The exchange of mails between Canada and Newfoundland remained at a frequency of three times a week until 1914 when it was increased to a daily service each way; and the inland service has been so improved that there is no district in the island, however remote, has not at least a weekly communication with the capital, while nearly all the towns and villages of any importance exchange mails with St. John's every day.
In the sphere of telegraphy the progress has not been less marked. Unlike Canada and the United States, but as in the mother country and most other countries, the telegraphs are under the control of the government, and administered by the postmaster general. Until 1901, this was not the case. By a concession granted by the legislature in 1854, the Anglo-American Telegraph Company obtained the exclusive privilege of communicating abroad by telegraphy, and of erecting and operating lines within the colony.
The system established under this privilege was naturally confined to the more populous districts, and indeed, it covered little beyond the peninsula of Avalon. The outlying parts of the island, embracing all the settlements on bays north of Trinity, and west of Placentia Bays were, in general, without the means of communicating with the capital by telegraph.
The company turned a deaf ear to all appeals which did not promise an augmentation of their profits. They had no objection to the government running lines to the remoter regions, as such messages as would be sent to St. John's from those parts must pass over the company's lines when they came within the system marked out by the company for themselves in virtue of their monopoly. The government would, in that case, bear the loss entailed by the maintenance of these lines, and the company would absorb the additional revenue arising from the transmission of these extra-territorial messages over their lines.
With the development of the fishing, mining and lumbering industries in all parts of the island, the extension of the means of telegraphic communication beyond the peninsula of Avalon became a necessity, and the government had no option but to provide these means, wherever the importance of the districts seemed to demand it.
Thus there grew up two systems, an inner and an outer one, the latter depending on the former for the means of access to the capital of the island. All messages to and from the outer system were subject to a double charge, for transmission over both systems. While messages circulating within the peninsula of Avalon had the advantage of the moderate charge of twenty-five cents for ten words, messages from outside the peninsula were subject to double that rate.
The government were helpless in the matter. They endeavoured vainly to come to terms with the company by which they might erect a line of their own from St. John's to Whitbourne, a village about sixty miles from St. John's, at which the lines of the outer system connected with those belonging to the company. The company, however, stood firmly on the letter of the bond, and it was not until the approach of the time when the monopoly, which was for a period of fifty years, would expire, that they became at all unbending.
An event of far-reaching importance took place in November 1901 in the arrival of Marconi to experiment as to the possibility of opening communication across the Atlantic by his wireless system of telegraphy. Early in December, he caught at his station on Signal Hill near St. John's some signals sent out from the Lizards in Cornwall, thereby establishing a new agency for conducting communication between Europe and America. When he had assured himself of the success of his experiments, he set about obtaining a site for a permanent station on Cape Spear. But no sooner had the Anglo-American company become aware of his intentions than they notified him that his proposed measures would be an infringement of their monopoly.
Thus blocked, Marconi resolved to return to England, but an opportune invitation from the Canadian government led him to turn his attention to the advantages that might be obtained on the eastern coast of Cape Breton. He was not long in selecting a site at Table Head, near Glace Bay, where he erected a station, and has demonstrated the feasibility of wireless communication across the Atlantic for commercial purposes.