This remark is made with reference to the necessity of great promptitude in the delivery of messages in Belgium, where the places connected are contiguous, and conveyance by railroad rapid and frequent. It is made also to show that it is more difficult under such circumstances to cope with an enlarged use of the telegraph than in the United States, where, by reason of distance and the comparative infrequency of transit by railroad, the necessity of promptitude is presumably less urgent.
At first the argument seems fair, but when examined, it has no foundation except in the general fact that distance and infrequent transit by rail may render the telegraph valuable and desirable, even without the promptness essential where transit is rapid and frequent.
The weakness of the argument is evident when it is seen that, as distances decrease, all the elements of cost and maintenance of lines and the difficulties arising from elemental disturbances, lessen in the same proportion. This admits of easy illustration. Look for a moment at Belgium, of which Mr. Washburne treats so copiously. Located centrally in that kingdom, in the form of a triangle, and separated from each other by about thirty miles each, are her three chief cities, Ghent, Brussels, and Antwerp. To connect either two of these a line of telegraph thirty miles long is required, which government builds upon its own property and protects by its own police. However thoroughly built, its cost is necessarily small. There is no trouble or uncertainty in working it. Its very shortness renders its perfection in the use of all the appliances which science and experience have shown desirable readily and cheaply attainable, and it is easily kept in order. When increased public use imperils promptness by the limited provision of wires, ten men, in a single week, can erect another. In all this the very proximity of the points to be connected facilitates and economizes every step required in meeting the enlarged necessities.
The management of such lines, short, well-guarded, and permanent, is almost solely confined to the arrangements for transmission and delivery.
In Belgium, therefore, which contains only two thirds as many offices as the Western Union Telegraph Company maintains in the State of New York alone, with her commercial centres near together, with an average of less than three wires on her poles, with her 2,232 miles of line on government property and protected by its authority, want of promptness would be inexcusable, because so easily effected. Were New York and Chicago only thirty miles apart, and all the messages of the United States, now approximating thirteen millions per annum, required to be passed between them at the rate of 36,000 per day, and within an average of fifteen minutes from the time of their reception, as is now done between the Chambers of Commerce of these cities, it could be accomplished with comparative ease, and especially so were the land which the wires traversed the property of the company, and the lines guarded by the nation. Once render it easy and inexpensive to provide a reliable outward structure, and the work of the telegraph becomes a matter of simple internal organization, except as competition and the necessities of extension in a land so vast as ours adds to the ordinary cares of administration. The immense distances between our centres of commerce, the multitude of far separated radiating centres of business, the great exposure and defective protection of our lines, and constantly increasing system of wires which are constructed as rapidly as new demands for their extension are made, render the management of this company one of the most arduous and complicated of private enterprises. There is nothing in Europe or elsewhere which bears any proper resemblance to the American telegraph system, nor with which it can be properly compared.