Wichita eagle., 1889-08-09
STILL ANOTHER
More Of the Long MINDED Correspondence
on Telegraphic Rates

More Of the Long MINDED Correspondence
on Telegraphic Rates
| NEW YORK, August S.-Mr. Norvin
Green, president Of the Western Union
company, today sent the following to
| Postmaster General Wanamaker the fol-
lowing response:
John wanamaker, postmaster general
DEAR SIR-Acknowledging receipt of
your letter, beg to say much regret that
the publication Of my letters to you. to
| which you refer, was rendered necessary
| by the extraordinary statements, ION in
| formation furnished this (your) depart
ment," contained in your letter OF July ID
and extensively printed in the newspapers
on the following day.
You again refer to the privileges and
benefits derived by this company through
| the acts of congress- and especially the act
of 1866 You say: Under these grants
| the company has claimed the right to use
without compensation OF any KIND as a
right of way, all highways OF the country
| country on the ground Of their being post
roads. 1t has broadened this claim to the
extent that street of cities and towns are
also post roads and are therefore free TO It's
occupancy and use. The courts have suS-
tanned it in this claim" Either you or we
are very badly informed by our respective
legal advisers as to what has been claimed
by the telegraph company and held by the
courts in respect to the scope and au-
thority of that grant. l have had occa-
sion from time to time to go through
records in a great many cases, but 90
not recall any instances in which sucn
claim has been made and sus-
tanned by the courts. What we under
= ha civ II
act of 1866 was franchise and right to do
business In all the states and this was
given to all telegraph companies or other
parties who might accept; and subsequent
~ by what was known as the Butler
amendment it was especially extended to
all railroad companies. But the act never
assumed to give Us, and could not give us
the right to plant our poles on any but
lands actually belonging to the government
and that right we have very rarely exer,
cised except when the government wanted
us to extend lines for convenience
of the government to its navy
yards and military posts and
stations or to its department quarters In
the city of Washington. Had you care
fully read the decision in the Pensacola
telegraph case to which you refer you
would no. have fallen into such grleV-
Gus error upon this point. Chief Justice
Waite in the body of the opinion thus de-
fines the scope of the act of 1866 under con-
sideration: "NO question arises as to the
authority of congress to provide for the
appropriation of private property to the
use of telegraph, for no such attempt has
been made. The use of public property
alone is granted. If private property
is required it must, as far as
the present legislation is concerned,
be obtained by private arrangement with
its owner; no compulsory proceedings are
authorized; state sovereignty under the
constitution is interfered with, only ma
tlonal privileges are granted"
The decision in this case, therefore was
that the state of Florida could not prohibit
the Western Union Telegraph company
from erecting and operating its lines of
telegraph in that state after it had &C
quired right of way for its plant from
railroad company of that state but didn't
hold that it WAS exempt from obligations
to buy or condemn under state statutes
the property necessary to build the
lines The railroads are post roads as
well as some of the highways and if the
government gives us the right of way on
post roads why should we have to pay the
railroad companies for it? We have to
contract for and obtain our rights of way
from the parties who own them, whether
railroad companies, turnpike and plank
road companies or individual land owners
and in case of streets and highways we
have to obtain license from the city, county
or state authorities or condemn under aul-
thority of the state laws. l sincerely wish
that your ideas of the law that we
''are in fact occupying many thousand
miles of pest roads and are privileged to
occupy all the highways in the United
States under the grants of that act'' may
prove sound in law, but we have not re-
lied upon that grant and are satisfied the
courts would not sustain your views Our
occupancy of the streets is always by
license of the local authorities or of the
state and in the case of the elevated rail
way company in the city of New York to
which you refer,we pay the companies who
own the structure for the right
to string our wires thereon.
The act to which you refer
gives telegraph companies accepting it the
right to take stone and timber from public
lands and to pre-empt and enter not eX
ceeding forty acres for each station. We
have never needed to use any stone, and
since the passage of that act the railroads
across the continent have afforded ample
facilities for transporting cedar for poles,
which is more durable and economical
than the native timber that might posi-
bly, be found accessible on unoccupied gov
eminent lands; as to pre- empting forty
acres of land for station, we have found
that wherever a telegraph station
was needed there were no unoc-
cupied government lands, and if
we were to establish a station on any forty
acres of unoccupied government land it
would be in locality that would yield no
revenue. 1t is true. therefore, that we
have never taken a stone or stick of timber
or appropriated lands to our use.
Mr.. Green then continues to rebut the
postmaster generals arguments tor low
er rate for government telegraph at con-
sidera BILE length.