the testimony of one of the best of British popular publications,—“Chambers’s Papers for the People,” published in 1851,—whose words we quote:—

“The scale of charges in the United States is much lower than in this country; the electric telegraph is consequently more available to the greater part of the population engaged in commercial affairs. Apart from business and politics, the Americans have made the telegraph subservient to other uses; medical practitioners in distant towns have been consulted, and their prescriptions transmitted along the wire; and a short time since a gallant gentleman in Boston married a lady in New York by telegraph,—a process which may supersede the necessity for elopement, provided the law hold the ceremony valid. A favorable idea of the immediate practical utility of the telegraph may be gathered from a communication to the present writer from New York. ‘The telegraph,’ he writes, ‘is used in this country by all classes except the very poorest, the same as the mail. The most ordinary messages are sent in this way,—a joke, an invitation to a party, an inquiry about health, &c. At the offices they are accommodating, and will inquire about messages that have miscarried or have not been answered, without extra charge.’ The lines in the United States are carried across the country regardless of travelled thoroughfares; over tracts of sand and swamp, through the wild primeval forest where man has not yet begun his contest with nature, where even the rudiments of civilization are yet to be learned. Away it stretches, the metallic indicator of intellectual supremacy, traversing regions haunted by the rattlesnake and the alligator, solitudes that re-echo with nocturnal howlings of the wolf and the bear. Communications are maintained from North to South, East and West, through all the length and breadth of the mighty Union, and with a frequency and social purpose exceeding that of any other nation. In one stretch, Maine and Vermont, where winter with deepest snows and arctic temperature usurps six months of the year, are united with the lands of the tropics, where the magnolia blooms and palm-trees grow in perpetual summer. Subordinate lines bring the great lakes—the inland seas—into direct communication with the ocean ports on the eastern shore. Nothing stops the restless, enterprising spirit of that people.”

REMARKABLY LOW TARIFFS OF THE EARLY AMERICAN TELEGRAPHS.

There is, indeed, nothing more remarkable respecting the presentation of any great invention to the public than the fact that the electric telegraph in America was thrown open to the public, in its very inception, at the lowest tariff which has yet, under all the excitement of opposition, been adopted.

What was true of Great Britain with respect to tariffs during the early years of the introduction of the telegraph applies, as has been seen, equally to France and the other European states. Every tariff adopted was, to a large extent, prohibitory, and the facts connected with these years utterly falsify the statement that Europe has shown (until within a very few years) anything like the spirit of liberality which private companies in the United States have manifested in this matter.

Since these early years no advance was made in our tariffs until the third year of the rebellion, when the depreciation of the currency necessitated the increasing of the salaries of employees from fifty to one hundred per cent, and enhanced the price of material in a corresponding ratio, compelling a considerable increase of the tariff on despatches. Since the war closed, most of the important tariffs have been reduced to their original standard, without any corresponding reduction of the price of material or labor.

In contrast with this, we need only to point to the large advance in railway fares and transportation, in the cost of entertainment at hotels, in the prices of daily newspapers, and in that of almost every commodity or service which the people enjoy; and yet the telegraph, like all other enterprises, has been burdened with the same increase in the cost of labor and materials.

NO SIMILARITY BETWEEN THE TELEGRAPH AND POSTAL SYSTEMS.

The idea which has been repeatedly broached, that the telegraph and postal communication are in the same category, is entirely fallacious. The telegraph does that which the post cannot do, and which, before the telegraph was invented, remained undone. If the public use the telegraph at a cost of 25 cents when they might use the mail at a cost of three cents, it is obvious that the use of the telegraph implies something essentially different from the use of the post. If they use the post, with its tardy departure and delivery, instead of the telegraph with its instant and continuous departure and delivery, it is equally obvious that there is something implied in the use of the post that is not to be obtained by the use of the telegraph.

Postal correspondence and telegraph communication are two very distinct things.

