Show I BELIEVES WIRE RATES TOO LOW LOWI I Superintendent Hawk Does Doe Not Believe Missouri Plan Will Wilt Work Out I I COST OF F MATERIAL IS 18 HIGH LONG DISTANCES TO BE COV COY COVERED ERED IN ROCKY MOUNTAINS A few days das ago ilK there appeared in The Herald a news item dated Jefferson City Mo which in substance stated staged that that the th legislature of that good old state tate had passed a law reducing the on intra intrastate state business to a basis of df 25 cents for 10 words and 1 cent for each additional word The present arrangement Is what might be called a sliding scale that is to say telegraph companies com divide their ter territory territory territory into geographical ge districts and are arc ar arnot not governed by state county or r othA othe lines of boundary demarcation except In Ina Ina Ina a limited sense The ordinary rate for local business is 23 z and 2 W p s Hawk superintendent super of this division b jf the Postal Telegraph company com pan with headquarters In Salt Lake City was asked questions with reference to ris new law lawIt lawIt lawIt It is I barely possible that the can an make the rate pay but I doubt it very much macli Local business involves s an expenditure that eats up Uj nearly all of f the revenue derived from it Local business must have the ordinary sending and re receiving receiving over the wires It must have de livery liver and quick delivery if it is gone after at all The telephone has cut into the telegraph companies business locally to a material degree Limit Reached Here HereIn In this region the proposed Missouri rate would be utterly out of or all tion to the service entailed Here we have immense distances with very r very few towns that furnish business In Mis Missouri Missouri and other eastern states the con are different the population s dense and consequently there Is more traffic I think we have about reached our limit hereabouts on low local rates As your paper stated them lher has bas re recently recently recently been an increase in some of the telegraph tariffs This Increase however affects only night messages Heretofore night messages have been handled on a ridiculously low schedule It Is la true that It does not cost quite as much to trans transmit transmit transmit mit and deliver a night message as it does a day message but it costs nearly nearl as much Some of the wires are relieved of their burden during the early earl hours of the morning and that is when we send our reds but it is also a fact that we must keep our operators In service to send our reds as as well as to handle our blacks day messages and our pinks pink rush messages It is just as easy ens or Just as hard to send either one of the lat latter latter latter ter class as It Is to t send a red it In the same sarno amount of ot physical and mental energy The telegraph ph companies arc are un up against It too in the matter of increased ed cost Construction material in some cases indeed n eed In many costs three times as much as It did Copper as you TOU see dally Is rated at 26 6 cents the pound where whereIn In some former years we could buy it for tor fort 10 and 11 Poles are getting scarce For Forest Forest est eat reserves have cut off ort one source of or our supply and the gradual thinning out of the open timbered country hiss Kas left us In a it position where we have to skirmish pretty prett hard to find trees tr es suitable for poles Not Xoi long Jong ago our operators were grant granted ed Iid an au increase of wages wa es amounting to 10 per cent I understand that th the lion Uon company has in some Instances instanced granted like increases ases All AU of these things to make the th operation of or a tele telegraph tel telegraph graph system an expensive proposition Oh J I forgot to mention this Telegraph i offices are now neatly and conveniently furnished with ventilation n and are gener generally generI generally ally attractive If It you recall the office I of the olden days and your memory hae haie to go ge back more than ten years yow will the dingy foul toul smelling unsanitary cubbyholes in which operators were werf at work as well as tho the al almost almost almost most repelling appearance of the counter conditions surrounding It IL t |