Another serious drawback to the value of the telegraph under government
management is its failure to make reparation to private individuals for
losses caused by the errors or imperfection of its service. In no
country where the telegraph exists under government control is there any
assumption of accountability for errors or delays in the transmission of
messages. In some countries they will not even inquire into the cause of
delay or errors, and in others, as in Spain, they will only do so for
the purpose of punishing the delinquent employee, but in no case to
reimburse the patron of the telegraph for his loss. This failure to
assume any responsibility in the matter is of great importance to the
public. The amount paid by the Western Union Telegraph Company per
annum, on account of these unavoidable errors and delays, is very
considerable. The public would be reluctant to leave the correct
transmission and delivery of their important messages to the chances of
a government system which is notoriously defective, and which would in
no case reimburse them for losses occasioned by errors in the
transmission of their telegrams, or failure to send them at all. The
scheme proposed by Mr. Hubbard, owing to the divided responsibility of
the service, would be even worse than the absorption of the lines by the
government. Public opinion could not reach the contractor, because he is
the servant of the government, and not of the public, and it would fail
to influence the Post-Office Department, as it does not itself perform
the service, and, because being a department, it is practically
irresponsible. How much influence, for example, has public opinion on
the collectors of internal revenue or customs, or even the postmasters
of this country?
If despatches were left at the post-offices, or dropped in the street
boxes, as provided for in Mr. Hubbard’s bill, they would have to take
their chances of transmission and delivery, with no recourse, in case of
failure, for redress from any source. If a despatch should fail to reach
its destination, and complaint was made to the postmaster, he would
reply that he was not responsible for its transmission, and would refer
the aggrieved person to the telegraph contractor; while the latter would
answer that he was a servant of the government, and not responsible to
the public for the imperfections of his service. And the result would
be, that while the sender of the despatch obtained no redress, he would
not have even the satisfaction of knowing which service was at fault,
the post-office or the telegraph.
THE PROPOSITION TO ERECT COMPETITIVE GOVERNMENTAL TELEGRAPHS UNFOUNDED
IN PUBLIC NECESSITY, UNJUST AND DELUSIVE.
The proposition to erect a competitive governmental telegraph line
between Washington and New York, as described in the paper of Mr.
Washburne, and the bill designed to authorize it, is a scheme founded
upon no public necessity, unjust and delusive.
It is easily demonstrable that the tariff proposed by the bill, if
adopted by the government, could only be maintained by large drafts upon
the national treasury. It is well known that the active hours of
telegraph service are about five, and the ordinary average of
transmission not over fifty messages per hour, the general allowance
being forty. Thus each of the four wires proposed to be erected under
the bill would be capable of earning, at the maximum, five dollars per
hour, or a total daily income of one hundred dollars, an amount unequal
to the provision of the most ordinary indoor service, to say nothing of
the cost of management, repairs of lines, battery power, stationery, and
many other necessary expenses. The annual cost to our company of repairs
and inspection on this route alone is $20,000.
This company denies the exorbitance of the rates it has adopted, and
which it is now actively engaged in modifying so as to secure the
fairest correspondence to other branches of labor, and the utmost
development of the system. It therefore deprecates as illusory, as well
as unjust, the proposal to establish rates lower than those which in
Belgium have caused a loss of one third of the tariff on each message
sent, and which, under the management of a department now showing an
enormous annual deficit, cannot fail to prove perplexing and disastrous.
It deprecates also, as utterly illusory, the idea that under such
tariffs a product would be realized that would provide for the extension
of the government lines to other regions. This delusion, which makes it
possible for an intelligent public man to predicate so absurd a result,
has for a basis that which is ever used to allure men into schemes of
promised wealth. The insane speculation which, thirty years ago, ruined
tens of thousands of our people, by counting the leaves of the _Morus
multicaulis_ as the products of veritable mulberry-trees, on which
delighted caterpillars would feed, and enrich their owners with untold
webs of native silk, was not more illusory than that which to-day, by
showing the possibilities of each hour by day and night, crams the wires
with possible messages which will never be sent, and estimates balances
which cannot be earned.
This scheme would be unjust to government, by undermining and perilling
a business which pays $300,000 per annum to its revenues, besides
casting upon a nation, great because of the energy which has
characterized its private enterprises, the odium of initiating
competition with one of the most useful products of the national brain,
before time has been given to complete the design of those who direct
it, and to fully illustrate its capacity.
The policy and practice of the Western Union Telegraph Company favor a
reduction of the rates on despatches as rapidly as the necessary
expenses of the service will admit; _and if the government will abolish
its tax on the receipts for transmitting telegrams, this company will
immediately lower its rates until the reduction upon the gross amount of
business done shall be twice as much as the tax remitted_.
