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.

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.

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.

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.

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]

“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]....