THE TELEGRAPH AND THE GOVERNMENT.^[30]

The building of telegraph lines in the United States, from the date of their inauguration down to the present time, has been overdone. There are now too many wires for the business, at the prices that are charged; consequently there are few, if any, lines that pay a fair interest on the cost of their construction. So great is the cost of maintaining and operating lines, too, that it is a question whether sufficient business could be done, as it is conducted at very low rates, to pay expenses. In business hours, for example, there is a great rush of messages,—say from 9 A. M. to 3 P. M.—that is, between commercial centres. After 3 o’clock there is comparatively little business, except what is furnished by the newspapers. Consequently, in the after part of the day, and during the night, many wires and operators are idle. In order to make business for this portion of the twenty-four hours, the telegraph companies adopted a low schedule of rates for night messages, but this has been attended with poor success. The lines are mainly used, it is found, by business men and newspapers. Business messages require immediate delivery, and are not valuable except when transmitted and delivered during business hours. Hence the reduced rates for night messages has not created much new business. Neither would low rates for day messages create new business, unless the despatches could be promptly forwarded and delivered. Low rates for day messages, prompt delivery being insured, would undoubtedly largely increase the business, but this would require more wires and more men. The question then is, would the income at low rates be sufficient to pay for the increased expenditures? Telegraph managers have decided this question in the negative. There is, it must be borne in mind, a limit to the capacity of telegraph wires for conveying news. Herein this system differs from the postal system. There is, practically, no limit to the capacity of the railroad companies for carrying the mails, and, of course, the profits of the postal department are in proportion to the amount of business they transact. These preliminary remarks are made in order that the public may the better understand the proposition which has been made, and is being agitated, looking to the purchase of the telegraph lines by the government, and their operation in connection with the postal system. The pretext is, that the government could afford to reduce the tariff to a low point, say one cent per word for five hundred miles or less, and two cents for over five hundred up to one thousand, &c. This would make the tariff between Cincinnati and New York three cents, whereas it is now ten cents, for private messages. This is the pretext, but the real secret of the movement is this. There are two parties who favor the proposition. One of these has been quietly buying up telegraph stock at thirty or forty cents on the dollar. They propose to have Congress pass a law authorizing the President to appoint three commissioners to value the telegraph lines of the United States and providing for their purchase at such valuation. Here is a fine chance for speculation. It would afford an admirable opening for the gentlemen who practise in the lobby. The second party favoring the purchase is composed of members of Congress who are anxious to have the franking privilege extended to the telegraph lines. What a splendid thing it would be if members of Congress could use the telegraph lines free, as they use the mails. But the people would have to pay for the free business on the telegraph lines,—pay dearly, too, as they pay for the uses and abuses of the postal franking privilege. Besides, the government, in connection with the postal system, is mainly conspicuous for its mismanagement. It does not compete successfully with private enterprise, and never can so long as the abominable system of filling and vacating offices is continued. The telegraph business is decidedly complicated. It requires skilful men to operate it. How would it be if telegraph offices were to be filled as post-offices and revenue offices are filled? We need not stop to answer this question. Besides, secrecy is an important feature of the telegraph business. It is not as carefully enforced as it should be; but what a political machine the telegraph would become if partisan politicians should get hold of it! Imagine the telegraph during an exciting presidential campaign, with one party controlling the wires and reading all the private despatches that passed over the lines! There would be no secrecy about it; neither would it be reliable, and in the end it would cost the people more than those using it would save. Not one man in twenty would use the telegraph if rates were even lower than is proposed; and consequently nineteen men would be taxed for the benefit of one. The whole thing would be a tax upon the people, without compensating advantages. If private enterprise, with sharp competition, cannot carry messages between New York and Cincinnati, at ten cents per word, and make money, the government could not do it at three cents, or at any price up to ten. Nothing more certain than that. Besides, the corruption connected with office-holding and office-getting, in this country, is sufficient to cause the people to shudder at the mere proposition to add fifty thousand offices to the already enormous federal patronage. The government is staggering now under the tremendous load of corruption consequent upon the federal patronage and the mode of distributing it, and the people must soon choose between a reform in this or a revolution. Let it be first demonstrated, therefore, that the government can successfully, honestly, and economically manage the business intrusted to it before it undertakes to assume exclusive control of other branches of private enterprise. But, as already stated, the present movement is merely a scheme to saddle upon the government the non-paying telegraph lines of the United States, at three or four times their value. The result would be amazing corruption in the management of the lines, the violation of private confidence for personal or political purposes, and a cost to the people for telegraphing greater than is now borne by those who use the wires.

