THE TELEGRAPH AND THE PRESS.
In nothing, perhaps, is the superiority of private enterprise over governmental control more strongly marked than in the extraordinary amount of news furnished to the press of the United States, as contrasted by the meagre supply of the European journals.
By a system of co-operation among the newspapers of the United States and the Western Union Telegraph Company, the news of the world is daily furnished to the people of every portion of this country at a price within the reach of the poorest citizen.
On page [8] we have shown that 294,503,630 words are annually furnished to the newspapers of the United States, at an average cost of less than two mills per word. This immense amount of matter is not transmitted to each newspaper separately, but through a combination of wires only possible to a vast system like that owned by the Western Union Telegraph Company, it is sent to a large number of places simultaneously, with only one transmission.
The newspapers of the United States are associated together on the co-operative system. There is a general association having its headquarters in New York, which collects news from every part of the world; and there are local associations in every section of the country, which furnish their quota of intelligence to the general association, and receive in return such news as they require.
As an illustration of the manner in which this service is performed, we will take the State press of New York for an example. The report is compiled by the agent of the Association for the various editions of the newspapers requiring it, and it is then handed to the telegrapher, who with the manipulation of his magic key transmits it simultaneously to Poughkeepsie, Hudson, Albany, Troy, Utica, Syracuse, Auburn, Elmira, Binghamton, Owego, Rome, Oswego, Rochester, and Buffalo, New York, to Rutland and Burlington, Vermont, and to Scranton, Pennsylvania. These stations are not all on a single wire, nor on the same route, and the question may be asked, How can they all receive the same information from a single impulse? This is accomplished by a combination of circuits through an instrument called a repeater, by which the intelligence can be transmitted to a thousand offices as easily as to one.
The news is sent to the Eastern press in a similar manner. The manipulation of the key at New York transmits the report simultaneously to Bridgeport, New Haven, Hartford, Waterbury, and Norwich, Conn., Providence, R. I., and to Springfield, Worcester, Boston, Fall River and New Bedford, Mass.
The operator at each of these places receives the reports by the click of the instruments,—reading by the sound of the armature,—and with an agate pen copies them upon manifold paper, making as many impressions as are necessary to furnish each paper with a duplicate copy.
Direct wires carry and bring news from and to Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Washington, New Orleans, Plaister Cove, and other important points. Sixteen wires work out of New York every night to transmit or receive news reports, and all over the United States the ubiquitous iron threads are permeated by the subtile and invisible fluid during all the silent hours of the night, conveying intelligence of passing events in all sections of the civilized world for publication in the morning journals throughout the country.
It is a singular and suggestive fact, that the amount of news which we furnish to the press of the United States, for an aggregate sum of $521,509, is considerably greater than the entire telegraphic correspondence of Continental Europe, for which the paternal governments of those enlightened and enterprising peoples receive $11,597,632.71.