“The capacities of the line of telegraph are very great. 2,000 words
an hour are easily transmitted by a good operator over a single
wire. At this rate there could be sent over fifty-one of the eighty
or ninety wires leading from the New York office of the Western
Union Telegraph Company 2,448,000 words, or 97,920 messages of
twenty-five words each, a day. This amount cannot be obtained. Forty
messages an hour are easily transmitted by a good operator over a
through line, and this number could be sent every hour by relays of
operators. This estimate gives 1,224,000 words, or 48,960 messages.
On through and local lines a deduction of one half for twelve hours
of the day, during which the local lines are open, must be
made,—918,000 words, or 36,720 messages, on through and local lines.
The average number actually transmitted on these fifty-one wires is
184,378 words, or 7,375 messages. 733,622 more words, or 29,340 more
messages might daily be transmitted over these lines. If the present
business could be distributed over all the hours of the day, or if
there were sufficient business for all the wires the whole day, the
rates could be largely reduced.
“Nearly eighteen hours of each day the wires are idle, yet a
considerable portion of the expenses of the line are no greater than
they would be if messages were transmitted the whole time. Interest,
depreciation, and repairs, office rent, salaries, and general
management are the same, whether much or little business is
transacted. These items constitute about one third of all the
expenses on the Western Union line. The other expenses will not be
increased in proportion to the increase of the time.”
In reply to the above, we assert that 2,000 words an hour are not easily
transmitted by a good operator over a single wire. There are operators
who can send at this rate for a short time, but they are very few in
number, and none of them could maintain this rate of speed for any
length of time. It must be recollected that a message must be copied
with a pen as rapidly as it is sent. Now, we doubt if Mr. Hubbard even
can write 2,000 words legibly within an hour, with pen and ink. It is
well known that the celebrated horse Dexter has trotted a mile in the
unprecedented time of 2.17, but would it not be absurd to state, on that
account, that every good horse can easily trot twenty-six miles an hour?
Why, Dexter himself cannot keep up this rate of speed for even a quarter
of an hour. Because a celebrated pedestrian walked a hundred miles in
twenty-four hours, would it be just to say that every good walker can
easily walk 36,500 miles per annum? A man in California rode three
hundred miles in twenty-four hours; would it be honest, therefore, to
say that every good horseman can easily ride 9,000 miles a month? The
maximum speed of the best operators is 1,500 words per hour, but the
average speed of the best is very much below this.
The amount of business done upon a wire in a given time is vastly
greater in this country than in any other. In Europe there are 355,218
miles of wire, while in the United States there are less than one third
as many, and yet the wires in this country transmit more telegraphic
matter per annum than all the lines in Europe. This almost incredible
fact is explained by the superior character and ability of our operating
staff. In Europe they still use recording instruments, and slowly and
laboriously pick out their messages upon strips of paper. Here, on the
contrary, every operator—except in the small villages—reads by sound,
and does three times as much work upon a wire as the poorly paid and
inefficient European operator. Now, this being the case,—and the
statistics prove it,—it can hardly be pretended that our company gets
much less out of its wires than they can reasonably perform, and yet Mr.
Hubbard says we “could easily send on fifty-one wires 97,920 messages
per day, while in reality we only send 7,375.” Here is a difference
between theory and practice that beats even Dexter’s 2.17 as the rate of
speed which every horse in America can average.