progress made in the methods of electrical communication within the past year, and thereby bringing to view a state of affairs which renders the old objections to postal telegraphy illogical and baseless.

It is a curious fact that while great improvements have been made in telegraphy, and notwithstanding that telephony has come and covered the earth with its wires within the past twenty years, the arguments put forward against postal telegraphy have not changed in the slightest degree. So anxious have the telegraph owners been to perpetuate the condition of the early days-the golden span from 1858 to 1870-when a half-million-dollar plant grew to one of twenty millions, every innovation calculated to upset or interfere with this comfortable situation has been unwelcome. Every step in advance has been viewed as an encroachment on an exclusive domain, and each great improvement has been obliged to knock loud and long for recognition. It is significant that none of the improved methods of telegraphy now in use originated within the controlling telegraph organization, all having come to it by purchase of competing lines or from individuals outside. The well-known Page patent was the work of an examiner in the patent office. Stearns was connected with the municipal telegraph of Boston when he brought out his duplex system, and it required two or three years' effective work by a competing line to gain a foothold for it. Edison's quadruplex system was an outside creation. The telephone was a foundling left on the doorstep of the leading telegraph company, but was not adopted, and was recognized only after it had grown into great promise. I refer to these matters because the opponents of government telegraphy have invariably advanced the argument that government control would discourage invention and improvement in systems. If the policy of other countries is a fair criterion, this fear has no foundation.

The British postoffice, the most ably managed concern in the world, has in its telegraph department encouraged invention at home and abroad. With the exception of its own Wheatstone system, all the great improvements used are importations. The Hughes printing system, the Stearns duplex, the Edison quadruplex, the telephone, and the multiplex (Delany's) system were all American creations in their practicality, and every one of them is doing excellent work for the British postoffice today. Every country in Europe is using foreign systems to a great extent. In this reference I have not the slightest intention of aspersing the ability or ingenuity of our telegraph electricians. The ability and cleverness displayed in the refinement and practical adaptation of everything officially recognized by the

companies are known throughout the world. But their contention is that the companies hold out little or no inducement for improvement. I merely want to show that private corporations are no more generous with incentives to their employes in the field of invention than are national administrations.

One of the main points made by the opponents of telegraphy by the government is that the British postoffice telegraphs do not pay. This is a misleading and truth-impoverished statement. It is well understood in England that the telegraph branch of the postoffice has not a distinct financial head, and that the postoffice accounting bureau arranges disbursement and expense items from a standpoint not in accord with the ideas prevailing among the heads of the telegraph service, and that if the telegraph branch kept its own books the yearly exhibit would show a handsome profit. As it is, the telegraph department shows a good margin of earnings over operating expenses every year, amounting to nearly ten million dollars since 1870, but the interest on the capital at which the lines were taken over by the government in that year brings the telegraph receipts below the balance mark. Every one at all familiar with the terms of the purchase of the corporation lines by the government appreciates the fact that the price paid was enormously in excess of their cost, and that the energetic management, which has given the British public the best telegraph service in the world, has been handicapped from the beginning by this overvaluation. Even this load the telegraph department could have carried easily but for other heavy burdens. According to the report of the postmaster-general for the year ending March, 1895, 66,189,000 messages, averaging fifteen words each, were transmitted at an average cost of fifteen cents, and, in addition, there were transmitted 5,400,000 press dispatches, averaging 120 words each, at a cost of nine cents, or nearly fourteen words for a cent. Nor is this all. There were 1,600,000 railway messages, averaging twenty-five words in length and representing twenty-five cents in value, transmitted free.

Now as the deficit for this year, including interest account, amounted to a little over two and a half million dollars, it will be evident that had the free messages been paid for at regular rates, and press dispatches paid for at a rate bearing the same proportion to the regular rate that such dispatches are charged for in this country, the British telegraphs would show a good balance of profit. The low press rates and free telegrams for railways were conditions of the sale of the private lines to the government. It should be borne in mind also that until now

the British telegraphs have not participated in the enormous telephone receipts, as is the case in this country. No better evidence of the efficiency of the telegraph in England could be had than the fact that in the face of telephone competition the number of messages transmitted has increased at an extraordinary rate. In the city of London, even the telegraph business has grown in spite of the telephone, while in this country local telegraphy in cities has almost disappeared. Since the adoption of the six-penny rate in 1885, the telegraph traffic in England has increased from 28,000,000 to 72,000,000 messages annually.

In 1870, when the government took control, the business amounted to but 7,000,000 messages, an increase of more than tenfold in twenty-six years, while the rates have been reduced from a maximum of about four shillings to a uniform rate of six pence.

