Morning journal and courier., 1886-09-03
PRIVATE WIRES.
A Revolution Brought About I'm Meth
 ods of Speculation. ....--

From the New York Heraldl
 ''Nothing in Wall street shows @ more marvellous growth in short time than the use of private telegraph wires. Only few years ago man would have been thought a crank if he had suggested the possibility of a stock broker enjoying the expensive privi- lege of having telegraphic service eighteen hundred miles long for his own exclusive use Now there are fifty houses in the stock and produce exchanges which have leased lines. The Western Union company alone has one hundred thousand miles of wire leased tor private use, and the Baltimore and Ohio, the Postal and other companies have about fifty thousand miles more. The pri- vate wire has revolutionized the methods of speculation and stock gambling in five years time, and has about completely superseded the old ways of business"
 The speaker was smart telegraph opera tor in a brokers office. Business was over for the day and he stood in converse with a reporter among crowd or Wall street men at popular resort not far from the stock ex- change The artist behind the bar had an exceedingly satisfactory creation in the way of 8 silver fzz, and the operator dallied with it as he continued: Expensive? Yes; the rent of a special wire between New York and Chicago is from twenty-five to thirty thou sand dollars year, and there are at least twenty of them in use. All the big stock and grain houses have them, because what one does the others must do to keep up with the procession. The speculation in grain on the Chicago board has grown so rapidly and enormously in this city that New York now almost controls the business in Chicago. h. stantaneous and constant communication be- tween the two cities is a necessity for this gamble.
 "Then there are scores of wires to Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore, Alba nv and in summer to Newport, Saratoga, Long Branch and other watering places. Of course the rental of these shorter lines is not so high as the Chicago circuits, but none of them costs less than three thousand dollars a year each. The average price is thirty dol lars per mile year.
 GAS to the private wires in the city con- meeting Wall street with the up town and Brooklyn branch offices of stock exchange firms and produce exchange brokers, they are innumerable. One big house alone has eighteen branch offices in New York, Chica- go, Boston, Philadelphia and elsewhere all connected by private wires. Sometimes on the more expensive wires, like Chicago, the cost is divided between two firms one in New York and the other in Chicago. Then again some lines are 'quadded' or quadru- plexed. This splits the wire or enables two distinct circuits to be worked over at the same time. In this way four parties-two at each end of the line-may use the same wire without interference. The companies keep the leased lines in repair, but the brokers hire their own operators.
 ''The private wires have been the saliva tion of Wall street speculation. Brokers complain of dull times now, but some of them couldn't make enough to pay for a walk home if it wasn't for the new business which the private wires have brought into the street Practically all the principal cities in the country have been put into instant com munieation with the stock exchange. A man may sit in an office in Chicago, one thousand miles away, watching the ticker re- porting New York stock exchange quotations, and he may order the purchase or sale of stock in Wall street and have 1t executed five minutes later. He couldn't do it quicker if he was in New York on the floor of the board room. By far the greater portion of the transactions in the stock exchange are now on out of town orders by telegraph. The biggest operators in the country never come into Wall street, and some of them rarely come to New York during their deals. All their operations are conducted by wire from distance with the same care as though they were in the exchange in person. Some of the biggest deals on record have been car ried out altogether over the private wire. Fortunes are made and lost every day by the tick of the telegraph key, and the man one thousand miles away can, and does, specu- late in Wall street with the same opportuni- ties enjoyed by the operator who hangs over the tape or watches the blackboard in a Broad street office, within sound of the tu- mutt of the board room"