Year: 1869

Guy WOuiu, ~ any season ana In any place,
have been an appropriate and well deserved
recognition of the services rendered to man
kind by the distinguished guest to whose
science, genius and untiring devotion to his
boon of the recording telegraph. The banquet
might well have taken place in any country on
the face of the globe, for wherever civilization
reaches the benefit of the electric telegraph
has been felt; but here national pride com


bines with gratitude to render any honor paid
to this most eminent Of their fellow country
men peculiarly acceptable to Americans. 1t is
no wonder, therefore, that the company gathered
on this occasion should have included many
of the most respectable of our citizens, and
that the affair, in spite Of all drawbacks, should
have been decided success. 1t may, indeed,
have been matter Of surprise to some that such
q demonstration should have been made at
this particular time, and that great telegraph
monopoly, which has hitherto ignored Profess
sor Morse's services and claims, should have
become SO suddenly impressed with the duty
of giving costly entertainment in his honor.
But all this mystery was cleared up by the
speech of the President of the Western Union
Company, who, with singular lack of judg-
ment, made it evident by his ill-timed remarks
that the honor to Professor Morse was simply
decoy duck to affect a great lobby movement
upon Congress, and that the real object of the
concoctors of the affair was to assail the pro-
nocad falarra nhic rafnrp, ord IN orraod ohrood
the erroneous impression that the Professor
and the company assembled to meet him were
all opposed to the absorption of the telegraph
in the postal system of the government.
1t Is true that the innocence and honesty Of
true genius threw a terrible stumbling block
in the way Of the schemers. Professor Morse's
naive declaration that he had from the earliest
days realized the Importance of government
control of the telegraph and that he still ad-
hcred to his former opinions was fatal to their
main object. Nevertheless their popgun was
shot of amidst the heavy artillery of the after
dinner speeches, and if it did not produce any
very terrible results, it at least served to
scatter the guests and to expose the animus
OF the whole affair. s,....


The President of the Western Union Tele-
graph Company, in assailing the proposed bill
for the construction of a telegraph line from
New York to Washington and denouncing
the general principle of government tele-
graph, asserted that the plan was opposed by
all the American press, with one or two
exceptions. This is an entire misstatement


The truth is that, excepting one or two insig-
nifcant papers, with small local circulations,
no respectable journal has ventured to speak
out against the projected reform. Even the
attempt Of the Western Union monopoly to
coerce the press into opposition to Wash
burne's measure by threatening to discontinue
the existing press contracts and to raise the
rates for news reports has signally failed in
its object, The usually subservient organs of
the monopoly nave thus far refused to be
whipped into line, and the independent papers
all over the country, wherever they sasvIs Lave
spoken on the subject, have leaned towards
the proposed government system. II has been
everywhere conceded that the prevailing high
rates for the transmission of messages check
the growth of telegraphic correspondence and
operate unjustly in favor of the large capitalist
against the general commercial community.
1t has been stated that, while low rates are
necessity, the cheaper teegraphing becomes
the greater win be the falling off in the postal
revenues, and that the two means of communi-
cation must be combined in the hands of the
government or the postal system eventually
abandoned. So far, therefore, from opposing
the projected reform the arguments of the
Independent press have been used in its favor,
and, If left entirely untrammelled by personal
considerations, every intelligent journalist in
America would take broad view of the
subject and agree with Professor Morse that so
mighty an engine as the telegraph should be
held in the strong hands Of the government


The President of the Western Union mo-
nopoly further objects to the government plan,
for the reason that all the public departments
are corruptly managed. 'Look at the whiskey
rings and the internal revenue rings he ex-
claims, with the authority of one who has
filed an important internal revenue Office,
"and then imagine the telegraph business
confded to such hands," Well, we do not feel
disposed to question the Presidents authority
as to the corruptions to which he alludcs; but
it is well known that the Post Office Depart
ment has been less subjected than any other
public department to the suspicion Of dishonest
practices. His reasoning, II carried out to its
legitimate result, would break up the Post
Office and every other public department
and put the whole machinery Of the govern
ment into the hands Of private companies. But
the telegraph would necessarily require cx-
perts to operate It, Politicians are not tele-
graph operators, as general thing, and hence
the telegraph department would be less liable
to partisan control than any other In the gov
ernment. Besides, the objection to which we
have alluded, If well founded, could readily