| Show AMERICAN TELEGRAPH COMPARED WITH EIVGIiAXliS GOV IRN1IENl TELEGRAPH 8F Belting the Globe Tlie Western TJHlous 750000 Allies of Wire The ViccPresideiit of thc Line Talks About It Some feeling has been aroused in telegraph circles by reason of recent publications of the chief engineer of British telegraphs who claimed after a visit to this country that the English Eng-lish compared favorably with their r American cousins To learn his views upon the subject a reporter called yesterday on Colonel R C dowry vicepresident and general gen-eral superintendent of the Western Union Telegraph company and chairman chair-man of the committee on electricity of the Worlds fair Colonel Cl 0 wry did you read the telegraphic dispatches recently published pub-lished in which Mr Preece the chief engineer of the British telegraphs is quoted as saying that there was only one branch of electrical industry in which the English compared favorably with their American cousins that being be-ing telegraphy in which they were certainly ahead 1 Yes I read the article you mention men-tion inter I suppose you also read the view with MrPreece published in the New York Sun last August Yes I read that also What is there to be said in reply to those statements of Mr Preece Well a good deal may be said in reference to the matter In Mr Preeces Interview in the Sun he states that the telegraph facilities in England Eng-land are gi eater than they are here for we go to every town and every village irrespective of the fact that they pay or do not pay while in the states the places that pay appear tome to-me to be the only ones that receive the attention of the telegraph companies In reply to that statement I quote from the annual report of the British post mastergeneral who says The department de-partment has cersed to require the repayment re-payment of the capital outlay for telegraph tel-egraph extensions made under guarantee guaran-tee and the guarantee is now required to cover only the expense of working and maintenance By act of parliament parlia-ment the rural sanitary authorities are emppwered to undertake guarantees for telegraph offices at places within their districts and to defray the cost out of the rates As the result of this concession there has been a considerable considera-ble extension 01 the telegraph system in the rural districts It will be seen by this that the telegraph system of Great Britain is not extended to small towns except under a guaranty to cover the working and maintenance The statement of the postmastergen eral is therefore a direct contradiction to that of Mr Preece THE WESTERN UNION SYSTEM Under the Western Union system the telegraph extends to every ril way station great and small in the United States without expense to the public ad we are only too glad to extend ex-tend our lines to other towns not connected con-nected with railroads where as in Great Britain the expense of working i and maintenance is guaranteed Not ithstanding the statement of Mr Preece that the telegraph in England extends to every town and village it Is a fact that there are telegraph offices t established at less than onethird of I the Dostoffices I I notice also that when asked by the Sun reporter if he considered government gov-ernment telegraphs a success in England Eng-land Mr Preece said Yes they are undoubtedly a success in England On I the other hand the British chancellor of the exchequer in laying before the > house of commons last April the annual R I budget said in his speech thereupon that the operations of the British government r gov-ernment telegraphs for the fiscal year t showed a bad revenue and an excess j ex-cess of actual working expenses over receipts of fUoOOO 560000 to say nothing noth-ing of the interest on the 10000000 I 50000000 of bonds issued for their acquisition He also said that since the purchase the government of the r telegraph lines including the moderate interest they ought to have paid upon their cost the loss on that transaction transac-tion had been 4500000 about 22000 000 which result was founded on a miscalculation and for anything that can be seen to the contrary it is a revenue rev-enue which is going from bad to worse > and not likely to impove According to these figures the British government t govern-ment has operated the telegraph system sys-tem for about twentytwo years at a loss of about 1000000 a year The telegraph is used mostly by bankers r merchants manufacturers brokers and r F speculators so that according to the English plan a large majority of the people who never use the telegraph t 1 haveto make up this yearly deficit of 81000000 in order to afford the parties f first named low rates on their messages f mes-sages But while for short distances the world rates In England are lower Fr than they are here still owing to the L f different methods in vogue in the two r countries for counting the number of words in a massage in Great Britain f the words in the address and signature II are counted while we do not count them the cost to the sender on an t average message is about the same s The longdistance rates on the continent It conti-nent and between England and the continent are much higher than those i for similar distances m the United I States BELTING THE GLOiiE WITH WIRES IL Regarding the statement in the Sun I I article that Mr Peecps department is 5 the Western Union and American Bell I I Telephone companies rolled up into one r and half a dozen submarine cable companies thrown in etc I will merely call attention to the fact that the British Brit-ish telegraph system comprises but about 30000 miles of line 190000 miles of wire and 8000 offices extending over and area of about 120000 square miles while the Western Union telegraph tele-graph system alone comprises about 190000 miles of line 750000 miles of wire 8500 miles of ocean submarine cables and 22000 offices extending f throughout an area of more than S 000000 square miles being therefore About quadruple the British government govern-ment telegraph system and extending over an area twentyfour times as great The capital account of the cost k of the British government of its telegraph tel-egraph system Is 50000000 If the Western Union Telegraph companys capital account was in proportion to its property In the same ratio it would be over 200000000 r Mr Peece in his interview says that In England the telegraphs belong R be-long to the people they are maintained maintain-ed by the people they are supervised by the people for very Englishman has