Show JOHN OF THE CLOTH Dr Green Writes Him Another Quiet letter t Ef WHICH HE TURNS HDI OX A SPIT 1 Metaphorically Speaking Wanimakers Gov ernmentTelegraph Bates are Shown I t be Absolutely Low NEW YORK Aug 9Dr Norvin Green president of the Western Union Telegraph company today sent to PostmasterGen eral Wanamaker the following response Hon Jotth Wanamaker PostmasterGen eral Dear Acknowledging the receipt of your letter of August 2 I beg t say that I much regret that the publication of my letters to you to which you refer was inndered necessary by the extraordinary statements on information furnished this your department contained in your letter let-ter of July 13 and extensively printed in tho newspapers on the following You again refer t tho privileges and benefits derived by this compuny through the acts of Congress and especially the act of 18GG You say that under these grants the company com-pany has claimed tho right to use without compensation of any kind as t the right of way all the highways of the country on the ground of their being post roads that it has broadened this claim to the extent that the streets of cities and towns are also torpost roads and therefore open and Jlds roe to Its occupancy and that the courts J have sustained it in this claim Either you or we are very badly informed by our respective re-spective legal advisers as to what has been claimed by the telegraph company and held by courts in respect to the scope and authority au-thority of that grant I have had occasion from time to time to go through the post roads in a great many cases but I do not recall any instances in-stances in which such claim has been made and sustained by the courts What we understand un-derstand the government did give us in the act of 1SS6 was a franchise and right to do telegraph business in all the states and this franchise was given alike to all telegraph tele-graph companies or other parties who alight accept it and subequently by what was known as theButler amendment itwas especially extended to all railroad com panics But the act never assumed to give us and could not give us gve right t plant our poles on any but lands actually belonging t the government and that right we have rarely exercised except where the government govern-ment wanted us to extend lines for the convenience con-venience of the government into its navy Y arsand military posts and stations or tots to-ts department quarters in the city of 1 Washington iWaShington carefully read the decision inV in-V tie Pensacola telegraph case to which you refer you would not have fallen into such a grievous error upon this point Chief Justice Waite in the body of the opinion thus defines the scope of the art of 1SGO under consideration There is no question as to the authority of Congress to provide for the appropriation of private property to the uses of the telegraph for no such an attempt has been made The use of the public pub-lic property alone is granted I private property is required it must so far as tho present legislation is concerned be obtained ob-tained with private arrangement with its owner No compulsory proceedings arc uthore Sovereignty under the const tution it not interfered with only national privileges arc granted The decision in this case therefore was that the state of Florida could not prohibit the Western Union Telegraph company from erecting and operating its lines of telegraph in that state after it had acquired a right of way for its plant from a railroad company of that state but did not hold that it was exempt from the obligation obliga-tion to buy or condemn interstate statute the property necessary to enable It to build its lines The railroads are post roads as well as some of the highways and i tho government gives us the right of way on post roads why should we ha C to pay the railroads for itl We have to < contract for and obtain our rights of way 1 rom the parties who own them whether railroad companies turnpike and plank t oad companies or Individual land owners and in case of streets and highways we have to obtain a license from the city county or state authorities or condemn under the authority of state laws I sincerely wish that your ideas of the law that we arc in fact occupying many thousands of miles of post roads and are privileged t occupy a the highways in the United States under the grants of that act may prove sound in law but we have relied on that grant and are satisfied that he courts would not sustain your views Our occupancy of the streets is always by license of the local authorities or of the state and in the case of the Elevated Railroad Rail-road company in the city of New York to which you refer we pay the companies who jwn the structure for the right to string our wires thereon The act to which you refer gives the telegraph companies accepting it the right M to take stone and timber from the public w ands and to and not tnds t preempt ienter ex voeeding forty acres for each station We have never needed to use any stone and since the passage of that act the railroads have afforded ample facilities for transporting transport-ing cedar for poles which is more durable and economical than the native timberthan might possibly be found accessible on unoccupied un-occupied government lands As t preempting forty acres of land for a station wo have found that wherever a telegraph station was needed there were no unoccupied government lands and if wo were to establish a station on any forty acres of unoccupied government lands it would be in a locality that would yield no revenue I is true therefore that we have lever tin a stone or stick of timber or appropriated a foot of public land under that law j y tatlaw franchise granted this company in common with other parties was not supposed sup-posed to be solely for our benefit but t secure convenient facilities to the public The effect of establishing