10. _The Union of Telegraph and Post is needed for the Interests of the
Post as well as for those of the Telegraph._ It will elevate the skill
and competency of postal employees. When mails do not arrive on time, it
will inform the public thronging the post office, not merely that the
mail has not arrived, but when it will arrive. It will permit the
employment of the telegraph in tracing a missent letter or package,
rectifying an erroneous address, discovering the whereabouts of an
absentee, etc. It will permit the more rapid extension of the
free-delivery system by affording a larger basis for its sustenance. It
will multiply many fold the rapidity in transmitting letters across the
continent.
The telegraph is naturally a part of the post office,[3] as much a part
of it as the sewing machine is a part of a dressmaking establishment.
Suppose the government were in the clothing business (as it might have
been to advantage during the war), and continued to sew the garments
entirely by hand, leaving the sewing machine to private enterprise; it
would be a charming situation for private enterprise, but not very
delightful for the government. With such advantages private enterprise
would be apt to deprive the government of the best part of its business
in spite of its willingness to work for people at cost. The same thing
has happened to some extent with the telegraph and telephone, and will
happen to a far greater extent if they are allowed to continue in
private control. If trunk lines for automatic transit were established
by a private company, even at 25 cents per hundred words (a rate
sufficient to pay a very large profit on a corporate investment, water
and all), the post office would soon lose a considerable portion of its
most valuable business, the letter mail between the large cities.[4]
[3] Mr. Hubbard says: "The telegraph and the post office are
two great pieces of machinery going on, both for the same
purpose, the transmission of intelligence" (J. T. U. p. 17).
Prof. Ely calls the telegraph the "logical completion of the
post office" (ARENA, Dec. 1895, p. 49). Cyrus W. Field says:
"Why should not the two branches of what is really one service
to the public be brought together in this country, as in other
countries, and placed under one management? It would certainly
be a great convenience to the people if every telegraph office
were a post office, and every post office a telegraph office"
(_N. A. Review_, Mar. 1886).
[4] Postmaster-General Cave Johnson said: "Experience teaches
that if individual enterprise is allowed to perform such
portions of the business of the Government as it may find for
its advantage, the Government will soon be left to perform
unprofitable portions of it only, and must be driven to
abandon it entirely or carry it on at a heavy tax upon the
public Treasury.... I may further add that the Department
created under the Constitution and designed to exercise
exclusive power for the transmission of intelligence, must
necessarily be superseded in much of its most important
business if the telegraph be permitted to remain under the
control of individuals" (Reps. of 1845 and 1846).
Postmaster-General Cresswell said in 1872: "If the effects of
rivalry between the telegraph and the mail upon the revenues
of the post office have not been serious, it is due alone to
the liberal management of the latter as compared with that of
the companies, a management which since the invention of the
telegraph has reduced the rates of postage from 25 to 3 cents,
and increased tenfold the correspondence of the country" (Rep.
1872, pp. 22-3).
One of Hannibal Hamlin's three great reasons for a postal
telegraph was "for the sake of the post-office system, which
may at any time be depleted by a strong telegraph in private
hands" (_Cong. Globe_, 42-2, p. 3554).
In times of pestilence the telegraph will save the post office from
embargo. A letter from Port Gibson, Miss., says:
Whenever the yellow fever breaks out at any point, all cities and
towns, and some counties, having communication with the infected
districts, at once declare a rigid quarantine. The effect of this
is to cut off all communication between themselves and the outside
world. Trains and boats are prevented from receiving or delivering
the mails. Business men are unable to communicate by letter with
their correspondents, and all are prevented from hearing from
relatives and friends in the quarantined places, except by
telegraph, whose rates prevent many from using the wires.[5]
[5] Wan. Arg. p. 138.
The infection does not travel on an electric wire, and if the post
office possessed the telegraph, its business would go smoothly on in
spite of the plague, instead of being brought to a dead standstill
throughout the region of disaster at the very time when hearts are
breaking for daily news, and communication is of the utmost importance
to alleviate the quarantine.