A telegram announces sudden illness; death; an accident; prices of gold every five minutes; prices of stocks every hour; sudden fluctuations in the values of commodities; orders rooms at a hotel, while the sender is en route and flying to the distant city as rapidly as steam can carry him; countermands orders and instructions contained in letters sent by post; orders letters to be returned unopened; orders the arrest of fugitives from justice after they have taken their departure on the railway; orders the search for a package left in the cars, and its return by a succeeding train; announces that the Merrimac has destroyed several ships of war, and may get to sea in spite of the Monitor and ravage the coast; announces that the flag has been fired upon at Charleston, and in twenty minutes arouses the entire nation. None of these things are possible for the post. Before a letter could convey the intelligence of the sudden illness, the patient is dead, or convalescent; the dead is buried; gold has changed in price a hundred times; stocks have gone up and down; the man arrives at his hotel twenty-four hours in advance of his letter; the instructions in the letters have been acted upon, and no subsequent ones can repair the damage; the fugitive from justice escapes out of the country; the package left in the cars is irretrievably lost; the Merrimac has been sent to the bottom, and the alarm caused by the tidings through the post, which must continue until another arrival, is groundless; and the flag has been insulted a month, before all the patriots of the country have heard the tidings by the slow, plodding mail.

The telegram is often the index to the more full and copious information conveyed by the post, but it does not supersede it. There is no similarity in the conveyance of matter by post or telegraph.

A letter deposited in a post-office is placed in a bag, and carried to its destination with no less labor and expense than if ten letters were so deposited. The time taken in transport is the same. A leather bag covers a thousand letters as easily as a solitary note. It was this fact which led to the reduction of postage. But it was accomplished without the loss of an hour to government, without the enlargement of a coach, or any considerable increase in the compensation paid for the service. It involved no new brain-labor, no new responsibilities, no new expense. Under such circumstances high postage was a folly, and to return to it would be almost a crime.

A communication by telegraph, on the contrary, demands a calm, unoccupied brain, and a steady hand to manipulate its contents, letter by letter. A slip of the finger from the manipulating key changes its meaning; a truant thought alters the manuscript; a shadow of forgetfulness mars its whole design. It demands a whole wire for its use, and a given time for its solitary passage. Hence the necessity for multiplying the wires and enlarging the operating staff.

Added to all this is the necessity for repeating this process when destined to any point not directly reached by the originating office.

Over and over again have many of the messages left in the hands of telegraph companies to be translated or re-written before they reach their destination; very different from the sealed letter, which needs but the toss of a practised hand to change its route and put it under the cover of a new bag.

The difference between the use of the post and telegraph is well shown by the practice of the Western Union Telegraph Company, which requires all of its employees to use the mail, instead of the telegraph, in every case where the interests of the company will not suffer by the delay. All check errors, and discrepancies in accounts, are settled by correspondence through the mail, where the same might be done more readily, though at far greater expense, by the use of the wires. Now, if the company owning the lines, and working them, can better afford to pay the postage on its communications, than to block up the wires with its own free business, it shows a very radical difference between the expense of transmitting matter by steam, or horse-power, and doing the same by electricity.

COLLECTION AND DELIVERY OF TELEGRAMS BY LETTER-CARRIERS IMPRACTICABLE.

The plan proposed for the collection and delivery of telegrams by letter-carriers is equally impracticable. The rapid and safe delivery of messages is the great difficulty with which the telegraph companies have to contend, and the amount paid for this service forms a very material portion of the expense attending the operation of the system. How would this service be performed if left to the Post-Office Department? In 1865—the last year containing the statistics of the number of letters sent through the United States mail—the Postmaster-General estimates the number of letters transmitted at 467,591,600. No statement of the total number of letters delivered by carrier in the United States is given in the Postmaster-General’s reports for 1865 or 1866, but he states that the number of cities at which free delivery is established is 46, and the total number of carriers, 863; that 582 carriers are attached to ten offices, from which are delivered 38,060,009 letters. If the remaining 281 carriers, who are distributed among 36 offices, deliver as many in proportion, we have a total of 56,446,004 letters delivered for the year, or about nine per cent of the whole number transmitted through the mail. This does not present a very flattering result, and does not argue very favorably for the satisfactory delivery of thirteen millions of telegrams, through the same channel, at over 4,000 offices!

