NO ANALOGY BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND SWITZERLAND.
The analogy between the United States and Switzerland seems in every sense imperfect. The telegraph stations in Switzerland only number 252, or less than the number contained within a radius of fifty miles in and around the city of New York.
The total number of despatches transmitted annually in and through Switzerland only amounted in 1866 to 668,916, whilst of these probably more than half were either transit or international. These transit telegrams, of which there are none in our country, involve a most important difference. Belgium and Switzerland can make up the deficiencies which arise from losses on internal communication by the surplus derived from transit telegrams.
In 1852 the average number of messages per day, for all Switzerland, was less than ten. As the system became extended, and the people were educated to its use, the number of messages increased, until in 1866 they exceeded 2,000 per day, approximating, for the entire country, the number sent and received daily by fifteen female operators in one of the rooms of the Western Union Telegraph Company, in the city of New York. Probably one half of these were transit messages passing through Switzerland from stations in France, Belgium, and Italy, leaving about 1,000 messages per day of inland business, which, divided among 252 offices, would leave an average of a little less than four messages per day for each office! This is not a very magnificent result, and is not over encouraging as a model system, which gives to its twenty-five cantons ten offices, with an average revenue from each; for inland business, of only three francs per day! And this, notwithstanding that the government coaches convey, without any extra charge, messages, from towns unsupplied with offices, to the nearest telegraph station.