Address before the Starr King Fraternity of Oakland, Cal. Return to text

The Arena, Dec., 1896, p. 82. Return to text

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). Return to text

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the Constitution and designed to exercise exclusive power for the transmission of intelligence, must necessarily be superseded in much of its most important business if the telegraph be permitted to remain under the control of individuals” (Reps.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). Return to text

Wan. Arg. p. 138. Return to text

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). Return to text

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.” Return to text

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.” Return to text

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). Return to text

The Voice, Aug. 29, 1895, pp. 1, 8. Return to text

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. Return to text

Arena, Dec. 1895, pp. 51-2. Return to text

See Part VIII, Arena, August, 1896. Return to text

See Parts VIII and IX, Arena, Aug. and Sept. 1896. Return to text

Sen. Doc. 291, 54-1, p. 18. Return to text

“The Ascent of Life,” by Stinson Jarvis. Postal address, Branch “X,” New York, N. Y. Price $1.50. Return to text

From advance sheets of “Poems of the New Time,” by Miles Menander Dawson, The Humboldt Library, Publishers: New York. Cloth, 12mo, $1.00. Return to text

“Matka and Kotik; a Tale of the Mist-Islands.” By David Starr Jordan, President of the Leland Stanford Junior University and of the California Academy of Sciences; United States Commissioner in charge of Fur-Seal Investigations. One volume, square duodecimo, illustrated, pp. 68. San Francisco: The Whitaker & Ray Company, 1897. Return to text