The Arena, Volume 18, No. 93, August, 1897

THE TELEGRAPH MONOPOLY.

BY PROF. FRANK PARSONS.

XIII.

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]

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]

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 rÉgime 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.

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.

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:

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]

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]

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]

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.

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]

20. It will be a step toward coÖperation and partnership, away from private monopoly, usurpations, and taxation without representation.[14]

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]

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