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.