This would lessen the rates for telegraphing nearly ten per cent, and
would be a far better plan for furnishing cheaper telegraphic facilities
to the people than the construction and operation of government lines at
the expense of the national treasury.
THE TELEGRAPH BILL PROPOSED TO BE ENACTED BY CONGRESS WITHOUT NATIONAL
EXAMPLE.
It must be borne in mind that the remunerativeness of telegraph lines
depends largely upon the revenues of a few important cities, without
which the enterprise would not have an income sufficient to support it.
To take away the receipts of New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and
Washington, with Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and a few
others of like importance, would make it impossible for any company to
maintain itself, far less to meet the constant demand of an enlarging
population and new settlements for the extension of its lines. This is
not peculiar to America. In Great Britain, where there are 2,151
stations, seventy-six per cent of the entire receipts are received at 18
stations, fifteen per cent at 81 stations, and only nine per cent at the
residue. Even of the seventy-six per cent received at the 18 stations,
one half of that whole percentage was received in London, and one
quarter from two other cities.
In France, three departments collect 4,178,332, out of a total of
7,707,590 francs per annum; and of this amount, Paris (Départment de la
Seine) collects 2,794,768.40 francs, being more than one third of the
total receipts of the whole empire.
The Western Union Telegraph Company’s revenues come to it in a similar
manner. From its 3,331 offices it derives its receipts as follows:—
From 136 offices, 75 per cent.
„ 3195 „ 25 per cent.
Of these 136 offices, a large proportion of their receipts is derived
from twelve chief cities, of which four are on the route proposed by
this bill.
Government, by thus operating lines of telegraph over the choicest and
most productive route, at rates below the cost of the service, and which
could only be maintained by large drafts upon the national treasury,
would assume an attitude towards private telegraph enterprises of the
most unjust and unexampled hostility.
Such a partial experiment as that proposed by Mr. Washburne, or even by
Mr. Hubbard, would destroy the unitary character of the service which
the Western Union Telegraph Company has done so much to secure, and
would be a most decidedly reactionary measure.
Mr. Hubbard’s bill to incorporate the United States Postal Telegraph
Company, and to establish a postal-telegraph system, provides for the
establishment of telegraph lines to all cities and villages of five
thousand inhabitants and over in the United States. Were this scheme to
be adopted, and the government thus enter into a partnership with the
new company in the telegraph business, in accordance with the terms of
this bill, what is to become of the smaller towns? According to the
census of 1860 there are only three hundred and thirteen cities and
villages in the United States having the five thousand inhabitants
necessary to entitle them to an office under this postal system. Who,
then, is to maintain telegraphic facilities at the remaining three
thousand eight hundred and thirteen small towns now having offices?
Private companies, if driven out of the field by the establishment of
this semi-government competing line, could not do it, and, as this
scheme makes no provision for them, they must necessarily be deprived of
the facilities they now enjoy. Under this bill Arkansas, Florida, and
Oregon would not be entitled to an office; Minnesota, Mississippi, and
South Carolina to but one; North Carolina, Texas, and Vermont to but two
each; Delaware and Tennessee to but three; Connecticut, Georgia,
Kentucky, and Michigan to but four; and Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana,
Maine, Missouri, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Virginia, and Wisconsin
would be entitled to less than ten each, while those provided for the
whole United States would be less in number than the branch offices
furnished for the convenience of the public by the Western Union
Telegraph Company at the hotels, docks, piers, and other places in the
large towns alone.[29]
Footnote 29:
The Postmaster-General is permitted to establish postal-telegraph
stations at any city or village through which the lines of the
contracting party may be extended, though said city or village contain
less than five thousand inhabitants; but as the proposed company makes
no provision for the payment of the operators or any of the expenses
of such offices, while it secures to itself the receipts for
telegrams, it is hardly to be expected that the Postmaster-General
would feel disposed to open many stations under such circumstances.
The proposal presented to Congress is one which the governments of
Europe, from which it professes to draw its inspiration, have never
entertained. No government there has ever yet attempted to engage in any
public work by the destruction of the property of its people, except
after just compensation. The recent example of Great Britain in
acquiring the British lines of telegraph is eminently illustrative of
this national justice. Neither cavilling with the nature or condition of
their structure, cheapening the value of their property, nor defaming
the officers of any company, the British Parliament doubles the
valuation of its owners, and pays a price therefor which satisfies the
most exacting. In striking contrast to this is the enterprise proposed
to the American Congress by the Washburne bill, which begins by
attacking the integrity of the official management of the existing
system, depreciating the value of its property, and proposing the
competitive use of a grand invention which it refused to purchase, and
now proposes, without consideration, to possess. In such a project there
is no national example which would give it sanction or respectability,
even though, in times of great national peril, and amid the necessities
of despotic governments, monarchs have at times seized and made their
own the profitable traffic and pursuits of the people.