The National Telegraph Company is an example in point. This concern, which claims to have organized two years ago under an act of Congress, and which has filled the country with runners begging for subscriptions to its stock, has never set a pole.

The losses which have occurred in the operation of competing lines are enormous. The country is full of people who have lost money in these schemes, which, after a brief existence, are wound up and their effects disposed of by the sheriff.

The present condition of all the opposition lines is very precarious. The Franklin Company was made by a consolidation of the Insulated Company, having four wires between Boston and Washington, and the old Franklin Company, having two wires between Boston and New York. The capital of the former was $1,250,000, and of the latter $500,000. The new organization has been in operation about two years, during which time its receipts have fallen so far below its expenses that it has contracted a debt of $125,000; and its lines have deteriorated to such an extent that a large sum would have to be expended to put them in proper condition for business. The stock of such companies is valueless as an investment, and, in respect to some of them, it is doubtful if their property could be sold for a sum sufficient to pay their indebtedness.

The Atlantic and Pacific Company has a line from New York to Chicago, via Albany, Buffalo, Cleveland, and Sandusky, averaging about two wires for each line. Its lines are built under a contract to take stock in payment, at the rate of $1,666.66 per mile for a line of two wires.

The operation of these separate and irresponsible lines, during the brief period of their existence, retards the progress of legitimate telegraphy, and impairs the general unity of the system. Any legislation of Congress which is made to further such schemes has the direct effect of aiding a class of speculators to fleece a credulous public, by inducing them to invest their money in the construction of lines which never have paid, and never can pay, the expenses of operating them, and which are of no benefit to any persons but those who originate them, and profit by their construction.

MORE STARTLING INVENTIONS FOR RAPID TELEGRAPHING.

We quote from Mr. Hubbard:—

“Instruments have been recently invented, and are in operation, either in England or in this country, by which two great hindrances to the efficiency of the telegraph are remedied. Mr. Stearns, president of the Franklin Telegraph Company, has invented an instrument by which messages are transmitted both ways at the same time, on the same wire, thus doubling its capacity without any increase of expense. Sir Charles Wheatstone, in England, has invented an instrument by which double the number of words can be transmitted and received on the same wire, at an increased expense in the preparation of the message for transmission. Instruments are also in operation in Great Britain, worked by boys, after instruction of one or two days.”

In regard to Mr. Stearns’s apparatus for working both ways over one wire at the same time, we are compelled to say there is nothing new in the idea. Doctor Gintl, of Germany, invented it many years ago, and it was published in an Italian work,[[20]] with steel-plate illustration, issued in 1861, translated into English by George B. Prescott, of Albany, and published in the Telegraphic Journal, London, May, 1864. Moses G. Farmer, Esq., of Boston, invented another apparatus for doing the same thing, and worked it between Boston and Portland, in 1849. If there is any practical value in this apparatus it is open—like the Morse Telegraph—to the use of all. Sir Charles Wheatstone’s apparatus, by which double the number of words can be received on the same wire, will probably prove of the same practical value as many similar inventions, which in theory can transmit intelligence with the greatest accuracy at the astonishing rate of five or ten thousand words an hour, but in practice have never proved of the slightest value.

[20]. Manuale di Telegrafia Elettrica, di Carlo Matteucci, Torino, 1861.