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]
Footnote 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.