11. _Employees will be benefited_ by passing from a regime of oppression
to one of elevation; from low wages[6] and long hours to high wages and
short hours; from a service almost hopeless of promotion to a service of
almost limitless possibilities to the man of character, brain, and
energy; from an employment in which they are regarded as so much
machinery to be obtained at the lowest market rates and worked for all
the profit there is in them to an employment in which their comfort and
advancement are among the main objects of solicitude with the
management; from a business in which they have no share to a business in
which they are equal partners with all their fellow-citizens; from
serfdom to liberty and manhood. No more boycotting and black-listing, no
more denial of the rights of organization and petition.
[6] In the last Congressional investigation, dated May 26,
1896, the great telegraph inventor P. B. Delayner testified
that the pay of American operators had fallen forty per cent
in the last twenty years; and he said that, "while the British
operator has had two increases of pay since 1891, his American
brother has had four reductions, and to-day the British
operator is better paid for the same amount of work, and by
his environment occupies a higher plane of comfort and
contentment, than the American operator. Good behavior and
diligence in his duties warrant him a life position, from
which the whim and caprice of no one can drive him. He is not
an itinerant wandering from place to place looking for work
and hired for a day or a week, to be again sent adrift, nor is
he permitted to work overtime to the detriment of his health
and the exclusion of another wage-earner from his share. His
increasing years of service are taken into account in various
beneficial ways. He has his yearly vacation. He is not cut off
in sickness, and, most important of all, he is not 'turned
down' in old age, but is retired on a pension, proportioned to
his years of service" (Sen. Doc. 291, 54-1, pp. 4, 6).
Some of the consequences will be the lifting of thousands to a higher
plane of living, the annihilation of strikes by uprooting the causes of
them,[7] the improvement of the service as already stated under the
seventh sub-head of this section, etc., etc.
[7] Joseph Medill, the publisher of the Chicago _Tribune_,
expressed the opinion to the Blair Committee that, with a
postal telegraph, there would be no strikes any more than
among the clerks in the Treasury or the officers of the army.
Government employees do not resign _en masse_. Their pay is
good as a rule, and, anyway, they could not get it raised till
Congress thought it right; and a strike would not be apt to
hasten the achievement of their purposes, but would place them
face to face with the limitless power of the United States.
Instead of occupying a position of brave revolt against
corporate oppression, impervious to petition, the strikers
would place themselves in the position of deliberately
departing from ready and hopeful redress by peaceful petition
and discussion, to the very objectionable method of
obstructing the public business, defying the people's
government, and dictating terms to the nation."
The telegraph system would no longer be subject to such
disasters as that so well described by the Hon. Wm. Roche in
the Ohio legislature Jan. 29th, 1885: "A convulsion of the
trade and commerce of the entire country resulted, when, on
the 19th of July, 1883, 12,000 operators left their posts
after the flat refusal of the magnates to give audience to
their representatives to state their case."
12. _The press will be relieved of an ever present tyranny_ likely at
any moment to transfer itself from the potential to the real.[8] Sen.
Report 242, 43-1, p. 5, says:
[8] We have seen in Part VI (ARENA, June, 1896) how rates were
raised on papers that criticised the Western Union's president
or advocated a postal telegraph too vigorously, how papers
were ordered not to criticise news reports under penalty of
loss of news facilities, etc. It is interesting to note that
even the largest and most influential papers do not always
escape persecution. In his speech in the House, Mar. 1, 1884,
the Hon. John A. Anderson, of Kansas, tells us that "the
Chicago _Inter-Ocean_ had the lease of a private wire from
Washington to Chicago, and published Washington news every
day. A few weeks since, Senator Hill spoke for the postal
telegraph. The _Inter-Ocean_ published the speech verbatim.
That evening word was sent to the _Inter-Ocean_ that the lease
was terminated. The manager of the _Inter-Ocean_ said
afterwards that their relations with the Western Union were
still friendly, but he had to be, of course, in order to keep
the general despatches."
The operation of the postal-telegraph system would result in a
speedy termination of this alliance [between the telegraph and news
association, and groups of favored papers], and will be a very
important step toward the freedom of the press.
Sen. Rep. 577, 48-1, p. 16, says:
The bill [for a postal telegraph] will lessen the danger of a
concealed censorship of news whereby it may be colored and
distorted so as to subserve political purposes, to mislead public
opinion as to the merits or demerits of men and measures, to
pervert legislation, and to favor schemes of private gain.