We beg the advocates of the Postal Telegraph scheme not to stop. The justification of what they propose to do, if in accordance with their theories of government, will cover many other things necessary to be done. After having taken possession of the telegraph lines, and increased the number of officers necessary to insure the harmonious working of their plan, let them turn their attention to the Express business of the country, in which there is room for great reform. This, we are told, is practically a monopoly, by the greed of which the transmission of merchandise and valuables from one part of the country to another is often slow, and always expensive. If it is the province of the government to take charge of the telegraphic correspondence of the people, surely there is no abuse of authority in undertaking to carry, and in making a monopoly of carrying, their express packages; and the reasons which commend this telegraph scheme cover and justify the extension of governmental interference with the small freight that the express lines usually convey. We state these reasons seriatim, just as the advocates of governmental telegraphing rehearse them. They are, first, cheapness; second, certainty; third, celerity; fourth, promotion of intercourse and traffic between different sections of the country; and consequently, fifth, the wider dissemination of intelligence. If these are sufficient,—and no promoter of the telegraph scheme can doubt that they are,—they admit of still wider application. Most of the telegraphic correspondence of the country is of a business character, and so most of the service rendered by the express is of the same sort. The telegraph and the express are the adjuncts of our great commercial transactions by which people are fed, warmed, clothed, and supplied with the implements and raw material of labor. There is, then, no reason why the railroads, which are only larger instruments of the same kind, should be omitted in the list of things that the government may manage and monopolize. It is surely of as much moment that a train-load of flour or butter should be carried with cheapness, certainty, and celerity from Chicago to New York, as that the despatch announcing its shipment or arrival should be sent in the same way; and if we cannot manage the latter to our satisfaction, how shall we expect to manage the former? As it will never do to have a competitor in this carrying trade, the government must also take possession of all the canals. Of course these recommendations will, if adopted, largely increase the salaried officers of the country, and make our political contests tenfold more corrupt, acrimonious, and dangerous than now; but as the Pennsylvania editor said about protection—“If protection is a good thing, we cannot have too much of it!”—so say we of officials, the more the better.

But we see still larger fields that the government may occupy, this interference theory being established as the rule of its relation to the people. As the growing of wheat and the production of meats, to supply the prime necessity of our nature for food, are of far more importance than the correspondence which occurs in getting the wheat and beef to the consumer or than the method of their transit; as the people must die if they have nothing to eat; as farming, as now done, is a careless, haphazard business, pursued without the aid of adequate machinery or the proper division of labor; as the cost of farm produce might, by the universal adoption of improved methods, be greatly cheapened, thus promoting the increase of the race, and adding immensely to the general happiness, the government ought, first of all, to take the agriculture of the country into its keeping. Then how easy, if it should be imposed upon by the men who make agricultural implements, to turn manufacturer at some hundred convenient places and make all the tools it might need. Just think of the immense advantage of being able to go to a government warehouse and get a barrel of flour for half what it now costs, or of stepping into government shambles from which, of course, the people will be fed, and getting a rib-roast or tenderloin steak at a figure that would make our city butchers ashamed. Of course, every farmer would be a government officer, sure of his pay, and without the most powerful stimulus to exertion; but if each man who handles a letter or sends or delivers a despatch is to have the livery of public service on his back, why not? Finally, as food is useless unless cooked, we see the necessity—still reasoning on premises which the telegraph men furnish—of having the cooking and management of the kitchens of the country turned over to such officers as the government shall select. For doing this, just as soon as the plan of governmental telegraphing is put into operation, the reasons will be entirely conclusive. What, we ask, can be of more importance than that our food should be of good quality, healthfully prepared, quickly and neatly served, and peacefully eaten. Put the National Telegraph by the side of the National Dinner, and see how it is dwarfed by the comparison. Contrast the annoyance of a telegram overcharged, missent, or delayed, with the unutterable horrors of indigestion. Look at our hotels, restaurants, and private houses, and see how cruelly the people suffer; then think how perfect, how quick, and how cheap the relief that the government might extend. We well know that, had government cooking always been the rule of the nation, the great rebellion would not have occurred. The war was the result of the bad food and worse kitchens of our brethren of the South. It had its origin in hot bread and hog, which ruined the stomachs, perverted the morals, and inflamed the worst passions of the South. As we have already sacrificed half a million of lives, and ten thousand millions of treasure to repair the consequences of government carelessness in suffering national cookshops to remain unestablished, we cannot make too much haste in opening them now.

But we have adduced examples enough to show the absurd conclusions to which the reasoning of these telegraphic schemers logically leads. Our government, good as it is, has objectionable features enough now. The disparities in the condition of the people are due more to the operation of unjust law than to differences in natural gifts; and the great source of mischief is in the usurpation by government of functions it ought never to exercise. We do most assuredly need reform; but we shall not find it in enlarging the sphere within which the government may act, nor in curtailing or circumscribing the liberty of the individual. Let us go in the other direction; and instead of making the paternal rule of Continental monarchies the object of imitation, let us extend the application of the American idea. Instead of clothing government with new powers, let us take from what it has. Instead of creating an army of new officers, let us dismiss half we have got. Instead of increasing the patronage of the executive and the causes of political contention, let us give greater simplicity to our system and greater security to the citizen and the state. Instead of training the people more and more to rely upon the government to supply their business, social, and educational wants, let us give greater scope to their individuality, so that they may more and more rely upon themselves. Our government differs from all other governments in the world in nothing so much as in its capacity of letting the people alone in their houses, their business, their religion, and their pleasure. Our people differ from all other peoples in nothing so much as in the fact that, comparatively, they are let alone. All that the country is, it owes to the partial freedom of its citizens to go where they please, do what they please, and think and speak their own thoughts; which freedom, by cultivating strength, self-reliance, enterprise, intelligence, and patriotism, has wrought the work we see before us. This freedom is to be still more extended over ground which inherited abuses now occupy, and the consequences will astonish the world!

No, no! Our government is not a wet-nurse for all the schemes which the ingenuity of men may invent, or which incomplete and half-seen considerations of public convenience may recommend. It is primarily an organization for the protection of person and property, and the punishment of crime. And to keep it within its sphere, and to disassociate it, as far as possible, from the usual business of the citizen, is to insure its life. Leave to the people all that individual or corporate effort may do, and they will do it well. Leave to the government the preservation of order and the punishment of crime, and the governed will have no reason to complain.

TELEGRAPHING BY GOVERNMENT.^[32]

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.