Compare with these meagre results the operations of the British Post-Office, which employs 11,449 carriers, and annually delivers 705,000,000 letters.

As for the collection of telegrams from street boxes, the very idea is in direct antagonism to the first principles of telegraphic communication. A street box may answer the purpose of a place of deposit for a letter intended for the next day’s mail, but those who desire to communicate by telegraph want immediate and speedy communication. They require their message conveyed, and very frequently answered, whilst they wait in the telegraph office. They have no idea of depositing their messages to await the diurnal collection from the street box. Indeed, the idea is too absurd to be seriously discussed. There are upwards of 100 telegraph offices in the city of New York alone, and a proportionate number of branch offices in all the cities. Is it probable that persons who wish to send a despatch will walk several miles to send it by government line rather than patronize private lines at their own doors?

We cannot think that a department whose expenses exceed its receipts by $6,437,991.85 in a single year; which cannot even guess within a hundred millions of the number of letters it transmits per annum; which provides only forty-six free delivery offices out of a total of 29,387 post-offices in the United States; which does not even pretend to give the number of letters delivered free for any one year; and which sends over 4,500,000 letters to the Dead-Letter Office per annum, is a very proper guardian of so important an interest as the Electric Telegraph.

The space occupied for the various telegraph offices in all the principal cities of the United States is considerably greater than that required by the post-offices, while the rent paid by our company, owing to the more central and eligible situations of our offices, is greatly in excess of that paid by the Post-Office Department. In New York, our company pays $40,000 per annum for rent of its central office alone. So far as space and eligibility of location is concerned, we could much better accommodate the public by the delivery of their letters at our numerous offices, than they are now accommodated at the remote and inconvenient places provided for them by the government, and in all respects we could much better handle the mails than the post-office, as now located and generally conducted, could manage the telegraph.

MR. WASHBURNE’S PROPOSED EXPERIMENTAL LINE.

Mr. Washburne says:—

“In the present position of the finances of the country, it would hardly be wise to enter upon an extended experiment. It should be tried at first on a limited scale, and at small cost. If it proves successful, and becomes what the telegraph under other government control has become in other countries,—a source of revenue, as well as an inestimable boon to the community,—it ought to be, and doubtless will be, extended. The amount necessary to construct a suitable line from Washington to New York, and to sustain it until it becomes self-sustaining, will not exceed $75,000, and it is the belief of experienced telegraphers that, with a tariff of charges as low as that of Belgium and Switzerland, and with an additional charge of single postage upon each message, the line would be self-sustaining from the beginning, and would probably repay its entire cost long before the value of the structure was materially impaired.”

The results of lowering tariffs for telegrams to a point approximating the charge for letter postage has been tried so often in this country, as not to require a new demonstration. The following statement will show the result of a recent trial between the two important cities of Chicago and Milwaukee.

On the 12th of August, 1867, a rival line was opened between those two points, having no connection with any other at either end. The competition, therefore, was for local business only. The tariff previously had been sixty cents. The average number of messages transmitted per day for the ten days preceding the beginning of business by the new company was sixty-nine, and the daily receipts fifty-five dollars. On the opening of the rival line the rate was reduced to forty cents, and the average number of messages sent by both was eighty-seven, the receipts forty-seven dollars. On the 16th September the rate was further reduced to twenty cents, with the following results: Average number of messages per day for both lines, one hundred and thirty-three. Average receipts, thirty-seven dollars. On November 8th the rate was reduced to ten cents, and remained so for the next fourteen days, during which the number of telegrams transmitted daily by both lines was one hundred and sixty-seven, and the average receipts twenty-six dollars.

