To illustrate the operation of the telegraph in increasing the revenue, let us suppose that but 18 hours of the 24 are efficiently used for the actual purposes of revenue; that 6 hours are allowed for repetitions and other purposes, which is a large allowance. This would give, upon a single circuit, 12,960 signs per day, upon which a rate of postage is to be charged. Intelligence of great extent may be comprised in a few signs. Suppose the following commercial communication is to be transmitted from New York to New Orleans:
Yrs., Dec. 21, rec. Buy 25 bales c., at 9, and 300 pork, at 8.
Here are 36 signs, which take three minutes in the transmission from New York to New Orleans, and which informs the New York merchant’s correspondent at New Orleans of the receipt of a certain document, and gives him orders to purchase 25 bales of cotton at 9 cents per pound, and 300 barrels of pork at 8 cents per pound. Thus may be completed, in three minutes, a transaction in business which now would take at least four or five weeks to accomplish.
Suppose that one cent per sign be charged for the first 100 miles, increasing the charge at the rate of half a cent each additional 100 miles, the postage of the above communication would be $2.88 for a distance of 1,500 miles. It would be sent 100 miles for 36 cents. Would any merchant grudge so small a sum for sending such an amount of information in so short a time to such a distance? If time is money, and to save time is to save money, surely such an immense saving of time is the saving of an immense sum of money. A telegraphic line of a single circuit only, from New York to New Orleans, would realize, then, to the Government, daily, in the correspondence between those two cities alone, over one thousand dollars gross receipts, or over $300,000 per annum.
But it is a well-established fact, that, as facilities of intercourse increase between different parts of the country, the greater is that intercourse. Thousands travel, in this day of rail roads and steamboats, who never thought of leaving their homes before. Establish, then, the means of instantaneous communication between the most distant places, and the telegraphic line of a single circuit will very soon be insufficient to supply the demands of the public—they will require more.
Two circuits will of course double the facilities, and double the revenue; but it is an important fact, that the expense of afterwards establishing a second, or any number of circuits, does not proceed on the doubling principle. If a channel for conveying a single circuit be made, in the first instance, of sufficient capacity to contain many more circuits, which can easily be done, additional circuits can be laid as fast as they are called for, at but little more than the cost of the prepared wire. The recent discovery of Professor Fisher and myself, shows that a single wire may be made the common conductor for at least six circuits. How many more we have not yet ascertained. So that, to add another circuit is but to add another wire. Fifty dollars per mile under these circumstances, would therefore add the means of doubling the facilities and the revenue.
Between New York and Philadelphia, for example, the whole cost of laying such an additional circuit would be but $5,000, which would be more than defrayed by two months’ receipts only from the telegraphs between those two cities.
There are two modes of establishing the line of conductors.
The first and cheapest is doubtless that of erecting spars about 30 feet in height and 350 feet apart, extending the conductors along the tops of the spars. This method has some obvious disadvantages. The expense would be from $350 to 400 per mile.
The second method is that of enclosing the conductors in leaden tubes, and laying them in the earth. I have made the following estimate of the cost of this method: