The Arena Part 5

Do not allow yourselves to be terrified at the ghost of a silver dollar, for the ghost of it is all that will ever trouble you. In the event of free coinage, the trains going East will not be loaded with silver dollars to pay off old mortgages. I have seen a statement in Eastern papers to the effect that we wanted cheap money with which to pay our debts. It is a base slander; every intelligent Western man knows that, whatever happens short of the miraculous, only a small share of our mortgage debts will be paid.

All the holdings you now have in the West, new and old taken together, are not worth fifty-three cents on the dollar; and you cannot now in any way realize that much from them; and if your present policy is indefinitely continued you have no prospect of ever realizing fifty-three per cent on your investments. If, then, you should be paid in silver dollars, or if a larger share of the loans should be paid under the new conditions, you would be a gainer and not a loser by the change. It seems to me that an increase in the volume of money and rising prices are the opportunity for you to realize from your holdings, for without some favorable change you will hardly realize twenty-five per cent.

You can test the truth of these statements. Take twenty holdings, not selected, and try to convert them into cash. Or offer them to some capitalist who has travelled extensively in the West during the last five years. Time will convince you, if nothing else will; but the knowledge may come a little too late for practical purposes. You ought to be with us in this free-silver movement, and you would be if you knew what we know. We are not fools, although we may appear so to you; we know what we want, and we are trying to get it.

You threaten "to draw in your money from the West." If you have any money in the West which you _can_ "draw in," the sooner you do it the better; it will be an heroic remedy instead of misery long drawn out. A "panic" will return like a boomerang upon yourselves, and make _your_ property still less valuable. You can cause a panic, break our business men, make more idle men and tramps, and, in short, concentrate three or four years of squeezing into a few weeks or months; but what benefit can _you_ hope to derive from it?

Whatever adds to _our_ prosperity will increase the actual value of _your_ holdings; our interests are identical, then why should _you_ desire the continuance of present conditions? Have the present conditions done anything for you, as far as Western investments are concerned? Is not your increase of capital simply an increase "on paper"

which you can never realize? We cordially invite you to join us in our effort to bring on an era of prosperity; forsake your political leaders, as we have forsaken ours, and use at least as much common sense in politics as you do in business.

Save this article; it will be good reading after the election is over.

It is not politics, it is business; it is the naked truth. The writer does not want to borrow any money; he seeks no office, is not a politician, has no axe to grind, and expects no reward, except to share in the general prosperity, as he has shared in the general adversity, in the capacity of a humble citizen.

WICHITA, KANSAS.

THE TELEGRAPH MONOPOLY.

BY PROF. FRANK PARSONS.

XIII.

10. _The Union of Telegraph and Post is needed for the Interests of the Post as well as for those of the Telegraph._ It will elevate the skill and competency of postal employees. When mails do not arrive on time, it will inform the public thronging the post office, not merely that the mail has not arrived, but when it will arrive. It will permit the employment of the telegraph in tracing a missent letter or package, rectifying an erroneous address, discovering the whereabouts of an absentee, etc. It will permit the more rapid extension of the free-delivery system by affording a larger basis for its sustenance. It will multiply many fold the rapidity in transmitting letters across the continent.

The telegraph is naturally a part of the post office,[3] as much a part of it as the sewing machine is a part of a dressmaking establishment.

Suppose the government were in the clothing business (as it might have been to advantage during the war), and continued to sew the garments entirely by hand, leaving the sewing machine to private enterprise; it would be a charming situation for private enterprise, but not very delightful for the government. With such advantages private enterprise would be apt to deprive the government of the best part of its business in spite of its willingness to work for people at cost. The same thing has happened to some extent with the telegraph and telephone, and will happen to a far greater extent if they are allowed to continue in private control. If trunk lines for automatic transit were established by a private company, even at 25 cents per hundred words (a rate sufficient to pay a very large profit on a corporate investment, water and all), the post office would soon lose a considerable portion of its most valuable business, the letter mail between the large cities.[4]

[3] Mr. Hubbard says: "The telegraph and the post office are two great pieces of machinery going on, both for the same purpose, the transmission of intelligence" (J. T. U. p. 17).

Prof. Ely calls the telegraph the "logical completion of the post office" (ARENA, Dec. 1895, p. 49). Cyrus W. Field says: "Why should not the two branches of what is really one service to the public be brought together in this country, as in other countries, and placed under one management? It would certainly be a great convenience to the people if every telegraph office were a post office, and every post office a telegraph office"

(_N. A. Review_, Mar. 1886).

[4] Postmaster-General Cave Johnson said: "Experience teaches that if individual enterprise is allowed to perform such portions of the business of the Government as it may find for its advantage, the Government will soon be left to perform unprofitable portions of it only, and must be driven to abandon it entirely or carry it on at a heavy tax upon the public Treasury.... I may further add that the Department created under the Const.i.tution and designed to exercise exclusive power for the transmission of intelligence, must necessarily be superseded in much of its most important business if the telegraph be permitted to remain under the control of individuals" (Reps. of 1845 and 1846).

Postmaster-General Cresswell said in 1872: "If the effects of rivalry between the telegraph and the mail upon the revenues of the post office have not been serious, it is due alone to the liberal management of the latter as compared with that of the companies, a management which since the invention of the telegraph has reduced the rates of postage from 25 to 3 cents, and increased tenfold the correspondence of the country" (Rep.

1872, pp. 22-3).

One of Hannibal Hamlin's three great reasons for a postal telegraph was "for the sake of the post-office system, which may at any time be depleted by a strong telegraph in private hands" (_Cong. Globe_, 42-2, p. 3554).

In times of pestilence the telegraph will save the post office from embargo. A letter from Port Gibson, Miss., says:

Whenever the yellow fever breaks out at any point, all cities and towns, and some counties, having communication with the infected districts, at once declare a rigid quarantine. The effect of this is to cut off all communication between themselves and the outside world. Trains and boats are prevented from receiving or delivering the mails. Business men are unable to communicate by letter with their correspondents, and all are prevented from hearing from relatives and friends in the quarantined places, except by telegraph, whose rates prevent many from using the wires.[5]

[5] Wan. Arg. p. 138.

The infection does not travel on an electric wire, and if the post office possessed the telegraph, its business would go smoothly on in spite of the plague, instead of being brought to a dead standstill throughout the region of disaster at the very time when hearts are breaking for daily news, and communication is of the utmost importance to alleviate the quarantine.

11. _Employees will be benefited_ by pa.s.sing from a regime of oppression to one of elevation; from low wages[6] and long hours to high wages and short hours; from a service almost hopeless of promotion to a service of almost limitless possibilities to the man of character, brain, and energy; from an employment in which they are regarded as so much machinery to be obtained at the lowest market rates and worked for all the profit there is in them to an employment in which their comfort and advancement are among the main objects of solicitude with the management; from a business in which they have no share to a business in which they are equal partners with all their fellow-citizens; from serfdom to liberty and manhood. No more boycotting and black-listing, no more denial of the rights of organization and pet.i.tion.

[6] In the last Congressional investigation, dated May 26, 1896, the great telegraph inventor P. B. Delayner testified that the pay of American operators had fallen forty per cent in the last twenty years; and he said that, "while the British operator has had two increases of pay since 1891, his American brother has had four reductions, and to-day the British operator is better paid for the same amount of work, and by his environment occupies a higher plane of comfort and contentment, than the American operator. Good behavior and diligence in his duties warrant him a life position, from which the whim and caprice of no one can drive him. He is not an itinerant wandering from place to place looking for work and hired for a day or a week, to be again sent adrift, nor is he permitted to work overtime to the detriment of his health and the exclusion of another wage-earner from his share. His increasing years of service are taken into account in various beneficial ways. He has his yearly vacation. He is not cut off in sickness, and, most important of all, he is not 'turned down' in old age, but is retired on a pension, proportioned to his years of service" (Sen. Doc. 291, 54-1, pp. 4, 6).

Some of the consequences will be the lifting of thousands to a higher plane of living, the annihilation of strikes by uprooting the causes of them,[7] the improvement of the service as already stated under the seventh sub-head of this section, etc., etc.

[7] Joseph Medill, the publisher of the Chicago _Tribune_, expressed the opinion to the Blair Committee that, with a postal telegraph, there would be no strikes any more than among the clerks in the Treasury or the officers of the army.

Government employees do not resign _en ma.s.se_. Their pay is good as a rule, and, anyway, they could not get it raised till Congress thought it right; and a strike would not be apt to hasten the achievement of their purposes, but would place them face to face with the limitless power of the United States.

Instead of occupying a position of brave revolt against corporate oppression, impervious to pet.i.tion, the strikers would place themselves in the position of deliberately departing from ready and hopeful redress by peaceful pet.i.tion and discussion, to the very objectionable method of obstructing the public business, defying the people's government, and dictating terms to the nation."

The telegraph system would no longer be subject to such disasters as that so well described by the Hon. Wm. Roche in the Ohio legislature Jan. 29th, 1885: "A convulsion of the trade and commerce of the entire country resulted, when, on the 19th of July, 1883, 12,000 operators left their posts after the flat refusal of the magnates to give audience to their representatives to state their case."

12. _The press will be relieved of an ever present tyranny_ likely at any moment to transfer itself from the potential to the real.[8] Sen.