Another very important consideration in connection with this deficit of the British telegraph department, and one which is carefully avoided by opponents of postal telegraphy in this country, is that the pay of the British operators has been raised. I quote from the report of the then postmaster-general for 1895:

"The proportion of the amount expended on salaries and wages to the total telegraph expenditures, which in 1881, before the revision carried out by Mr. Fawcett, stood at 55 per cent., has since risen, as a result of that revision and the revision effected by Mr. Raikes in 1890, to about 65 per cent."

Now, let us look at salaries of operators in this country. Have they been increased? Quite the contrary. There are no recent figures accessible to the public; but I think it safe to estimate that while the British operator has had two increases of pay since 1891, his American brother has had four reductions, and that today 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 or caprice of none can drive him. He is not an itinerant, wandering from place to place looking for work, and hired for a day or week, to be again set adrift, nor is he permitted to work over-time, to the detriment of his own 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.

I can not conceive of a stronger incentive to

a government system of telegraphy in this country than the example of thorough efficiency and success presented by the British postoffice.

But, Mr. Chairman, no telegraph operated by the government in any country is conducted with a view of pecuniary profit. The aim is to spend all surplus earnings in improvements and extensions, and if none are necessary, then a surplus is prevented by a reduction of charges. This intention is plainly set forth in an historical outline of the telegraph by the British postmaster-general last year, in these words:

The mainspring of the movement which led to the acquisition of the telegraphs by the state was the public expectation that the postoffice would be able to provide for the benefit of the nation as a whole an improved service, at a rate which would bring it within the reach of all classes of the community, and the postoffice can justly claim that this expectation has been fulfilled."

Mr. Chairman, no one acquainted with the executive officers and heads of departments of telegraphs in this country can charge them with incompetency or lack of clear vision. They are experienced and able officials, familiar with all the details of their business. It is therefore strange that the wealthy few who control and dictate the policy to be pursued have not deferred more to the opinions of these managers, and been satisfied with a slower inflation of their shareholdings. The ability to so manage a vast concern as to earn dividends on a capitalization at least double what it should be, and this in times of great depression in business, commands admiration, but surely the wealthy owners have cut out a hard task for these men. They have been so hampered as to warrant the conclusion that the most primitive methods were the conditions most desired, and that difficulties in the way of cheap telegraphy should always be encouraged in order to maintain a great discrepancy between the cost of sending a message by wire and one by train. It has always seemed to me that the natural desire for great profits could have been met much better by a policy of encouragement of improvements, warranting cheaper rates and insuring an increase in business which would more than compensate for the reduction in charges. Telegraph rates can not be reduced much further as long as hand-working is used almost exclusively. I doubt very much whether telegraphy could be carried on any cheaper by the government than it is now conducted by the companies, if the same methods of operation are to be retained. Expertness of the operator has reached its highest development. The use of the typewriter for printing messages, read from the sounder, has increased the speed of receiving considerably; but as the

speed of the sending operator remains the same, the principal advantages of the typewriter lie in greater legibility, and owing to the margin of time gained, greater relaxation than by the use of the pen without an instant to spare. The era of hand-telegraphy has long outstayed its time, and to this fact may be ascribed the limited use of the telegraph by the public at large. Machine methods are as old as hand manipulation, but in this country they have not been used to any considerable extent and their development taken advantage of. A wrong start has been adhered to persistently, owing, in a great measure, to over-construction of competing lines and multiplication of wires; and, so long as one company gathered all the others in as fast as they came along, there were wires to spare, and, therefore, as those in control argued, there was no use for increasing speed. Besides, wires afforded a basis for stock-issuing. If this convenient mine could have been ignored, it would have paid the companies much better to have abandoned the poorlyconstructed lines and concentrated traffic on a comparatively small number of well-constructed lines of high conductivity, operated by machinery. The companies can hardly be blamed now for not taking down thirty poor iron wires and putting up one good copper conductor in their stead, even though it is now entirely practicable by machine-working to make the single wire carry more messages for average distances than the thirty hand-worked wires, even when quadruplexed, so that four messages may go simultaneously. The argument of those whose interests compel them to defend them by disparagement of improvements which must surely render their great net-work of wires unnecessary and useless, is that machine-working would be slower than hand-working. With plenty of wires, no practical telegrapher will deny that a single short message can be sent by hand in the same time that it takes to perforate or prepare it for transmission by the machine system. The average layman is by this fact frequently deceived into grave error, and by not pushing the comparison further. If the message be a long one, or if there are a thousand messages to transmit, it might take two days to get these off by hand, whereas, if there are a sufficient number of perforators the whole lot could be transmitted in a few minutes. A perforating operator will prepare messages at the same rate of speed that a Morse operator can transmit them by hand, and a transcribing operator will typewrite them as rapidly as a sound-reading operator can receive, while the machine transmitter will send the dispatches as fast as seventy to one hundred and seventy perforators can prepare them, or afford on an average, according to length of circuit, the same carrying capacity as seventy to one

