New-York tribune., 1884-01-16
TIE TORST or MONOPOLTES

The plan of Mr.. Gardiner G.. Hubbard is 10
have the United States make itself the greatest
and most odious monopoly on earth. He pro-
poses, in effect, that the Government shall buy
nm all the lines of telegraph in existcncc-and
how much the people would be piundcred in
such an operation nobody can tell But the
original deecing, whether much or little, would
be relatively insignificant Having bought mp
the lines, the Government is to mOnOpolize the
business, it is proposed. Competition Is not to
be permitted If anybody inycnts means of
transmission infinitely superior to those now in
uSe the people of this country can get no benefit
from them unless the Government can be
persuaded to cast away it's old wires or instru-
mcnls, and invest some millions in new plant.
Even then. the inventor would be tOcrably
sure TO get his patents first in other countries,
where he could reap the benefit, before selling
his invention to the Government When we
consider how Old-tashioned and Old-iOgy
methods Of appliances lnger far behind their
time in almost every branch of the public
service, how slow the Government is to give a
fair hearing to any useful invention, how it
almost starved Morse for six years before it
would give him chance to test the telegraphic
>
when the Nation was fighting for its life, to take
it by the throat, to speak and force it to look
at military and naval inventions of the greatest
value, and how certain the party not in power
is to smell corrupt job in the adoption of any
new device with decent reward to the in
ventOr we may safely conclude that, with the
Government in exclusive control of the
telegraph this Nation would SON be as far
behind other civilized nations as it is now ahead
of them all in devices for the swift and cheap
transmission of intelligence.
A nee thing it would be, indeed, to have a set
of Republican officials able to control the
transmission of every dispatch 10 Democratic
journals party managers in the next Presi-
dental campaign! Their virtue may be great,
but truly they would need SupeIhuman virtue
to resist the temptations of close contest. Or
do you fancy that it would be in any respect
nicer TO have the same tremendous power
intruStcd to a set of Democratic officials One
or the other Will seize and hold it; of that
may be certain, if ever the Government UNDER
takes the business of tclcgrarhihg. Does any
body suppose that either party will voluntarily
ntrust such Il power to the othcrR Or does
anybody imagine that the most elaborate Civil
Service system ever devised even if it could be
adopted and enforced, could exclude partisan
ship from the political control Of the wires 7
II is possible to give reasons for believing
that the Government should have lines of its
own, connecting distant parts of the country,
but even that has yet to be shown. Monopoly
of the telegraph is another matter. No com
pany has that, nor would the people tolerate
such monopoly in the possession of any COM
pany But it would be incomparably more
odious, CALLING and uncomfortable in the hands
of the Government. Mr.. Hubbard may rest
assured that postal telegraph SYSTEM if it ever
comes at all, will not come in that way, or at
such "a cost. The tendency to Capitalization
has not advanced thus far, nor will it at