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.