hundred and seventy circuits worked by the present Morse system. Hand transmission will always be used for stock and other exchange business, where transactions are made in a few seconds and with messages of sometimes a single word. Every practical telegraphist can understand this, and none save a prejudiced electrician will deny that for the great bulk of telegraphic correspondence the hand method is inadequate, slow and expensive, and that in the near future the full carrying capacity of wires will be utilized. In no other way can general cheap correspondence be accomplished electrically. At least one-half of the entire traffic of the British telegraph is carried by a machine system. Has any American traveling in the United Kingdom ever found the service slow? The average time for delivery of telegrams, from the time of filing, is about twenty minutes, and the blank informs the recipient of a dispatch the time of its filing at the place from which it came. In this country the companies do not dare to let the public know how long a message has been on the way. Each message shows the time of its reception, but there is nothing to indicate that it may have been a whole day in reaching its destination. *

* *

Whatever force or legitimacy the present arguments against postal telegraphy may have had twenty years ago, they are utterly fallacious with respect to the possibilities of the state of the art today. At that time the telephone was struggling desperately for a foothold. The quadruplex system had not much more than half the efficiency that it has today. Multiplex telegraphy, whereby six Morse circuits are obtained over a single wire, was not thought of. The English Wheatstone system of machine transmission was a poor affair in its own country and was not in use here at all. Copper wires, which have increased speed over twelve per cent., had never been tried.

Operators' salaries are about forty per cent. lower, and the necessities for postal telegraphy have grown in scope and imperativeness concurrently with the increase of population and the desire for quicker facilities.

Twenty years ago the highest average of transmission over a single wire was, by the quadruplex system, about fifty words per minute. The telephone was only thought of for local use over distances of a few miles. Now it is practicable to telegraph 2,500 words a minute between Washington and New York, and 1,000 words per minute between New York and Chicago, while the telephone carries speech 1,500 miles.

Mr. Chairman, the question of constitutionality of government telegraphy, the political aspect of the undertaking, the objections on the grounds of centralization and paternalism have

all been considered, discussed and passed upon by many of the foremost men of the nation, and their conclusions have been cited in connection with the subject in and out of congress ever since the beginning of telegraphy, over fifty years ago. Statistics of all kinds have been placed upon record and are before the committee in connection with this bill. It would therefore be useless for me to deal with these matters. I assume that what the committee want to hear are such facts as I can give, founded on practical knowledge and experience bearing upon the practicability of cheaper telegraphy. In this undertaking I am met at the very outset by a difficulty which I would gladly avoid if possible. It may be said that, being an inventor, liberal allowance must be made for any claim that I may make for improvements in telegraphic speeds. I can only say that if my statements are not already sufficiently substantiated by actual results obtained over regular lines, and by demonstrations over experimental circuits, in the presence of able experts, it will be an easy matter to support my claim by further demonstration. In view of what has already been done, however, I do not think that any telegraph electrician will dissent from these propositions, that with machine transmission and chemical recording by the method referred to, over a copper wire weighing 850 pounds to the mile, and with an ordinary current power such as is used for quadruplex working, 1,000 words per minute can be plainly recorded over a distance of 1,000 miles, or, say, from New York to Chicago, and that over such a line 2,500 words per minute can be plainly recorded from New York to Washington and between other points throughout the country in the same ratio, according to distance. Last October, over an actual line, having but 180 pounds of copper to the mile (Philadelphia to Harrisburg and return), 216 miles, 940 words per minute were plainly recorded in dots and dashes, the current used being but 120 volts. This trial was conducted in the presence of a board of well known electrical experts. With this system, 8,000 words per minute have been recorded over an experimental line. This would be an impracticable speed for regular work, as the transmitting tape must pass through the machine at the rate of 27 feet per second, or impulses recorded at the rate of 2,500 per second; but it goes to show the possibilities of the latest development in machine telegraphy.

[Mr. Delany here introduced a table showing the cost and earning capacity of a line of two copper wires, between New York and Chicago. He showed that the cost would be $600,000, and the operating expenses for a year $780,712.20 and the earnings $1,021,529.30, at the rate of fifteen cents each for messages of seventy words,

that is, fifty words of message and twenty words for date, address and signature. Should the business amount to only half the capacity of the line and the expenses be reduced onethird, the net earnings would be $380,679.28, or about 631⁄2 per cent.]