About the 20th November the rates were advanced to forty cents, by mutual agreement, and afterwards the lines and records of the new company came into our possession.

Statement No. 1 exhibits a comparison for the first ten days of August, 1867, before the opening of the rival line, and when the tariff was sixty cents, with the same period in 1868 after the tariff had been forty cents for nearly a year. Statement No. 2 makes a similar comparison between the aggregate business of the Western Union and the competing line for the first fifteen days after the latter opened in 1867, and the same period in 1868, when, although the rate was the same, there was no competition. By Table No. 1 it appears that, at a tariff of sixty cents, the number of messages per day last year was sixty-nine, and the receipts therefor fifty-five dollars. That during the same period this year, at a reduction of one third in the tariff, there was an increase of about thirty-three and one third per cent in the number of messages, but a loss in revenue of twenty per cent. In other words, our work has been considerably increased, and our compensation therefor sensibly diminished. Statement No. 2 shows that last year, under the stimulus of active competition, and a reduction in rates of one third, the average number of messages per day for fifteen days was but four more than for the ten days next preceding. It also shows that, after the reduced rate had been in operation a year, and, notwithstanding the fact that the telegraph business in all sections of the country in the month of August this year was somewhat larger than last, the average had been increased but eight messages per day, and this increase was attended by a loss of over three dollars per day in the revenue.

From September 1 to November 3, 1868, the number of messages transmitted per day between these places was one hundred four and a quarter, and the average daily receipts $56.41.

On the 4th of November another rival line was opened between Chicago and Milwaukee, but no change in rates was introduced until the 24th of November. The average number of messages transmitted per day by the Western Union Telegraph Company between these places, from the 4th to the 23d of November, inclusive, was seventy-eight, and the daily receipts $43.27.

On the 24th of November the rates were reduced to twenty cents per message, with the following results: Average number of messages transmitted per day between Chicago and Milwaukee by the Western Union Telegraph Company, sixty-eight; average daily receipts, $24.59.

It should be remembered that the business from which these exhibits are derived is between two of the most important inland commercial cities in the country. Both are largely interested in two important branches of commerce,—grain and lumber; and probably no other points could be selected from which more reliable results could be obtained.

The reason why the Chicago and Milwaukee table is the only one given to show the results of competition is, that such comparisons are only valuable when they exhibit the effect upon the business of both competitors. This is impossible in other cases, because our opponents will not furnish us with their figures. We have written to every Telegraph Company in the United States for such statistics for publication, but none of them has responded to our request.

LONDON DISTRICT TELEGRAPH COMPANY.

We copy the following official statement of the London District Telegraph Company from the Telegraphic Journal, London, July 30, 1864. The capital of the company is £60,000, and the average cost of telegrams transmitted over its lines, for distances that cannot exceed ten miles, was 6d., equal to eighteen cents in our currency, and yet the loss in four and a half years’ business was £9,573 3s. 7d.:—

The Directors of the above company express much satisfaction in being able to present to the shareholders so favorable a statement of its business; but it strikes us that a system which entailed a net loss of one sixth of the capital invested in a little over four years is not a desirable one for imitation.

TELEGRAPHS UNDER GOVERNMENT AND PRIVATE CONTROL COMPARED.

The assertion that the Telegraph facilities are better in those countries where it is under governmental control than in those where it is left to private enterprise is entirely erroneous, as the following tables, compiled from official data, will show.

Thus it will be seen that Continental Europe, where the telegraphs are under government control, furnishes but 4,347 offices for a population of over 250,000,000, while Great Britain, the Dominion of Canada, and the United States, where telegraphy has been left to the control of the people, untrammelled by governmental interference, monopoly, or restriction, furnish 6,659 offices for a population of 64,000,000! The number of telegrams transmitted per annum in Continental Europe is only 12,486,311, while there were sent by the people of the three countries where it has hitherto been free from government repression, 18,741,360. The tariff of charges in Continental Europe averages eighty-one cents per message, while in the three countries where the people manage the business it averages but fifty-one cents.