our right t do business in Pcnsacola was to wipe out a charge of SI for a ten word message for a distance of fortvfiveamiles over a line that claimed tho excusive franchise Tinder the state law and the establishment of a branch office in the navy yard at that port which t this day we arc operating for the benefit of government at a loss The business busi-ness of that office i not being sufficient t pay the salary of tho operator PJ Woseem t be gettng nearer together af t the power and duty of postmaster general t name the rate of tolls t bo paid on government messages I only claim that this power and duty are limited by the constitution t a Just compensation for the I service required and that a Just compensation compen-sation must cover the actual cost of service ser-vice with something added for the use of the facilities necessary t perform it and a you say the government is willing t pay Just rates Wo have come quite near t an agreement on the principle that must agement govern the fixing of rates to be paid ftoM I g I still insist that the government i our most favored customer and that the rate for government services during ths past five years considering the char i cter of tho service is lower than that given t any other patron The government rato has been one cent per yord for a thousand miles or less You oily make up a supposed message with ad CTCSS mao signature of unusual length and twenty words in tho body sent short wors distance under our halfrate contract with I certain transportation companies and show that itis a triflcJess than the government gov-ernment rate but the halfrate is generally gener-ally higher and you forget that this half rate in money is not all we get To it mutt be added the value of what those transportation trans-portation companies do for us Yet when you apply even the shortest supposed case to a message between New York and Chi message cago or Washington and St Louis you will find the government is the lowest There is no comparison between the service ser-vice for the newspapers comparon even the special rates to one newspaper and messages transmitted for the government A special of 1500 words would make fifty government govern-ment messages of thirty words each each message requiring a separate checking booking numbering routing enveloping and a special delivery We often have a special news report of five thousand words or more equal to over one hundred and sixtysix messages of thirty words each whilst our commercial and social messages whist words includ average but about seventeen incud ing the address and signature In my former statement that for messages mes-sages transmitted and delivered to a single address the government was the only customer cus-tomer that enjoyed a reduced rate I distinctly dis-tinctly excepted in the context the service for the newspapers arrangements with the railroad and transportation companies and the distribution of commercial news reports re-ports It is not true that this company gives the large papers of the large cities any lower rate than it gives the small papers of small cities The press rate which is based on commercial rate is the same toevery paper in tho same city or town great or small whether it does business to the extent of a dollar per year or 100000 It is not true that the patronage patron-age from the press is the most profitable wo have There is little or no profit on the regular ltte gular press service as a whole and very little lit-tle on the special press service and would not add to our profit if tho rate were made still lower However as it is based on our commercial rate it necessarily is reduced with it The question of ourpress rate has been much discussed with tho Press association sedation who have many lines leased which they operate themselves They are quite familiar with the cost of rendering itl as they are with the cost of like service in other countries and it was found and admitted that the press rate of this country considering the distance is i the lowest of any country in the world and the most liberal in itt application O On the signal service reports since 1872 the rate has been reduced as in the caso of other government service by lengthening the circuits Until about 18S4 the circuit for signal service was paying three cents per word which was counted aspractically making the circuit a compound circuit requiring re-quiring the use of reporters as from New York to Milwaukee with drops and was charged and paid for as two circuits or at the rate of six cents per word So also were the circuits from New York to Eastport Maine and from Cincinnati to New Orleans whilst the circuit from Chicago Chi-cago to San Francisco was rated as four circuits or twelve cents per word San Francisco to San Diego and San Francisco to Olympia were each rated and paid for as three circuits or nine cents per word Others were contained in double or treble circuits Now we are only paid three cents per word for each of these circuits so that the rate for signal service reports has on a number of circuits been reduced t one half and others to onethird of theamount previously paid I we had ben paid last year for this signal service on the same basis as in 1872 we should have received nearly twice as much as wo did whilst tho rate on government ment messages was fixed so nearly at the cost of the service at the start that it has not been entitled to and could not be expected ex-pected to have a corresponding reduction with the rates to the public from timeto time Yet the facts show that on a large class of government business the reduction cass been much greater than that made to the public Up to July 1877 the government govern-ment rate was 1 cent per word for 250 miles or less than 1 cent per word for each additional 2 miles or fraction with not less than 2 cents to be counted for a fraction frac-tion less than one thousand miles |