14. Gambling in government stocks will cease, speculators in wheat, corn, pork, copper, oil, and other products of industry will be unable to control the wires for their uses, or even secure a precedence over the lines, and the Louisiana Lottery and similar frauds will no longer find a refuge in the telegraph as they do at present. The post office has been taken away from the gamblers; it is time the telegraph were taken from them also. The telegraph in the hands of cunning men may be the means of abstracting millions of money from the producers of the country, and may even become a potent factor in the causation of panic and depression. On page 3 of his Argument for a postal telegraph, Mr. Wanamaker says:
The measureless body of producers, in order not to be manipulated and robbed by the speculators, need to be nearer the consumers; and the measureless body of consumers, in order not to be manipulated and robbed by the same speculators, need to be nearer to the producers.
Take the telegraph away from the speculators and give it to the producers and consumers, that they may come into the closest possible relations.
15. Political corruption will lose an able contributor when the telegraph ceases to belong to a private corporation (See Part VII, Arena, July, 1896).
16. A Postal telegraph will be a step toward a fairer distribution of wealth and away from the congestion of power and wealth in the hands of a few unscrupulous men, which is one of the chief dangers threatening the future of the country (See Part VIII, Arena, August, 1896). On this ground alone the establishment of a national telegraph would be justified, were there no other reason in the case.
17. The public safety demands a national telegraph, not merely as a precaution against corruption, speculation, and panic, congestion of wealth and power, strikes, and duress of the press, but also as a military measure and a valuable addition to the police power of the government,—a means of strength in time of war, and a conservator of law and order by aiding in the capture of criminals and in the general enforcement of the law. We have already quoted the opinion of Mr. Scudamore that the postal telegraph “will strengthen the country from hostility from without, and the maintaining of law and order within the kingdom.” Let us call attention here to the weighty words of the New York Public, cited in Wanamaker’s Argument, pp. 206-7:
The Government itself absolutely needs a telegraphic system for its own protection. This will not seem the language of exaggeration when it is considered that the ordinary enforcement of laws, the capture of offenders, the success of fiscal operations, the protection of the country against domestic insurrection and foreign invasion, have come to depend in these days upon the instant transmission of intelligence with certain and absolute secrecy. It may at any time come to pass that the private interests of those controlling a telegraph system shall require the non-enforcement of the law, the prevention or delay of a financial operation, or the partial success of a domestic outbreak or foreign inroad. It is nonsense to say that this cannot happen. If Mr. Gould could suppress for a few hours or days, news of an outbreak on the Pacific coast or of the capture of a hostile ironclad from Europe, he could make millions by it. The Government has no certainty that he would throw away millions. It has no certainty that its orders bearing on great financial operations may not be betrayed and its aims thwarted. When the Government was hunting for the Star Route offenders, how many would have been caught if its despatches had been secretly betrayed? An important witness happened to be a Government director of the Union Pacific Railroad, and it has always been a mysterious fact that the officers in search of him could never catch him.
18. It will be a step toward civil-service reform. Every increase of public business brings us nearer to thorough civil-service reform, because it enhances the importance of that reform, impresses the need of it more strongly upon the people, and deepens their sentiment in its favor. This has been the experience of European cities and states. A good reason why they are ahead of us in civil-service management, is because they are ahead of us in the public ownership of railroads, telegraphs, telephones, etc.
In the case of the telegraph there are special reasons to expect that government control would carry with it an extension of the civil-service principle. In the opinion of Mr. Rosewater the postal telegraph “would be an entering wedge for the greatest possible success of the civil service.” He says:
It would bring into the postal service a large number of skilled operatives whose services could not be easily dispensed with. They would be divided in politics like every other class of citizens, their experience and trustworthiness would be of great moment, and their trustworthiness would be increased by the knowledge that they could not be displaced by partisan politics. This has been the experience in Great Britain, and would be the same here. Once get the postal service under government control and the civil-service act, and you would soon be able to place all departments of the government under the same system, and a large share of the public nuisance incident to office-holding would be done away with, leaving the officers free to inquire into and learn their duties to their office and to the public.[10]