The idea which has been repeatedly broached, that the telegraph and
postal communication are in the same category, is entirely fallacious.
The telegraph does that which the post cannot do, and which, before the
telegraph was invented, remained undone. If the public use the telegraph
at a cost of 25 cents when they might use the mail at a cost of three
cents, it is obvious that the use of the telegraph implies something
essentially different from the use of the post. If they use the post,
with its tardy departure and delivery, instead of the telegraph with its
instant and continuous departure and delivery, it is equally obvious
that there is something implied in the use of the post that is not to be
obtained by the use of the telegraph.
Postal correspondence and telegraph communication are two very distinct
things.
A telegram announces sudden illness; death; an accident; prices of gold
every five minutes; prices of stocks every hour; sudden fluctuations in
the values of commodities; orders rooms at a hotel, while the sender is
_en route_ and flying to the distant city as rapidly as steam can carry
him; countermands orders and instructions contained in letters sent by
post; orders letters to be returned unopened; orders the arrest of
fugitives from justice after they have taken their departure on the
railway; orders the search for a package left in the cars, and its
return by a succeeding train; announces that the Merrimac has destroyed
several ships of war, and may get to sea in spite of the Monitor and
ravage the coast; announces that the flag has been fired upon at
Charleston, and in twenty minutes arouses the entire nation. None of
these things are possible for the post. Before a letter could convey the
intelligence of the sudden illness, the patient is dead, or
convalescent; the dead is buried; gold has changed in price a hundred
times; stocks have gone up and down; the man arrives at his hotel
twenty-four hours in advance of his letter; the instructions in the
letters have been acted upon, and no subsequent ones can repair the
damage; the fugitive from justice escapes out of the country; the
package left in the cars is irretrievably lost; the Merrimac has been
sent to the bottom, and the alarm caused by the tidings through the
post, which must continue until another arrival, is groundless; and the
flag has been insulted a month, before all the patriots of the country
have heard the tidings by the slow, plodding mail.
The telegram is often the index to the more full and copious information
conveyed by the post, but it does not supersede it. There is no
similarity in the conveyance of matter by post or telegraph.
A letter deposited in a post-office is placed in a bag, and carried to
its destination with no less labor and expense than if _ten_ letters
were so deposited. The time taken in transport is the same. A leather
bag covers a thousand letters as easily as a solitary note. It was this
fact which led to the reduction of postage. But it was accomplished
without the loss of an hour to government, without the enlargement of a
coach, or any considerable increase in the compensation paid for the
service. It involved no new brain-labor, no new responsibilities, no new
expense. Under such circumstances high postage was a folly, and to
return to it would be almost a crime.
A communication by telegraph, on the contrary, demands a calm,
unoccupied brain, and a steady hand to manipulate its contents, letter
by letter. A slip of the finger from the manipulating key changes its
meaning; a truant thought alters the manuscript; a shadow of
forgetfulness mars its whole design. It demands a whole wire for its
use, and a given time for its solitary passage. Hence the necessity for
multiplying the wires and enlarging the operating staff.
Added to all this is the necessity for repeating this process when
destined to any point not directly reached by the originating office.
Over and over again have many of the messages left in the hands of
telegraph companies to be translated or re-written before they reach
their destination; very different from the sealed letter, which needs
but the toss of a practised hand to change its route and put it under
the cover of a new bag.
The difference between the use of the post and telegraph is well shown
by the practice of the Western Union Telegraph Company, _which requires
all of its employees to use the mail, instead of the telegraph, in every
case where the interests of the company will not suffer by the delay_.
All check errors, and discrepancies in accounts, are settled by
correspondence through the mail, where the same might be done more
readily, though at far greater expense, by the use of the wires. Now, if
the company owning the lines, and working them, can better afford to pay
the postage on its communications, than to block up the wires with its
own free business, it shows a very radical difference between the
expense of transmitting matter by steam, or horse-power, and doing the
same by electricity.