Footnote 32:
From the New York Tribune.
We use the telegraph very extensively and pay it a good deal of money;
so that there are few whose personal advantage from cheapening its use
would be greater than our own; yet we do not regard with favor any of
the bills looking to the establishment of a Government Telegraph. Here
are some of our reasons:—
I. The prevalent tendency in our day is toward a further restriction
rather than an enlargement of the sphere of government. We have (for
instance) a good many public markets in this city, which are, for the
most part, public nuisances. Had the city left this whole business of
purveying free to private enterprise, only overseeing it in the interest
of public health, few can doubt that our supply of food would have been
better and cheaper than it is. The same is the case with many other
attempts to serve or save the citizen through the agency of government.
Most certainly, we would not limit the sphere of government to the mere
prevention of breaking heads and picking pockets; but we should ponder
long before enlarging it.
II. A Government Telegraph is usually proposed as an adjunct of the
post-office. Our government already claims and enforces a monopoly of
the business of carrying letters, charges its own prices, collects some
$15,000,000 a year from the people for letter-carrying, and then loses
some $6,000,000 a year by the business. We submit that it should show a
better balance-sheet on this account before extending its sphere of
operations.
III. We never owned any telegraph stock, and expect to own none; we are
a daily and heavy customer to telegraphs, and expect to live and die
such. We presume that a Government Telegraph would somewhat cheapen the
cost of messages; but the money invested in establishing it would never
be returned to the treasury. The clamor for a reduction of charges (as
now with letters) would steadily overbear any hope of profit. Can it be
right, we ask, to tax the whole people for the benefit of that small
minority who send messages by telegraph? Would it not be better to start
government establishments for potato-growing on a gigantic scale, so as
to supply the poor cheaply with wholesome and nourishing food? Where one
wants cheap messages, many would be benefited by having a sure and ample
supply of cheap potatoes.
IV. Government, in this and other free countries, is and must be largely
an affair of party. The government of this country has been, is, and
must be, to a great extent, the rule of the dominant party. Would it be
well to have the telegraph under the absolute control of either party in
an excited Presidential election? Could the outs safely use it? Could
the people implicitly trust it? Remember how the mails were rifled under
Jackson, with the tacit approval of Postmaster-General Kendall, on the
assumption that it was right to take and burn Abolition documents if
circulated in Slave States. Consider General Jackson’s and Governor
Marcy’s official recommendations that the circulation of such documents
be prohibited by law. We should not like to have the telegraph
controlled, throughout the ensuing Presidential canvasses, by our
political adversaries, nor yet by our political friends.
V. The government is heavily in debt, and its finances are not in good
condition; yet it is bored and importuned for subsidies on this side and
on that,—all of them on the pretence of public advantage, many of them
with just grounds for such assumption. If the Northern and Southern
Pacific Railroads could both be built within the next five years, we
believe they would add five hundred millions of dollars to our national
wealth within the twenty years succeeding. We demur to their present
construction by government aid, simply that the state of our finances
forbids it. But if our government is able to build telegraphs where they
are not wanted, why not railroads where they are the very first
necessity of settlement and civilization?
We might go on for an hour longer, but let the above suffice for the
present. We think the government should let the telegraph business
alone.
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