The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1908-06-07

THE COST DECREASES.
WITH THE INSTALLATION OF A
LARGER NUMBER OF COMMUNE
CATlVE LINES TRANSPORTA
TON OF MESSAGES is CHEAPER

New York, June G.-Int-rnatiOnal
business this year VIII ceI4 brate the
fiftieth anniversary Of the laying of the
first transatlantic cable. That cable
soon broke, but it was the beginning
of the worlds present day gangIia OF
deep sea cables in which over $2D.-
100000 is invested 1t was in 1873
that the first cable 5000 miles long.
was laid across the Atlantic, from two
to three miles deep. Seven years lat
er the second one. which was success
went down in the still. dark depths
of the ocean.
Within the brief span Of the fifty
years. the world has built more than
900 miles of submarine cables.
sufficient to girdIc the globe eight
times. Beside the S2'D.OOO,ND invest
ment in cables, there is a fleet Of II
cable steamers, kept in constant ser
vice. And, besides the cables already
in operation, several others are in Va
rious stages of construction. Every
effort is being made to annihilatc the
distance between different parts of
the world and unite, by cables or by
wireless" countries separated by
vast bodies of water. The results in
the business world are huge.
The cable service of most direct i'm
portance to the general public is that
of transmitting the reports Of crops
and general commercial conditions of
widely separated nations. This ser
vice is intimately tied up with a most
interesting compilation of these re-
ports, a system which enables the eX-
porter in New York and Seattle. and
the dealers in Chicago to govern their
business by world wide conditions.
Cost of Messages.
In the early days it cost 500 to send
a message across the Atlantic. The
cable companies made a charge of 50
a word and the minimum amount of
words to be transmitted WAS fixed at
twenty. Recent developments in ca
ble-making and operating, combined
with healthy competition between ca
BILE companies have proved instrument
tai in bringing down the cable tolls.
A'Wireless" telegraphy has become an
important factor in the field. The
rates for cable messages, despite the
fact that they are much less than they
were forty years ago, still continues to
be high. Nevertheless Big Business
uses the cables eagerly. Vast sums Of
money are annually expended by ex-
porting houses and newspapers in OBJ
tanning information from foreign
countries by means of them.
A certain cable message from a war
correspondent to an American news
paper is an Illustration or the expense
incurred to secure news. as commercial
interests incur expense Tor their pur-
poses. Therefore, the message is Civ
en- in fac smile. 1t consisted of los
words and at the ordinary press rate
of 81 cents a word its cost would have
tOtaled $59.10; but the cable was sent
as urgent and charged at the rate of
$4.15 word. $472.2n being paid for its
transmission from Shanghai to New
York. Commercial rates are still
higher. II was sent on the 18th of
July, 1899 from Tientsin to Chefu by
means of a steamer: arrived at Chcfu
on the 18th; was sent thence to Shang-
hal by wire. where it was received on
the 10th. From Shanghai it was for
warded to London by means of the ca
BILE, crossing the yellow sea, China
Sea, Bay of Bengal Indian Ocean. Ara
bian Sea, Red Sea and Mediterranean,
reaching London, thence being de-
spatched by cable across the Atlantic
Ocean. 1t went quarters around