The press of the nation will not be forbidden to criticise the news, nor
will any paper be excluded from equal participation in the benefits of
the telegraph service--equal rates to all, special privileges to none.
Moreover, the rates will be greatly reduced for all press despatches,
and papers will be able to buy the world's history every day for a
fraction of what they pay now for imperfect and garbled reports.
As a result of National Ownership in England, "the press rates have been
reduced so low that every country paper can afford to print the latest
telegraphic despatches as it goes to press, and a telegraph or telephone
is at every country post office."[9]
[9] Sen. Doc. 205, 54-1, p. 50; Report of U. S. Consul at
Southampton, Consular Reports, vol. xlvii, No. 175, April,
1895, p. 564. The press rate in England averages nine cents
per hundred words. In this country it is at least 40 cents per
hundred; the electrician P. B. Delany says it is 50 cents per
100 (Sen. Doc. 291, May, 1896, p. 3).
The Report last quoted contains the testimony of Mr. Bell of
the Typographical Union, May 20, 1896, in which he says: "The
news of this country is controlled by two great press
associations, and in any place in which either has a footing,
no new journal can be established and secure telegraphic news
except on such terms as may be prescribed by the paper or
papers that already occupy the field. In England, on the
contrary, all papers are on an equal footing." The
Typographical Union is fully alive to the benefits of a
government telegraph; in fact, labor and commerce in general
very strongly favor the reform. Mr. Bell says: "In this
movement of ours we are supported by all the organized bodies
of workingmen in this country. We are a unit on this question"
(p. 17).
13. _Discrimination will receive a serious blow._ No more telegraph
rebates of 20 or 40 or 50 per cent to favored individuals and
corporations. No more telegraph blanks for legislators, politicians, and
lobbyists. No more delaying B's despatch until the rival message of C is
sent. No more precedence for bucket-shops and gamblers over honest
business and government despatches.
14. _Gambling in government stocks will cease_, speculators in wheat,
corn, pork, copper, oil, and other products of industry will be unable
to control the wires for their uses, or even secure a precedence over
the lines, and the Louisiana Lottery and similar frauds will no longer
find a refuge in the telegraph as they do at present. The post office
has been taken away from the gamblers; it is time the telegraph were
taken from them also. The telegraph in the hands of cunning men may be
the means of abstracting millions of money from the producers of the
country, and may even become a potent factor in the causation of panic
and depression. On page 3 of his Argument for a postal telegraph, Mr.
Wanamaker says:
The measureless body of producers, in order not to be manipulated
and robbed by the speculators, need to be nearer the consumers; and
the measureless body of consumers, in order not to be manipulated
and robbed by the same speculators, need to be nearer to the
producers.
Take the telegraph away from the speculators and give it to the
producers and consumers, that they may come into the closest possible
relations.
15. _Political corruption_ will lose an able contributor when the
telegraph ceases to belong to a private corporation (See Part VII,
ARENA, July, 1896).
16. _A Postal telegraph will be a step toward a fairer distribution of
wealth_ and away from the congestion of power and wealth in the hands of
a few unscrupulous men, which is one of the chief dangers threatening
the future of the country (See Part VIII, ARENA, August, 1896). On this
ground alone the establishment of a national telegraph would be
justified, were there no other reason in the case.
17. _The public safety demands a national telegraph_, not merely as a
precaution against corruption, speculation, and panic, congestion of
wealth and power, strikes, and duress of the press, but also as a
military measure and a valuable addition to the police power of the
government,--a means of strength in time of war, and a conservator of
law and order by aiding in the capture of criminals and in the general
enforcement of the law. We have already quoted the opinion of Mr.
Scudamore that the postal telegraph "will strengthen the country from
hostility from without, and the maintaining of law and order within the
kingdom." Let us call attention here to the weighty words of the New
York _Public_, cited in Wanamaker's Argument, pp. 206-7:
The Government itself absolutely needs a telegraphic system for its
own protection. This will not seem the language of exaggeration
when it is considered that the ordinary enforcement of laws, the
capture of offenders, the success of fiscal operations, the
protection of the country against domestic insurrection and foreign
invasion, have come to depend in these days upon the instant
transmission of intelligence with certain and absolute secrecy. It
may at any time come to pass that the private interests of those
controlling a telegraph system shall require the non-enforcement of
the law, the prevention or delay of a financial operation, or the
partial success of a domestic outbreak or foreign inroad. It is
nonsense to say that this cannot happen. If Mr. Gould could
suppress for a few hours or days, news of an outbreak on the
Pacific coast or of the capture of a hostile ironclad from Europe,
he could make millions by it. The Government has no certainty that
he would throw away millions. It has no certainty that its orders
bearing on great financial operations may not be betrayed and its
aims thwarted. When the Government was hunting for the Star Route
offenders, how many would have been caught if its despatches had
been secretly betrayed? An important witness happened to be a
Government director of the Union Pacific Railroad, and it has
always been a mysterious fact that the officers in search of him
could never catch him.
