In April, 1854, a combination was agreed upon between the Erie and
Michigan Telegraph Company and the New York and Mississippi Valley
Printing Telegraph Company. The united capital being $500,000 under
the name of the Western Union Telegraph Company, by an act of the
legislature of Wisconsin, dated March 4, 1856, and of the State of New
York, of April 4, 1856.
The following year the Michigan Southern Telegraph Company was added to
this combination.
The headquarters of the Company were at Rochester, N.Y. Other companies
joined the united companies and the Western Union found it necessary to
transfer its headquarters to New York, but the most notable of these
consolidations took place in 1866, when the United States Telegraph
Company, as well as the American Telegraph Company, joined forces
with the Western Union, thus virtually embracing the entire telegraph
business of the country.
In this year the capital was readjusted and appointed to the various
interests forming the Western Union combination.
Soon after the union of the many conflicting telegraph interests
had been effected, and through fear of a burdensome monopoly, a move
was made towards the nationalization of the telegraphs. As a matter
of course, this was strenuously opposed by the telegraph company’s
representatives, and public sentiment was with the company.
Although politicians as a rule were favourably inclined to such a step,
the majority of the people were against it, or indifferent, with the
result that the movement dropped out of view, and has so far as known
never been revived up to this period.
In telegraph operations little attention had been given to electricity
as a science in America. Any improvements which had been made in
connection with telegraphic appliances, except in repeating appliances,
were of a comparatively trifling and unscientific character.
Marshall Lefferts had done much to show the value of statistics, and
had laid down important ground work for systematized and scientific
methods; he had even introduced some of the electric tests by which the
telegraph wires afterward became so potential, but no clearly defined
system had been in practice.
The battery man still multiplied his cells, emptied his carboys of
nitric or sulphuric acid, and bathed his zincs in mercury, to raise the
telegraphic steam; the patient operator turned and returned during the
long hours of the weary nights the spring of his relay, to catch the
erratic movements of the armature as it vibrated before the changing
currents on the line.
Cromwell Varley, a well-known electrician whose accomplishments as
a gentleman of education as well as a scientist had preceded him in
the frequent appearance of his name in the records of scientific
investigation, had arrived in New York. Mr. Orton, at this time the
President of the Western Union Company, invited Mr. Varley to make a
thorough investigation into the condition of the lines and apparatus
owned by the Company.
The report made by Mr. Varley, minute and exhaustive, revealed a
startling condition of things--half of the wires were found to be
practically unavailable.
The best wires in the service showed a resistance far above the proper
standard.
A popular relay was found to have a resistance equal to one hundred
miles of number 8 wire, the use of which was choking the most important
circuits.
The chief value of Mr. Varley’s report, indeed was in giving a
practical illustration of the immense value of a scientific electrical
training.
The electrician now came to be an important factor in American
telegraphic work.
To this report also may be fairly traced the beginning of a series of
improvements and inventions which have made famous the American name.
By removing the obstructions to the electric current and reducing
resistances in wires, magnets and batteries to a minimum, the great
possibilities of the wires were discovered in accomplishments which
were never dreamed of.
The duplex and quadruplex are great advances on the old condition, and
would have been inoperative had they continued.
The visit of Mr. Varley had another result--the consolidation of
so many important organizations under a single administration had
unavoidably brought together more or less discordant elements;
each company had its own peculiar methods, ideas of management,
limitations of authority, rules of order, etc., as well as of tariffs
and compensation. It was of the utmost importance that, in order to
unity of management, distinct and clearly defined ideas of duty should
be made to permeate the entire working force so as to make conflict
impossible, and work quick, certain, harmonious.
It was scarcely less desirable also, now that the value of electric
knowledge had been demonstrated, that by some means its attainment
might be rendered easy and general, and a stimulus given to its
acquisition. Under these circumstances Mr. Orton established the
journal of the telegraph, and its usefulness soon became apparent; its
clippings from the scientific journals of European and Home papers on
electric art soon came to be the theme of almost universal interest.
A copy of this paper was mailed to every office of the Company as
soon as issued. It became not only the vehicle for executive orders
for the announcement of new offices and of changes in the tariff, but
imperceptibly, yet markedly, the means of infusing an “esprit de corps”
and sense of brotherhood throughout the telegraph service.
At the solicitation of Mr. Orton, Mr. James D. Reid accepted the
management of the journal of the telegraph, by whom it was admirably
conducted for a number of years, with the praiseworthy results
previously noted.
In view of the recent boundary arbitration between the United States
and Great Britain, it may be interesting to recall the circumstances
which led the American Government to become interested in Alaska as a
connecting link in a telegraph project, to connect Europe and America
by land wires.
When, in 1858, the Atlantic Cable proved a failure, and was looked upon
as an utter impossibility, a Mr. Collins, the American commercial agent
resident at St. Petersburg, proposed to construct a line of telegraph
overland from the United States (via) Behring Strait and Asiatic Russia
to Europe.
