Government, however, most effectually insured its successful extension, when, contrary to the practice of European powers, it declined to assume the control of the Telegraph, and referred its inventor, after the thorough investigation of the Postmaster-General, to the people as the proper recipients of his discovery. It was the healthy act of a government which recognized its duty to protect, instead of absorbing, the enterprises of its citizens. That duty is as clear to-day as it was then.
When government rejected the control and ownership of the Telegraph, although offered for so paltry a sum by the inventor, it was accepted by the people as a legitimate enterprise, and they have given to it all the capital, skill, and labor required for the fullest development of its usefulness.
Although many years elapsed after the introduction of the Telegraph in this country during which it maintained but a feeble existence through numerous weak and limited organizations, that rendered the business expensive and precarious, it now begins to crystallize into strength and harmony; and the projectors and promoters of the enterprise feel that they have a right to expect the fruit of their labors, in the proper and legitimate return which the humblest citizen receives for his work, and which government was, in part at least, organized to secure. We therefore pronounce the Washburne bill an unwarranted and unjust measure, which, while proposing an ostensible public good, essays to provide it by the destruction of vast private interests for which it proposes no compensation.
ERRONEOUS CHARGES AGAINST THE AMERICAN TELEGRAPH SYSTEM.
To the charges made by Mr. Washburne, in the prefatory sentences of his paper, against the management of the Telegraph system of the United States, little need be said. They are without the shadow of proof, and require no other answer than an explicit denial. Yet American telegraph companies may justly complain that a public man, while ostensibly performing a service in the interests of the people, should deem it necessary to traduce a vast interest by the use of terms so broad as to attract to it, even without proof of their justice, unwarranted disparagement and suspicion.
Mr. Washburne’s statement that “the telegraphic system has made less progress toward perfection, and has been practically of less value to the masses of the people in our country, than in any other civilized country on the globe,” is so sweepingly erroneous as to excite our profound astonishment, which is increased by the still broader assertion that, “while in nearly every country in Europe the telegraph has become a speedy, certain, and economical medium of communication, the inestimable benefits of which are extended to the inhabitants of small towns and communes as well as to the great centres of trade, in this country telegraphic communication has always been uncertain and expensive, and limited to chief towns and cities.”
BRIEF STATEMENT OF FACTS.
In reply to the above we desire to present the following facts.
The population of Europe at the last authentic census was 288,001,365, nineteen twentieths of which belonged to the Caucasian race. It contains thirty-nine cities, each possessing more than one hundred thousand inhabitants, and the accumulated wealth of nearly two thousand years of civilization.
The United States has a population of only 31,148,047, and contains but ten cities of one hundred thousand inhabitants, while its utmost civilized history reaches back scarcely two and a half centuries, and the accumulated wealth of its civilization cannot average fifty years throughout its cultivated area.