BRIEF STATEMENT OF FACTS.
In reply to the above we desire to present the following facts.
The population of Europe at the last authentic census was 288,001,365, nineteen twentieths of which belonged to the Caucasian race. It contains thirty-nine cities, each possessing more than one hundred thousand inhabitants, and the accumulated wealth of nearly two thousand years of civilization.
The United States has a population of only 31,148,047, and contains but ten cities of one hundred thousand inhabitants, while its utmost civilized history reaches back scarcely two and a half centuries, and the accumulated wealth of its civilization cannot average fifty years throughout its cultivated area.
The population of Europe being nearly ten times greater than that of the United States, as is also its accumulations of years of civilization, while, according to Mr. Washburne, its telegraph facilities vastly outstrip ours, it should, of course, possess far more than ten times the number of telegraph offices.
But, in truth, there is not even an approximation to this provision of telegraphic convenience based on population; for while the United States alone possess 4,126 telegraph offices, all Europe contains but 6,450, of which 2,151, or more than one third of the whole number, belong to Great Britain, where the telegraph has heretofore been free from government control.
It is significant of American enterprise that continental Europe, with a population of 260,000,000, possesses but one hundred and seventy-three more telegraph offices than the United States, with her 31,000,000 of widely scattered people. While in the United States there is a telegraph office to every 7,549 of its inhabitants, in continental Europe there is only one to every 60,249!
The following table will serve to show the proportion of telegraph offices to population in the principal countries of Europe and of the United States, the number of miles of line, and amount of telegraph business of each.
| TABLE A. | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Statistics of the Telegraph in Europe and America for the year 1866, from official reports. | ||||||
| Countries. | Number of Stations. | Miles of Line. | Miles of Wire. | Total Number of Messages Transmitted. | Population.[[1]] | Proportion of Offices to Population. |
| Austria | 856 | 24,618 | 73,854 | 2,507,472 | 39,411,309 | 1 to 46,311 |
| Belgium | 356 | 2,187 | 6,146 | 1,128,005 | 4,530,228 | 1 to 12,416 |
| Bavaria | 2,115 | 4,945 | ||||
| Denmark | 89 | 2,515 | 308,150 | 1,684,004 | 1 to 18,921 | |
| France | 1,209 | 20,628 | 68,687 | 2,842,554 | 38,302,625 | 1 to 31,681 |
| Great Britain and Ireland | 2,151 | 16,588 | 80,466 | 5,781,189 | 29,591,009 | 1 to 13,750 |
| Italy | 529 | 8,200 | 20,120 | 1,760,889 | 24,550,845 | 1 to 49,000 |
| Norway | 73 | 269,375 | 1,433,488 | 1 to 19,773 | ||
| Prussia | 538 | 18,386 | 55,149 | 1,964,003 | 17,739,913 | 1 to 32,955 |
| Russia | 308 | 12,013 | 22,214 | 838,653 | 68,224,832 | 1 to 221,508 |
| Switzerland | 252 | 1,858 | 3,715 | 668,916 | 2,534,240 | 1 to 10,000 |
| Spain | 142 | 8,871 | 17,743 | 533,376 | 16,302,625 | 1 to 100,000 |
| United States | 4,126 | 62,782 | 125,564 | 12,904,770 | 31,148,047 | 1 to 7,549 |
| Dominion of Canada | 382 | 6,747 | 8,935 | 573,219 | 3,976,224 | 1 to 10,400 |
[1]. From the Annual Cyclopædia. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1868.
In large sections of the United States the proportion is much greater. Thus, the Pacific States embrace an area of 600,000 square miles; Belgium, 11,000. The former provide an office to every 2,500 of their population; the latter, one to every 12,416. Thus, the Pacific States sustain five times as many offices in proportion to population as Belgium, to say nothing of the great disparity in the condition of service by the vast range of wild territory occupied by the one, and the fine roads and cultivated area of the other.
In view of the facts shown in the preceding table, how can it be said that in America the telegraph is less practically provided to the people than in any other civilized country on the globe?