It will be observed that this rate of fifteen cents for fifty words, exclusive of the date, address and signature; includes two cents for the delivery of messages by postoffice carriers.

If the government, in consideration of not having to transport them, would deliver these telegraph letters for one cent, it would make a difference for 16,457 messages per day of $60,068.05 per year, increasing the net earnings to $440,747.33 or about 73%1⁄2 per cent., over and above all expenses.

There are about 40,000 letters per day exchanged between New York and Chicago, and about 8,000 telegrams exclusive of press dispatches and a large amount of telephoning. Communications of all kinds would doubtless average 60,000 a day. It is reasonable to estimate that the low rate of fifteen cents for fifty words in the body of a message would secure more than one-quarter of this traffic, and should the business of New York and Chicago alone fall below the capacity of the fast system on two wires, business telegraphed to New York and Chicago to be mailed to points beyond, or the business to be gotten from intermediate points, would insure all the correspondence that the wires could carry.

Mr. Chairman, opponents of postal telegraphy have contended that it would be wrong for the government to engage in telegraphy in opposition to existing lines in which private capital is invested. No fault is found so long as trains, steamboats and horses are comparatively slow. The telegraph companies, having exclusive use of electricity for carrying messages, have nothing to fear from these, but if it were possible to run electric mail trains from New York to Chicago in five minutes, would not the telegraph companies have as much right to complain of such a service as they now have to protest against postal telegraphy? And should the government in consequence restrict the mail service to present steam time of over twenty hours, in order to protect the telegraph companies with their utterly unnecessary high rates? Are not the mails actually carried now by electricity over a number of railways and trolley lines, notably in large cities? If it is right that the government should use current as the motive power to carry letters, why not use the current to carry the essence of the letter? Does the difference lie between the paper pulp and the click of the sounder, the original manuscript and the recorded dot and dash, or the spoken

word by telephone? If the government is to be restricted to slow methods for the protection of the faster ones of private corporations, why has it progressed beyond the packet boat on the canal or the postboy on horseback? Why has the government encouraged and subsidized fast trains and record-breaking steamships?

Great ado is made over a reduction of a few minutes in the mail train time between New York and San Francisco or Chicago, while the elimination of the entire train time is perfectly feasible whenever the government arrives at the conclusion that the public are entitled to the quicker methods, and sets aside the unwarrantable assumption that electrical communication is for private corporations only, with the right to fix charges, regulate facilities, and open

and close offices at will, without fear of interference from any superior authority.

I am unable to understand why congress has not long ago authorized the postmaster-general to fix a maximum rate for telegraphic letters, and contract with the lowest bidders for their transmission, especially between cities separated by any considerable distance. The public puts a ten-cent extra stamp on letters, to quicken the delivery, perhaps half an hour, after days have been consumed in transit. For about the same charge these letters might be telegraphed and, practically, all the time saved.

It is to be hoped that favorable consideration of this bill will lead to a realization of the benefits of electrical facilities of correspondence so long enjoyed by other countries.

I am tempted to write a protest against the general adoption of the so-called Standard Dictionary as a standard for the division of words. So many principles seem to be commingled in this the latest attempt to define the English language and to decide all the petty questions that arise in the printing of the same, that I feel like warning your readers to pause before they conclude to jump out of the frying-pan into the fire by abandoning the established results of long experience for the sake of having a written authority to appeal to in every emergency of doubt.

Of course, with respect to a great many words, the simple rule to divide by syllables is sufficient, so long as no question arises as to just where the line of demarcation comes in between one syllable and another. But should we divide, for example, active, this way-ac-tive-or this way-act-ive? Shall we make the first syllable end with the c or with the t? In this and in numerous other cases the Standard abandons the pure phonetic guide for the sake of another; it chooses to run the ive

over, not because the organs of speech decide that the two consonants c and t constitute one sound and must therefore go together, but because the word "active" is a modification of the word "act," and the structure of the word requires that the hyphen be placed after the t. This is a principle of division that is destined to work havoc in the printer's conceptions of propriety in this branch of his art. It decides, among other things, a la Standard, that defective shall be divided on the t, destructive on the c; affirmative on the m, firmanent on the r; lesson on the first s, lessen on the second, formal on the m, cormorant on the r-the first r; passive on the first s, massive on the second.

Every printer has been taught to divide between double letters in such cases as mol-lify, fol-low, drum-mer, etc., and in participle forms where the second of the repeated letters does not belong to the root word, as in run-ning, impel-ling, etc. Where the second letter belongs to the original word, it stays with it, as in spell