18. _It will be a step toward civil-service reform._ Every increase of
public business brings us nearer to thorough civil-service reform,
because it enhances the importance of that reform, impresses the need of
it more strongly upon the people, and deepens their sentiment in its
favor. This has been the experience of European cities and states. A
good reason why they are ahead of us in civil-service management, is
because they are ahead of us in the public ownership of railroads,
telegraphs, telephones, etc.
In the case of the telegraph there are special reasons to expect that
government control would carry with it an extension of the civil-service
principle. In the opinion of Mr. Rosewater the postal telegraph "would
be an entering wedge for the greatest possible success of the civil
service." He says:
It would bring into the postal service a large number of skilled
operatives whose services could not be easily dispensed with. They
would be divided in politics like every other class of citizens,
their experience and trustworthiness would be of great moment, and
their trustworthiness would be increased by the knowledge that they
could not be displaced by partisan politics. This has been the
experience in Great Britain, and would be the same here. Once get
the postal service under government control and the civil-service
act, and you would soon be able to place all departments of the
government under the same system, and a large share of the public
nuisance incident to office-holding would be done away with,
leaving the officers free to inquire into and learn their duties to
their office and to the public.[10]
[10] _The Voice_, Aug. 29, 1895, pp. 1, 8.
Prof. Ely says:
One of the strongest arguments in favor of a postal telegraph, is
that such a telegraph would carry with it an improvement in our
civil service. It would increase the number of offices in which
civil-service rules would be applied, even according to existing
law, and it would be an irresistible argument in favor of the
extension and elevation of the civil service. Some want to have us
wait until the civil service has been already improved, but the
purchase of the telegraph lines would inevitably carry with it the
improvement of the civil service.
The country would insist upon it. The acquisition of the telegraph lines
by the nation would convert more people to civil-service reform in one
day than all the speeches which have ever been delivered on the subject
would win to this good cause in a year.[11]
[11] The total number of positions that must now be filled
from the classified civil-service lists is 85,100, out of a
total of a little more than 200,000 positions in the national
service, aside from the army and navy.
The plan advocated in this paper includes the civil-service act as one
of its essential terms, for without it we run the risk of having, for a
time at least, boss-ownership instead of public ownership of the
telegraph. The recent extension of the civil-service act to 30,000 new
positions, argues well for the future of this great reform.[12] That
such an order should have come from President Cleveland, who has not
been noted for his absence of partisan feeling, indicates that the
election of a man of thorough independence would probably complete the
transformation of our service. Even without that, the work will be done
by the piece, each president ordering a section into line at the end of
his term when the delay of justice can no longer aid his own political
purposes, but may, on the contrary, strengthen his successor. Or he may
act before the end of his term and from less selfish motives; the main
thing for the nation is that he act.
[12] ARENA, Dec. 1895, pp. 51-2.
19. The public ownership of the telegraph will remove one of the
antagonisms that weaken the cohesion of society and retard the
development of civilization.[13]
[13] See Part VIII, ARENA, August, 1896.
20. It will be a step toward cooeperation and partnership, away from
private monopoly, usurpations, and taxation without representation.[14]
[14] See Parts VIII and IX, ARENA, Aug. and Sept. 1896.
* * * * *
Let us now see what the defendants have to say; that means the Western
Union, for, as Mr. Bell said to the Senate Committee on Post offices and
Post roads, May 20th, 1896:
The only persons who have ever put in an appearance in opposition
to this measure, have been the officers, attorneys, and agents of
the telegraph companies. No representative of the people has ever
opposed it.[15]
[15] Sen. Doc. 291, 54-1, p. 18.