Private enterprise alone laid the submarine cables through the Persian Gulf and Mediterranean Sea, across the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the Vineyard Sound, the Strait of Florida, the English Channel, the North Sea, and the German and Atlantic Oceans.

THE TELEGRAPH AND THE PRESS.

In nothing, perhaps, is the superiority of private enterprise over governmental control more strongly marked than in the extraordinary amount of news furnished to the press of the United States, as contrasted by the meagre supply of the European journals.

By a system of co-operation among the newspapers of the United States and the Western Union Telegraph Company, the news of the world is daily furnished to the people of every portion of this country at a price within the reach of the poorest citizen.

On page [8] we have shown that 294,503,630 words are annually furnished to the newspapers of the United States, at an average cost of less than two mills per word. This immense amount of matter is not transmitted to each newspaper separately, but through a combination of wires only possible to a vast system like that owned by the Western Union Telegraph Company, it is sent to a large number of places simultaneously, with only one transmission.

The newspapers of the United States are associated together on the co-operative system. There is a general association having its headquarters in New York, which collects news from every part of the world; and there are local associations in every section of the country, which furnish their quota of intelligence to the general association, and receive in return such news as they require.

As an illustration of the manner in which this service is performed, we will take the State press of New York for an example. The report is compiled by the agent of the Association for the various editions of the newspapers requiring it, and it is then handed to the telegrapher, who with the manipulation of his magic key transmits it simultaneously to Poughkeepsie, Hudson, Albany, Troy, Utica, Syracuse, Auburn, Elmira, Binghamton, Owego, Rome, Oswego, Rochester, and Buffalo, New York, to Rutland and Burlington, Vermont, and to Scranton, Pennsylvania. These stations are not all on a single wire, nor on the same route, and the question may be asked, How can they all receive the same information from a single impulse? This is accomplished by a combination of circuits through an instrument called a repeater, by which the intelligence can be transmitted to a thousand offices as easily as to one.

The news is sent to the Eastern press in a similar manner. The manipulation of the key at New York transmits the report simultaneously to Bridgeport, New Haven, Hartford, Waterbury, and Norwich, Conn., Providence, R. I., and to Springfield, Worcester, Boston, Fall River and New Bedford, Mass.

The operator at each of these places receives the reports by the click of the instruments,—reading by the sound of the armature,—and with an agate pen copies them upon manifold paper, making as many impressions as are necessary to furnish each paper with a duplicate copy.

Direct wires carry and bring news from and to Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Washington, New Orleans, Plaister Cove, and other important points. Sixteen wires work out of New York every night to transmit or receive news reports, and all over the United States the ubiquitous iron threads are permeated by the subtile and invisible fluid during all the silent hours of the night, conveying intelligence of passing events in all sections of the civilized world for publication in the morning journals throughout the country.

It is a singular and suggestive fact, that the amount of news which we furnish to the press of the United States, for an aggregate sum of $521,509, is considerably greater than the entire telegraphic correspondence of Continental Europe, for which the paternal governments of those enlightened and enterprising peoples receive $11,597,632.71.

The following table will serve to show the remarkable contrast, in this respect, between the systems under government and private control. The number of messages delivered to the press are obtained for this comparison by dividing the total number of words furnished to the press by 20, the European standard:—

The above exhibit illustrates the difference between what can be accomplished under a popular government which leaves the press and telegraph free and untrammelled, and the results of the paternal system which the governments of Continental Europe impose upon their subjects. For these great benefits the people of this country are indebted to the government for the one negative quality of letting the press and telegraph alone. For the positive quality which actually provides them they are solely indebted to the enterprise and public spirit of the press, and the Western Union Telegraph Company, the latter furnishing the reports at a price which barely covers the cost of service employed in transmitting them, and leaving nothing to defray the expense of the wear of the lines, or interest on the investments for their construction.

