| From | 136 | offices, | 75 per cent. |
| „ | 3195 | „ | 25 per cent. |
Of these 136 offices, a large proportion of their receipts is derived from twelve chief cities, of which four are on the route proposed by this bill.
Government, by thus operating lines of telegraph over the choicest and most productive route, at rates below the cost of the service, and which could only be maintained by large drafts upon the national treasury, would assume an attitude towards private telegraph enterprises of the most unjust and unexampled hostility.
Such a partial experiment as that proposed by Mr. Washburne, or even by Mr. Hubbard, would destroy the unitary character of the service which the Western Union Telegraph Company has done so much to secure, and would be a most decidedly reactionary measure.
Mr. Hubbard’s bill to incorporate the United States Postal Telegraph Company, and to establish a postal-telegraph system, provides for the establishment of telegraph lines to all cities and villages of five thousand inhabitants and over in the United States. Were this scheme to be adopted, and the government thus enter into a partnership with the new company in the telegraph business, in accordance with the terms of this bill, what is to become of the smaller towns? According to the census of 1860 there are only three hundred and thirteen cities and villages in the United States having the five thousand inhabitants necessary to entitle them to an office under this postal system. Who, then, is to maintain telegraphic facilities at the remaining three thousand eight hundred and thirteen small towns now having offices?
Private companies, if driven out of the field by the establishment of this semi-government competing line, could not do it, and, as this scheme makes no provision for them, they must necessarily be deprived of the facilities they now enjoy. Under this bill Arkansas, Florida, and Oregon would not be entitled to an office; Minnesota, Mississippi, and South Carolina to but one; North Carolina, Texas, and Vermont to but two each; Delaware and Tennessee to but three; Connecticut, Georgia, Kentucky, and Michigan to but four; and Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Missouri, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Virginia, and Wisconsin would be entitled to less than ten each, while those provided for the whole United States would be less in number than the branch offices furnished for the convenience of the public by the Western Union Telegraph Company at the hotels, docks, piers, and other places in the large towns alone.[[29]]
[29]. The Postmaster-General is permitted to establish postal-telegraph stations at any city or village through which the lines of the contracting party may be extended, though said city or village contain less than five thousand inhabitants; but as the proposed company makes no provision for the payment of the operators or any of the expenses of such offices, while it secures to itself the receipts for telegrams, it is hardly to be expected that the Postmaster-General would feel disposed to open many stations under such circumstances.
The proposal presented to Congress is one which the governments of Europe, from which it professes to draw its inspiration, have never entertained. No government there has ever yet attempted to engage in any public work by the destruction of the property of its people, except after just compensation. The recent example of Great Britain in acquiring the British lines of telegraph is eminently illustrative of this national justice. Neither cavilling with the nature or condition of their structure, cheapening the value of their property, nor defaming the officers of any company, the British Parliament doubles the valuation of its owners, and pays a price therefor which satisfies the most exacting. In striking contrast to this is the enterprise proposed to the American Congress by the Washburne bill, which begins by attacking the integrity of the official management of the existing system, depreciating the value of its property, and proposing the competitive use of a grand invention which it refused to purchase, and now proposes, without consideration, to possess. In such a project there is no national example which would give it sanction or respectability, even though, in times of great national peril, and amid the necessities of despotic governments, monarchs have at times seized and made their own the profitable traffic and pursuits of the people.