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.