In no other country in the world is there such a system, and in none can there ever be, until the policy of our government is imitated, and the people left to manage their own private affairs, leaving the press and the telegraph free and untrammelled by governmental control or repression. What our government, with such an example already set, might be able or disposed to do, in the event of its monopolizing the telegraphs, it is impossible to say; but it is unquestionably true, that no other government has ever made such a use of them to promote the education and general well-being of its people.

We believe it would prove a serious misfortune to the press and the people, if the government were to destroy, by its interference, this admirable co-operative system of obtaining telegraphic news at such low rates.

The tariff for special press reports is as follows: For the first one hundred words, full rates; for the next four hundred words, a discount of thirty-three and one third per cent; for the next five hundred words, one half the ordinary tariff; and all over one thousand words, a discount is made of sixty-six and two thirds per cent.

Mr. Washburne’s bill provides for a general tariff of one cent per word for telegrams, with an additional charge of three cents for postage, and two cents for delivery, and stipulates that a reduction of not more than fifty per cent shall be made for press reports. This rate would increase the average cost of news for the press of the United States more than three hundred per cent, and thus the newspapers would be compelled to pay an extra tax of a million dollars per annum for the privileges they now enjoy.

If these facts show any results to warrant governmental assumption or interference in the business of telegraphing, we fail to perceive them.

REVIEW
OF
MR. GARDINER G. HUBBARD’S LETTER TO THE POSTMASTER-GENERAL ON THE EUROPEAN AND AMERICAN SYSTEMS OF TELEGRAPH.

We have recently received a pamphlet from Gardiner G. Hubbard, Esq., of Boston, entitled a “Letter to the Postmaster-General on the European and American Systems of Telegraph, with Remedy for the present High Rates,” which we will briefly review.

Mr. Hubbard commences by saying:—

“The reasons that have induced the public to commit to the government the transmission of the mails by rail have induced most civilized nations to intrust it with the duty of transmitting correspondence by telegraph. England and America are the only important exceptions.”

As England and America are the only “civilized nations” where the public have any control of such matters, there need be no further discussion of this proposition.

ERRONEOUS STATEMENTS RELATIVE TO BELGIAN TELEGRAPHS.

Alluding to the Belgian telegraph, Mr. Hubbard says:—

“In 1850 the private lines then in operation were purchased by the government, and have since been under its management. The rates were originally one franc and a half for a message of twenty words. At these rates, the telegraph was little used for inland messages, and its development was very slow. In January, 1863, they were reduced to one franc, and December, 1865, to half a franc.”

By referring to the official tables published by the Belgian government, on page [94], it will be seen that the average cost per message on the Belgian lines in 1851 and 1852 was over 6 francs; in 1853, 5.10 francs; 1854 and 1855, over 4 francs; in 1856 and 1857, 3.62 and 3.42 francs; from 1858 to 1862, over 2 francs; and even in 1867 they averaged 0.85 francs.

We quote from Mr. Hubbard again:—

By an examination of Table H, page [96], it will be seen that the total receipts of the Belgian telegraphs for 1866 were 962,213 francs; expenditures, 1,217,496 francs; loss, 255,283 francs. Of the receipts only 407,532 francs were for inland messages, of which there were transmitted 692,536, while 553,580 francs were received for 435,469 international and transit messages. As before stated, the expense of service upon transit messages is merely nominal. They simply pass through the kingdom, and require no labor in receiving, transmitting, or delivery. The greater part of the expense, therefore, was incurred upon the inland messages; and, had not the Belgian administration imposed a tax upon neighboring nations of 553,580 francs for messages coming from or going to other countries, there would have been a deficit of 809,964 francs on the year’s business instead of 255,283 francs.