576 POST-OFFICE [TKLEGEAPHS. Progress of tele graph service. Tele- phoiiic com munica tion. In tlie year 1 882 a large increase in the working expenses became necessary for the further improvement and exten sion of the service, and for a very just increase in the re muneration of the telegraphists. In the report of that year the postmaster -general writes as follows : " The annual interest on the capital sum of <! 0,880, 571, raised by the Government for the purchase of the telegraphs, has not previously been included in the postmaster-general s accounts, because the amount is not provided for out, of post-office votes ; but in estimating the financial position it ought to be borne in mind that the chancellor of the exchequer has to meet a charge of ,326,417 for this service out of the consolidated fund." 1 The reduction of the unit of charge from a shilling to sixpence is a reform yet to come, but it is a reform expressly promised (Thirtieth Report, 1884, p. 5). It was originally proposed, in the Edinburgh chamber of commerce, at the outset of the public movement which led to the transfer of 1870. It has been repeatedly urged upon successive postmasters-general by the council of the London Society of Arts. On one of those occasions it was admitted by the postmaster-general that even at a sixpenny rate the telegraphs would eventually more than pay all expenses, including the current rate of interest upon the capital expended. 2 Two years later the urgent necessity of this reform was expressly stated by the same high authority in answer to a question put to him in the House of Commons. But he calculated that to effect it would involve a loss to the revenue for the first three years, which would probably amount to nearly 420,000 in the aggregate. The chief dates in the history of the electric-telegraph service may be stated briefly thus. The first public line to work the patent of Wheatstone and Cooke was laid from Paddington to Slough on the Great Western line 3 in 1843. The charge for a message up to fifty words was Is. Before the end of the year 1845 lines- exceeding in the aggregate 500 miles were at work in Eng land on the same patent. In the following year the Electric Tele graph Company was established with a tariff of Is. for 20 words within a radius of 50 miles, Is. 6d. within 100 miles, 5s. if exceeding 100 miles. Remittance messages or telegraphic money- orders were established in 1850. In October of that year the first oceanic telegraph was worked for the Submarine Telegraph Company. In June 1854 a writer in the Quarterly Review* put the question : " Is not telegraphic communication as much a function of Government as the conveyance of letters?" In January 1870 the telegraphs became, in pursuance of the Acts of 1868 and 1869, practically a branch of the post-office. In 1881 telephone exchanges were established, both by the post-office and by private companies under its licence, for terms of years, upon payment of a royalty. In 1884 (August and September) definitive arrangements were made between the post-office and the telephonic companies, thus terminating a long controversy and removing many mercantile heart-burnings. When the telegraphs were taken over by the Government tele phonic communication had not yet come into practical use. But the principle and base of both methods are the same ; and the Acts were framed to give the state a right to profit by improvements. In the course of the year 1880 several telephone companies estab lished telephone exchanges in various parts of the kingdom. Means were immediately used by the postmaster-general to vindi cate the law. On the 20th December of that year the question was brought to an issue in the Exchequer Division of the High Court of Justice. It was contended by the companies that "the telephone differed essentially from the telegraph, the one trans mitting electric signals, the other carrying the human voice by means altogether unknown when the post-office monopoly wa s granted." In the course of his judgment Mr Justice Stephen observed that, " if the telephone really transmitted the human voice, then communication by it could not be more rapid than the velocity of sound, whereas in fact it was instantaneous. In both 1 Twenty-eighth Report of Postmaster-General, 1882, p. 10. 2 Journal of the Society of Arts, 1880, vol. xxviii. p. 739. 3 The preliminary experiments of Wheatstone and Cooke had been successfully made on the North-Western line, between Euston station and Camden Town station, but at that date the North-Western Company declined to give facilities for working out the new enterprise.