the right to complain for any delay or anything wrong ot only through the press but in the houses of parliament parlia-ment and every complaint of every kind receives as much attention as though it came through the houses of parliament low an examination into the conditions con-ditions under which telegraphic business busi-ness is transacted in the two countries Ty will show that in the United States i there is sharp competition two competing com-peting companies having always been In the fieldsometimes more and that our business men fully appreciate the value of competition as an incentive to prompt and efficient service knowing know-Ing that if one company does not give satisfaction they can transfer their patronage to another Again as the telegraph service in America is essentially essen-tially under the control of the people y being amenable under the law to every Inhabitant of the country ehould errors or unnecessary delays occur oc-cur in the transmission of messages the public have redress through the courts and can and do recover damages and It is a crime under the law for employees em-ployees of telegraph companies to divulge di-vulge or make improper use of the contents of messages 1 GOVERNMENT ESPIONAGE OVER i PRIVATE MESSAGES r HOn r thp other hand where 1 the gov 5 il k6 = Q J ernment has a monopoly of the telegraph tele-graph business as is the case in England Eng-land and on the continent there is no competition and no redress whatever for delay cr error in the transmission of messages over apd above the refunding re-funding of the actual tolls paid upon the message which may possibly be secured after a correspondence more or less prolonged and the governments govern-ments having direct control of the telegraphs exercise an espionage over the contents of all messages transmitted I trans-mitted which would not be tolerated I by the people of the United States Now I wish to call attention to the i fact that the employes of the competing com-peting telegraph companies of the United States are in the main persons per-sons who have been in the business all their lives the tenure of their positions po-sitions depending upon their efficiency But if the telegraph business were controlled by the government political loyalty to the party in power would be more apt to be regarded as the gauge of qualification than ability to perform the duties of the position Fourteen years ago Mr Preece first visited this country and at that time I understood him to say that there was not an operator in Europe who read by sound although the soundreading system had been in vogue in this country for upward of thirty years On his return to England Eng-land he stated in a paper read before a society of which he was a member that England was twenty years behind be-hind the United States in its telegraphic tele-graphic development and for this he was severely criticized by some of the English papers About eight years later Jfr Preece again visited this country and stated that they were making considerable progress in the direction of introducing the American or Morse soundreading system He again visited the United States this year and informed me that it would be very difficult to distinguish an English from a Western Union telegraph tele-graph office they were so much alike and that the American Morse or sound reading system was in general use in England It appears therefore that Mr Preece has introduced the American system in his own country and in this he has shown great wisdom wis-dom as it is and always has been very much superior to the European system If it had not been for Mr Preeces visits to the United States and his ability to adopt our system and improvements I am afraid that the English would still be dragging I along with the oldfashioned dial needle instruments as they are singularly I sin-gularly averse to what they call American innovations FOREIGN ELECTRICIANS ASTONISHED ASTON-ISHED During the past summer I have met and conversed with representative i electricians from nearly all parts of the world who came here to visit the I exposition Each of them has inspected I the Western Union office and system in Chicago and in every case has staled distinctly that the progress of telegraphy in the United States was very far in advance of what it was in Europe Our instruments switchboards switch-boards etc appeared to be a revelation revela-tion to most of them Then again the United States is the only country in which telegraph lines are operated direct from dynamo current In Europe they still adhere to the old battery bat-tery system in some cases using storage stor-age batteries and the gentlemen who visited me were surprised to see the great advance we have made in this direction The only European instruments instru-ments which we have adopted in this country are the English Wheatstone which we work to advantage on some of our long circuits while in England they are gradually substituting our Morse system including the duplex quadruplex etc for their old machinery machin-ery In fact an electric manufacturing manufactur-ing company of Chicago is shipping telegraphic instruments to nearly all parts of Europe It appears to me therefore that the United States is very much in advance of all European countries in all branches of electrical industries the telegraph and telephone Included and in fact in all mechanical industries very nearly all of the great inventions having been made in i America Have you anything to say in reference I refer-ence to the electrical exhibit at the Worlds fair The electrical exhibit was a very fine one but no satisfactory exhibit of electrical industries in the United States could be given within the confines con-fines of any single buildng To appreciate ap-preciate the extent of such industries one should travel all over the country 1 and see the thousands of cities and towns which are lighted by electricity I and furnished with transportation for the people by means of electric street railways running at a rate of speed varying from five to twentyfive miles an hour This list which I hand you will give you some figures from which you can form an idea of the extent of exhibits from the different countries as they appeared in the Electricity building at the Worlds fair The list shows the following figures Square feet United States occupied141397 Germany occupied 24172 France occupied 20338 Great Britain occupied 5031 Japan occupied 1103 Austria occupied 1000 Italy occupied 1000 Other countries less than each 1000 |