Perceiving the importance of the project, Mr. J. Cochrane, a member
of Congress and of the Committee on Commerce, reported to that body
on Feb. 18, 1861, a bill appropriating $50,000 for “The Survey of the
Northern Waters, Coasts and Islands of the Pacific Ocean and Behring
Strait, having reference to telegraphic connection with Russia,” and
expressing full faith in its possibility.
In the United States Senate, Feb. 17, 1862, Mr. Latham also made an
elaborate report, revealing the vast progress of telegraphs in Europe
and the enthusiastic and enlightened action of the Russian Government
in the proposed extension of her telegraph system to the Pacific.
A line had already been mapped out from Kazan, through Circassia.
From Omsk a line was traced out with the design of reaching India
through the Northern Central gate of Asia. Still another was projected
from the Amoor line to Pekin, Shanghai, Amoy and Hong Kong--thus,
to reach the trade of China, these projects showed the value of the
telegraph to commerce.
Mr. Latham asked an appropriation of $100,000 for a survey of the route
from California to the Amoor.
Russia offered her aid and a rebate of forty per cent. on American
messages when communication was established.
Russia had already assured the construction of the line 7,000 miles
from Moscow to the Pacific.
Secretary Seward took a deep interest in the enterprise, in a report to
the Senate, May 4, 1864.
On the proposition of Mr. Collins, he said: “I think it may be regarded
as settled that the United States cannot neglect to employ telegraphic
communication with foreign countries, and yet expect to maintain a
healthful commerce with them; that the United States cannot hope to
inspire respect, confidence and good will abroad, and to secure peace
with foreign States, without using the magnetic telegraph when it
is possible. I do not know any one object lying within the scope of
our foreign relations more directly important than the preservation
of peace and friendship with Great Britain and Russia; nor can I
conceive of any measure of nationality that would more effectually tend
to secure that great object than the construction of this proposed
international telegraph.”
The sentiments thus officially expressed by Mr. Seward were responded
to by all intelligent men, and the Russian line was the most popular of
the enterprises of the period.
The proposition to construct the Russian American line was first
formally submitted by Mr. Collins to the Western Union Telegraph
Company, Sept. 28, 1863, and again at a meeting of the board of that
company in Rochester, N.Y., March 16, 1864.
It was in the form of a letter from Mr. Collins, requesting the
acceptance of his project to connect Europe and America by way of
the Behring Strait, and offering, if accepted within twenty days, to
transfer his rights and privileges under certain conditions.
The terms offered by him were accepted by the board of directors.
Soon after this construction commenced, beginning at New Westminster,
B.C., the terminus of the California State Telegraph Company. The line
in a few months was carried to the Skeena river. Meanwhile Mr. Serge
Abasa, a Russian gentleman who had entered the service of the Western
Union Company, was despatched to the Asiatic coast between the mouth of
the Amoor and Behring Strait.
Mr. Abasa reported, January 18, 1866:--“Inform the directors, the
entire extent between Anadyr and Okhotsk district has been surveyed,
but the route of the line has been determined by me in person, and
notwithstanding the scarcity of laborers in the country, I have
commenced preparatory works in Anudirsk, Jijiginsk, Yamsk, Taousk and
Okhotsk.”
In the midst of all this enthusiasm, however, the Great Eastern, at the
docks of an English harbor was having a cable coiled in her immense
hold for another attempt to lay a submarine line between Europe and
America.
When it was announced that at last victory had come, and that the
continents were speaking to each other with easy garrulity, the
overland line was abandoned.
It was a question of two thousand miles of cable against sixteen
thousand miles of land line, half of which was along an uninhabited
coast. The advantage of the cable was too palpable; orders were,
therefore, issued recalling the men.
Already some eight hundred and fifty miles of line had been built, and
was in operation between New Westminster, B.C., and the Skeena River.
The United States Government were duly notified of the stoppage of the
work by the Western Union Telegraph Company, to which the Secretary of
State wrote the following reply:--
I am not one of those who have been disappointed by the complete
and magnificent success of the International Atlantic Telegraph.
I regard it as tributary to an expansion of our national
commerce, and ultimately to our political institutions, both of
which are important forces in the progress of civilization.
I would not have the Atlantic become dumb again if thereby I
could immediately secure the success of the Inter-Continental
Pacific enterprise which was committed into your hands.
Nevertheless, I confess to a profound disappointment in the
suspension of the latter enterprise.
I admit that the reasons you have assigned for the suspension
seem to be irresistible. On the other hand, I abate no jot of
my former estimate of the importance of the Inter-Continental
Pacific Telegraph.
I do not believe that the United States and Russia have given
their faith to each other and to the world for the prosecution of
that great enterprise in vain.