11. Employees will be benefited by passing from a régime of oppression to one of elevation; from low wages[6] and long hours to high wages and short hours; from a service almost hopeless of promotion to a service of almost limitless possibilities to the man of character, brain, and energy; from an employment in which they are regarded as so much machinery to be obtained at the lowest market rates and worked for all the profit there is in them to an employment in which their comfort and advancement are among the main objects of solicitude with the management; from a business in which they have no share to a business in which they are equal partners with all their fellow-citizens; from serfdom to liberty and manhood. No more boycotting and black-listing, no more denial of the rights of organization and petition.
Some of the consequences will be the lifting of thousands to a higher plane of living, the annihilation of strikes by uprooting the causes of them,[7] the improvement of the service as already stated under the seventh sub-head of this section, etc., etc.
12. The press will be relieved of an ever present tyranny likely at any moment to transfer itself from the potential to the real.[8] Sen. Report 242, 43-1, p. 5, says:
The operation of the postal-telegraph system would result in a speedy termination of this alliance [between the telegraph and news association, and groups of favored papers], and will be a very important step toward the freedom of the press.
Sen. Rep. 577, 48-1, p. 16, says:
The bill [for a postal telegraph] will lessen the danger of a concealed censorship of news whereby it may be colored and distorted so as to subserve political purposes, to mislead public opinion as to the merits or demerits of men and measures, to pervert legislation, and to favor schemes of private gain.
The press of the nation will not be forbidden to criticise the news, nor will any paper be excluded from equal participation in the benefits of the telegraph service—equal rates to all, special privileges to none. Moreover, the rates will be greatly reduced for all press despatches, and papers will be able to buy the world’s history every day for a fraction of what they pay now for imperfect and garbled reports.
As a result of National Ownership in England, “the press rates have been reduced so low that every country paper can afford to print the latest telegraphic despatches as it goes to press, and a telegraph or telephone is at every country post office.”[9]
13. Discrimination will receive a serious blow. No more telegraph rebates of 20 or 40 or 50 per cent to favored individuals and corporations. No more telegraph blanks for legislators, politicians, and lobbyists. No more delaying B’s despatch until the rival message of C is sent. No more precedence for bucket-shops and gamblers over honest business and government despatches.