- Vol. xcv. p. 151.
the communication is by electric signals." The Exchequer decision of December 1880 establishes once for all, not only that the tele phone companies are quite outside of "the terms of the exceptions in section 5 of the Act of 1869," but also that " the Government monopoly is not limited to the property it acquired. It extends to all improvements in telegraphic communication. " 5 The post master-general used his victory with generous moderation. As the companies, he wrote, "were apparently under the belief that they had infringed no law, I held myself ready to meet them with liberal terms. The system of telephonic intercommunication is therefore now being extended partly through the agencies of com panies and partly by the post-office." 6 In the next annual report (1882) he added : "Licences were granted to the United Telephone Company, 7 as representing the companies defendants to the suit, and to other private agencies to carry on the business of a tele phone exchange in London and in various provincial towns, the department at the same time itself establishing exchanges in other places. The principle which underlay this arrangement was that only one telephone system should be established in any one town. Ultimately he came to the conclusion that it was undesirable . . . to create a monopoly in the matter of telephonic communication ; and in future applications will be favourably entertained from responsible persons for licences to establish exchanges under con ditions which may be regarded as giving adequate protection to the public and to the department." 8 According to the Situation des Rescaux Telephoniqiics for 1883, published by the International Telephonic Company at Paris, the contract between the British post-office and the London and Globe Telephone and Maintenance Company is for a term of twenty- nine years. The licence granted to the Telephone Company of Ireland provides that no exchange to be established thereunder by that company shall be within less than 4 miles of any post-office exchange. But, liberal as they were, the concessions made by Mr Fawcett in 1883 failed to satisfy the large and constantly -increasing claims of the telephonic interest. They claimed (1) entire practical freedom of control for their respective enterprises, (2) the reduc tion of the subsisting state royalty by one-half, (3) the extension of the commercial telephonic radius to 15 miles. As an alter native, they offered to continue the subsisting royalty if every sort of restriction and control were removed. Mr Fawcctt firmly maintained the right of Her Majesty s post-office to continue the existing royalty, to establish at its discretion its own telephone exchanges throughout the realm, and to grant new licences irre spective of the old ones ; he consented to abolish all limitations of radius or area, to subject trunk wires and exchange wires to like conditions, to withdraw the claim heretofore made by the department for an unlimited supply of the patented instruments used by the companies, and to permit the establishment by them of call -offices for local messages. But no company was to be licensed to receive and deliver written messages at any point. By this restriction telegraphic and telephonic messages were practically divaricated in service, although identical in law. The subjoined table (XVI.) shows the total number 9 of telegraphic Tele- messages forwarded in England and Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, graph severally, at different years, since the transfer. statist Year. England and Wales. Scotland. Ireland. Total of United Kingdom. Provinces. London. Total. 1870-71 1871-72 1876-77 1881-8210 1882-83 1883-84 5,299,882 0,594,590 11,232,704 14,204,479 14,554,015 14,920,413 2,863,821 3,612,772 0,561,930 12,071,034 12,374,707 12,086,433 8,163,703 10,207,362 17,794,634 26,275,513 26,928,722 27,606,840 1,080,189 1,388,434 2,402,347 3,207,994 3,244,202 3,299,428 606,285 878,000 1,529,162 1,862,354 1,919,102 1,936,840 9,850,177 12,473,790 21,720,143 31,345,801 32,092,020 32,843,120 The number of telegrams sent in proportion to population is now much greater in England than it is in the countries which were cited in the evidence of 1868 as in that particular outstripping others. The old companies, " by maintaining high charges as long as they could, by reducing those charges . . . only under pressure, by the confinement of their operations to important towns, and by planting their offices mainly in the business-centres of those towns, had brought speculative men, and speculative men only, to a free B See Law Journal Reports of January 1881. 6 Twenty-seventh Report of Postmaster-General, p. 5. 7 Upon an average this company paid to the post-office, under the arrangement so initiated, a sum of 15,150 a year. Its aggregate payments up to 31st December 1883 were only 35,500 (Postal Gazette, 1884, p. 490). In other countries the telephonic companies pay much more for their privilege. In Italy, for instance, there are fixed annual payments to the state over and above the royalty of 10 per cent., as in Britain. 8 Twenty-eighth Report, 1882, pp. 5, 6. 9 Compiled from Reports of postmaster-general. 19 Including certain press messages, which previous to 1878-79 were
not included in the returns.