INCREASE IN TELEGRAMS NOT DUE TO LOW RATES.
It will be observed, by an examination of the above table, that low tariffs are not the only causes of the enlarged use of the telegraph. The annual percentage of increase in messages, as tariffs were gradually reduced, was vastly less than during those years when the rates remained unchanged. During the year of 1851 only 9,014 telegrams were transmitted through the French empire, the tariff averaging $1.60 per message. Five years later, notwithstanding that the average cost per message had been increased to $1.73, the number of messages had increased to 360,299, and in 1858 to 463,973,—more than fifty times the number sent in 1851, or an increase of more than five thousand per cent in eight years, without any reduction in rates. The increase in the number of messages during the next eight years, from 1858 to 1866, was only six hundred per cent, notwithstanding a reduction in the tariff from 7.60 to 2.79 francs.
This same peculiarity of increase, without regard to the cost, is also observable in all other countries, as will be seen by a perusal of the official tables.