“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]
Footnote 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.