Report 242, 43-1, p. 5, says:

[8] We have seen in Part VI (ARENA, June, 1896) how rates were raised on papers that criticised the Western Union's president or advocated a postal telegraph too vigorously, how papers were ordered not to criticise news reports under penalty of loss of news facilities, etc. It is interesting to note that even the largest and most influential papers do not always escape persecution. In his speech in the House, Mar. 1, 1884, the Hon. John A. Anderson, of Kansas, tells us that "the Chicago _Inter-Ocean_ had the lease of a private wire from Washington to Chicago, and published Washington news every day. A few weeks since, Senator Hill spoke for the postal telegraph. The _Inter-Ocean_ published the speech verbatim.

That evening word was sent to the _Inter-Ocean_ that the lease was terminated. The manager of the _Inter-Ocean_ said afterwards that their relations with the Western Union were still friendly, but he had to be, of course, in order to keep the general despatches."

The operation of the postal-telegraph system would result in a speedy termination of this alliance [between the telegraph and news a.s.sociation, and groups of favored papers], and will be a very important step toward the freedom of the press.

Sen. Rep. 577, 48-1, p. 16, says:

The bill [for a postal telegraph] will lessen the danger of a concealed censorship of news whereby it may be colored and distorted so as to subserve political purposes, to mislead public opinion as to the merits or demerits of men and measures, to pervert legislation, and to favor schemes of private gain.

The press of the nation will not be forbidden to criticise the news, nor will any paper be excluded from equal partic.i.p.ation in the benefits of the telegraph service--equal rates to all, special privileges to none.

Moreover, the rates will be greatly reduced for all press despatches, and papers will be able to buy the world's history every day for a fraction of what they pay now for imperfect and garbled reports.

As a result of National Ownership in England, "the press rates have been reduced so low that every country paper can afford to print the latest telegraphic despatches as it goes to press, and a telegraph or telephone is at every country post office."[9]

[9] Sen. Doc. 205, 54-1, p. 50; Report of U. S. Consul at Southampton, Consular Reports, vol. xlvii, No. 175, April, 1895, p. 564. The press rate in England averages nine cents per hundred words. In this country it is at least 40 cents per hundred; the electrician P. B. Delany says it is 50 cents per 100 (Sen. Doc. 291, May, 1896, p. 3).

The Report last quoted contains the testimony of Mr. Bell of the Typographical Union, May 20, 1896, in which he says: "The news of this country is controlled by two great press a.s.sociations, and in any place in which either has a footing, no new journal can be established and secure telegraphic news except on such terms as may be prescribed by the paper or papers that already occupy the field. In England, on the contrary, all papers are on an equal footing." The Typographical Union is fully alive to the benefits of a government telegraph; in fact, labor and commerce in general very strongly favor the reform. Mr. Bell says: "In this movement of ours we are supported by all the organized bodies of workingmen in this country. We are a unit on this question"

(p. 17).

13. _Discrimination will receive a serious blow._ No more telegraph rebates of 20 or 40 or 50 per cent to favored individuals and corporations. No more telegraph blanks for legislators, politicians, and lobbyists. No more delaying B's despatch until the rival message of C is sent. No more precedence for bucket-shops and gamblers over honest business and government despatches.

14. _Gambling in government stocks will cease_, speculators in wheat, corn, pork, copper, oil, and other products of industry will be unable to control the wires for their uses, or even secure a precedence over the lines, and the Louisiana Lottery and similar frauds will no longer find a refuge in the telegraph as they do at present. The post office has been taken away from the gamblers; it is time the telegraph were taken from them also. The telegraph in the hands of cunning men may be the means of abstracting millions of money from the producers of the country, and may even become a potent factor in the causation of panic and depression. On page 3 of his Argument for a postal telegraph, Mr.

Wanamaker says:

The measureless body of producers, in order not to be manipulated and robbed by the speculators, need to be nearer the consumers; and the measureless body of consumers, in order not to be manipulated and robbed by the same speculators, need to be nearer to the producers.

Take the telegraph away from the speculators and give it to the producers and consumers, that they may come into the closest possible relations.

15. _Political corruption_ will lose an able contributor when the telegraph ceases to belong to a private corporation (See Part VII, ARENA, July, 1896).

16. _A Postal telegraph will be a step toward a fairer distribution of wealth_ and away from the congestion of power and wealth in the hands of a few unscrupulous men, which is one of the chief dangers threatening the future of the country (See Part VIII, ARENA, August, 1896). On this ground alone the establishment of a national telegraph would be justified, were there no other reason in the case.

17. _The public safety demands a national telegraph_, not merely as a precaution against corruption, speculation, and panic, congestion of wealth and power, strikes, and duress of the press, but also as a military measure and a valuable addition to the police power of the government,--a means of strength in time of war, and a conservator of law and order by aiding in the capture of criminals and in the general enforcement of the law. We have already quoted the opinion of Mr.

Scudamore that the postal telegraph "will strengthen the country from hostility from without, and the maintaining of law and order within the kingdom." Let us call attention here to the weighty words of the New York _Public_, cited in Wanamaker's Argument, pp. 206-7: