Magnetic Telegraph from Baltimore to New York, March 3, 1845.Mr.Chappell, from the Committee of Ways and Means, made the following Report.The Committee of Ways and Means, to whom was referred a resolution instructing said committee to inquire into the expediency of reporting a bill to continue the Electro Magnetic Telegraph from Baltimore to New York, by way of Philadelphia, beg leave to submit the following report:The authority given by the constitution to Congress to establish post offices and post roads, so far as it operates to confer on the government any power which would not equally belong to it without that provision, amounts simply to making the government, a public or a common carrier of the written correspondence of individuals, and of the lighter form of printed intelligence and news. In other words, by virtue of this clause, the government is authorized and required to pursue, on a scale commensurate with the wants and extent of the country, the business of receiving, transporting, and delivering letters, newspapers, and pamphlets, for all persons, private, as well as public, and to and from any and all places in the Union. And for the service thus rendered, the government exacts from the individuals served, a specific fee or compensation, under the name of postage, for every letter or paper transported and delivered. Now, it is quite obvious that both the pursuit of this business, and the exaction of a remuneration for it, would be altogether beyond the range of federal authority, but for the specially granted power to establish post offices and post roads. Mere silence in the constitution on this subject would have effectually withheld the power from the general government, and would have caused the business of carrying letters, newspapers, &c., to remain where all other branches of the carrying trade are actually left—namely, in the hands of individual enterprise, subject to State legislation, and to such (and no other) federalcontrol as is involved in the power of Congress to regulate commerce among the States.The functions thus devolved on the government, of performing for the people the office of universal letter carrier and news carrier, is a matter of the very highest consequence in every light in which it can be viewed. The bare fact that our ancestors refused to leave it dependent on individual enterprise or State control, and vested it expressly in Congress, abundantly attested their anxious sense of its importance, and their conviction of the impracticability of realizing the requisite public advantages from it, otherwise than by giving it a federal lodgment and administration.Had not these advantages been regarded as attainable in no other way, while, at the same time, they were felt to be virtually necessary, the framers and adopters of the constitution, devoted as they are known to have been to the power and importance of the States, and jealously apprehensive of the undue preponderance of the federal branch, would never have consented to engraft on that branch a power so great, so growing, so penetrating and pervading, as that of the post office system—a power involving the direct exercise of the carrying trade by the government on a vast scale, and requiring, in order to its exercise, the organization and maintenance of a huge and distinct administrative department, which, in its operations, touches daily and intimately the private affairs as well as public interests of the people; receives and expends millions of money every year; and continually employs, pays, and controls many thousands of persons, scattered through all parts of the country—thus adding mightily to federal power, and especially to the influence and patronage of the federal executive. These are all consequences which result directly and necessarily from the bestowment of the post office power on the general government. And inasmuch as the government thus derives from that power so great an addition to its own weight and influence, it certainly ought to be considered as contracting therefrom a correspondently heavy obligation to make the power advantageous and useful to the people, to the utmost extent of which it is capable.The government has ever shown itself fully sensible of this obligation, and alive to its fulfilment. Hence, that immense and minute machinery of post offices and post roads, of postmasters, contractors, and carriers, which overspreads the country, and meets us everywhere—all designed and kept up for the sole purpose of bringing the contents of the mail-bag, with frequency, regularity, and celerity, near to the doors of our whole population. For many years, no better or more expeditious means of conveyance could be found than horse-power in the various forms in which it might be applied on ordinary highways. But in those times, as well as now, the government acted on the principle of not regarding even a heavy increase of expense as an objection sufficient to outweigh so important an object as the regular,frequent, and rapid transmission of the mail between all the great points, and along all the chief arteries of the country. On such routes, accordingly, the mail was kept running without interruption—by night as well as by day—and at the best speed that could be secured by a well organized and costly system of relays of men, horses, and vehicles.But, at length, the ever advancing discoveries and improvements of science and art threw into the shade, as slow and inadequate, all the old and long used modes of travel and transportation. Steamboats and railroads burst upon the world, introducing a new and wonderful era in its commerce and intercourse; private capital and enterprise soon built them up, and put them in operation, whenever a sufficiently tempting prospect of gain appeared; and all private persons, as well as public departments, saw presented to their option more perfect and expeditious modes of transportation than could have possibly entered into the anticipations of the framers of the constitution. But, though not anticipated or foreseen, these new and improved modes were as clearly within the purview of the constitution, as were the older and less perfect ones with which our ancestors were familiar. And there being no doubt entertained either on this point, or as to the obligation of the government to lay hold of the best and most rapid methods of transmission which the improvements of the age put in its reach, steam-power commended itself at once to adoption, and has long been extensively employed, both on land and water, for the carriage of the mail.It is not without full reflection that the committee insist on the principle that it was the duty as well as the right of the government thus to avail itself, even at heavy additional expense, of the powerful agency of steam, for the purpose of accelerating the mails. It would have been a gross and manifest dereliction to have permitted that vitally important concern, the transportation of the mail—a concern so anxiously intrusted by the constitution to the federal authority—it would have been, in the opinion of the committee, a gross and manifest dereliction to have permitted it to lag behind the improvements of the age, and to be outstripped by the pace of ordinary travel and commercial communication. Such is the view which the Post Office Department avowedly takes of its own obligations, and upon which it habitually acts. To be outstripped by private expresses, or by the ordinary lines of travel, is deemed discreditable to the department, injurious to the general interests of the country, and a thing, therefore, not to be permitted.This great and fundamental principle upon which the departments acts, (of not being outstripped in the transmission of correspondence and intelligence,) led necessarily to subsidizing the steam-engine into the service of the post office; and it must and will lead, with equal certainty, to a like adoption of any other newly discovered agency orcontrivance possessing decided advantage of celerity over previously used methods. It is not probable, however, that the government will ever find itself called upon to make any transition wider or more striking than that already so familiar to us—a transition from the use of animal power to the tremendous enginery of the steam-engine; from common roads to iron railways; from land carriage to the conversion of rivers, lakes, and the ocean itself, into post roads.The same principle which justified and demanded the transference of the mail on many chief routes, from the horse-drawn coach on common highways to steam-impelled vehicles on land and water, is equally potent to warrant the calling of the electro magnetic telegraph—that last and most wondrous birth of this wonder-teeming age—in aid of the post office, in discharge of its great function of rapidly transmitting correspondence and intelligence. And the only question to be considered, in determining whether it ought to be so called in aid, is a question of fact—namely, whether said telegraph possesses, over the modes of transmission now in use by the department, any advantages of sufficient value to justify the expense of engraftment on the system.Its first and most signal advantage consists in the truly electrical celerity with which it transmits intelligence and communications through the greatest distances. It supplies, with a perfection like magic, the first and most important and difficultdesideratumin a post office establishment—especially in one which has to serve a country so vast as ours. That desideratum is despatch—rapidity of transmission. It is to secure this, that the government pays a hugely greater price for the carrying and delivery of the mails, than any other equalquantumof transportation costs in the world. Nature seemed to have fixed certain limits to the speed of transmission, which it seemed impossible to pass; and those limits appeared to be reached by the steam-engine. But they have been utterly transcended by the electro magnetic telegraph, which has literally demolished time and space for all purposes of correspondence between places connected by its wonder-working wires.Another inestimably important advantage of Professor Morse’s telegraph consists in the fulness, precision, and variety of matter which it is capable of communicating. Its alphabet contains representatives of all the letters of our language, and of all the numerals of arithmetic; and they are capable of infinite combination and repetition under the magnetic impulse. Hence it is obvious that thecapacityof the instrument is competent to the communication of a long discourse of the greatest variety of thought and expression. But, as the telegraph letters must necessarily be despatched along the wire, and marked down, one by one, at the station to which they are transmitted, it is obvious that a long discourse must occupyconsiderable time, although the letters follow each other in the most rapid succession.This brings the attention of the committee to a very material point, namely: the quantum of matter, or amount of intelligence, which the instrument would be capable of transmitting in a given time. The ordinary average of transmission is about thirty letters per minute along each wire. Six wires can be erected at an expense of somewhat less than $500 per mile, which would make the telegraph competent to the transmission of one hundred and eighty letters per minute, on an average. The words of our language are estimated to average six letters to a word. A telegraphic line composed of six wires, would, consequently, be able to transmit per minute thirty words fully spelt. But it is wholly unnecessary that the words should be fully spelt by the instrument. By a well-contrived system of abbreviations, the number of letters to be transmitted, in order to communicate a given number of words, is greatly diminished; and, of course, the number of words transmissible in a given time is proportionably augmented. To such great perfection has this system of conventional abbreviations been carried, as to have enabled the telegraph, on one occasion, to transmit in thirty minutes, from Washington to Baltimore, congressional intelligence enough to fill a column of the Baltimore Patriot. This was done, too, with only one wire. Increase the number of wires to six, as proposed in the bill introduced by the Committee on Commerce, and it follows that the capacity of the instrument will be adequate to the transmission of six long newspaper columns of matter in half an hour. Then it is to be further noted, that the telegraph is capable of working throughout the whole twenty-four hours, without intermission—in darkness as well as in daylight—in stormy weather as well as in serene—which would enable it to communicate in a single day two hundred and eighty-eight long newspaper columns of matter. All these facts put together, evince that the capacity of the instrument, in reference not only to the celerity of its communications, but in reference also to the kind and quantity of matter it can communicate in a given time, is such as to recommend it as a most efficient medium both of private correspondence and public intelligence.That it is capable of being, and will actually be, at no distant day, extensively employed as such a medium, it seems to the committee there can be but little room to doubt. Such a result seems, indeed, to be rendered altogether certain, when, in addition to the capacities of the instrument, we take into consideration its cheapness. For little more than $100,000, Baltimore can be connected with New York; and for a like sum, New York with Boston. There would then be an unbroken telegraphic line from Boston to Washington; passing through New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and the other considerable towns on the route.What a vast number of short commercial letters would such a line be able to attract to itself, and to despatch every day, far in advance of the ordinary transportation by mail. Nor would any danger of a detrimental divulgence of their affairs exist to deter merchants and men of business from resorting to the telegraph; because, in the first place, the simple expedient of a concerted cipher between distant correspondents would protect their communications with a shield of secrecy impenetrable even to the officers and managers of the telegraph. And in the next place, the very nature of their functions will require that these persons shall be men of great trustworthiness, and that they shall moreover be placed under the most stringent official obligations of secrecy in regard to the contents of private communications. Under such circumstances, men of business need no more apprehend danger of improper publicity from employing the telegraph, than from the necessity of having clerks in their counting-houses to pen and copy their correspondence.If all these advantages should have the effect of attracting to the telegraph the amount of custom which to the committee seems probable, it is obvious that a very moderate tariff of charges would produce income enough to make it a gainful property—at least upon such a line as that from Boston to Washington. It is upon this ground the committee base the belief that it is destined soon to be established along that whole line, if not by government, certainly by private capital and enterprise; and then a state of things will immediately develop itself, which the people will never endure nor tolerate the government in permitting to exist. That state of things would be that the post office, in its transportation of all correspondence and news, would lag not hours, but days, behind the transmission of the same things through another medium; and that, a medium belonging to private individuals, and controlled by private views and interests.The importance of prompt action in the matter on the part of the government is further apparent from the fact that the invention is a private patented property. It is a property to the production of which Professor Morse has devoted years of the highest order of labour—the labour of genius and science combined. Under the patronage and at the expense of the government, he has been enabled to give to the world, in the line between Baltimore and Washington, a visible and perfectly triumphant demonstration of the success and utility of his invention. But the pecuniary reward, to which he is so justly entitled, remains yet in abeyance. It depends upon his being successful in making contracts with the government, or others, for the use of his invention. And, of course, if government shall not speedily embrace the project, and enable him to realize a compensation for his discovery, he will be necessitated to look elsewhere for his indemnification and reward. And, should the arrangements into which he may find it necessary to enterwith private individuals or associations, stipulate exclusive rights in their favour, it is manifest how greatly government and people would lie at their mercy. Having in their hands the monopoly of such a medium of intelligence on the important lines, they could make such use of their advantages over the government and the community as would at length enable them to exact their own terms as the price of the surrender of their exclusive right; for the truth cannot be too often repeated, or too deeply impressed in relation to the subject, that the people will never submit long to the mischiefs and discredit of the public post office transmission of correspondence and intelligence being outstripped by any private monopoly or establishment whatever. The loss of revenue will co-operate with the complaints and sufferings of the people to compel the government, in the long run, to do what were better done at once—namely, to establish the telegraph in connection with, and as a branch of, the post office, on such great lines of communication as the correspondence and commerce of the country may indicate.An accident has occurred, during the present winter, in the administration of the post office, to which the committee beg leave to call the attention of the House, as illustrative of the principles and policy by which the Department avowedly feels itself bound, as the public organ for the transmission of correspondence and intelligence. It is well known that, from Boston to Covington, in Georgia, the great southern and New Orleans mail is transported wholly by steam-power, either on water or on rail roads. It is carried this whole distance in five days. From Covington to Mobile, it is carried in stages, with the exception of a short interval of rail road in approaching Montgomery, Alabama. At Mobile, the mail is again committed to steam-carriage, by sea, to New Orleans. Now, of so much importance was a single day’s anticipation of the mail deemed in all the great cities on the route, that a private express was established with that view, to be carried on horseback between Covington and Montgomery. All matter destined for the private express was addressed to the agents of the company at Covington and Montgomery, according as such matter should happen to come from the north or south. The express carrier at Covington, receiving his despatches from the northern mail on the arrival of the steam-cars, delivered them at Montgomery to the post office again in such time that they were sent from Montgomery to Mobile and New Orleans by mail one day in advance of the other letters, which reached Covington at the same time. The effect was, the anticipation of the northern mail by one day at Mobile and New Orleans; and the same operation, from Montgomery to Covington, resulted in one day’s anticipation of the Mobile and New Orleans mails at New York. What did the Post Office Department do, under this state of facts? The answer to this question is to be foundon the records of the Department. The Postmaster General, after watching these anticipations for a short time, issued an order for their prevention by the establishment of a post office express between Covington and Montgomery, to run alongside the private express. In the same manner, if the government shall not soon establish the telegraph on public account on the great routes, it will find the mails anticipated in the hundred-fold greater degree by the establishment of private telegraphs, which it will have to meet, either by purchasing them out on exorbitant terms, or by erecting a rival public telegraph line by their side.The facts and reasonings which have now been submitted, satisfy the committee that it is important that the government should lose no time in occupying, with a telegraph of its own, the ground between Baltimore and New York. The committee look to the probability that the line will afterwards he progressively extended northwardly, southwardly, and westwardly, on routes the business and correspondence on which shall justify and require telegraphic facilities of communication.Apart from the post office power, the government undoubtedly possesses the authority to establish the telegraph for its own use in the transmission of official orders and communications. On this ground, as well as on that growing out of the post office power, the committee deem the constitutionality of the measure incontrovertible.The committee might easily add to the views and arguments which they have now presented, others of a highly commanding character—especially those which relate to the extreme value of which the magnetic telegraph would be in the emergencies of war, and its singular adaptedness to render our system of government easily and certainly maintainable over the immense space from the Atlantic to the Pacific, which our territory covers. Doubt has been entertained by many patriotic minds how far the rapid, full, and thorough intercommunication of thought and intelligence, so necessary to a people living under a common representative republic, could be expected to take place throughout such immense bounds. That doubt can no longer exist. It has been resolved and put an end to forever by the triumphant success of the electro magnetic telegraph of Professor Morse, as already tested by the government.The fact that a bill has been long pending in the House, introduced by the Committee on Commerce, for the extension of the telegraph from Baltimore to New York, renders it unnecessary for this committee to report a bill. Without pronouncing positively on the sufficiency of the provisions of that bill, the committee consider the whole subject worthy the prompt attention of Congress.Having thus presented their views on the subject referred to them, the committee beg to be discharged from its further consideration.
Magnetic Telegraph from Baltimore to New York, March 3, 1845.
Mr.Chappell, from the Committee of Ways and Means, made the following Report.
The Committee of Ways and Means, to whom was referred a resolution instructing said committee to inquire into the expediency of reporting a bill to continue the Electro Magnetic Telegraph from Baltimore to New York, by way of Philadelphia, beg leave to submit the following report:
The authority given by the constitution to Congress to establish post offices and post roads, so far as it operates to confer on the government any power which would not equally belong to it without that provision, amounts simply to making the government, a public or a common carrier of the written correspondence of individuals, and of the lighter form of printed intelligence and news. In other words, by virtue of this clause, the government is authorized and required to pursue, on a scale commensurate with the wants and extent of the country, the business of receiving, transporting, and delivering letters, newspapers, and pamphlets, for all persons, private, as well as public, and to and from any and all places in the Union. And for the service thus rendered, the government exacts from the individuals served, a specific fee or compensation, under the name of postage, for every letter or paper transported and delivered. Now, it is quite obvious that both the pursuit of this business, and the exaction of a remuneration for it, would be altogether beyond the range of federal authority, but for the specially granted power to establish post offices and post roads. Mere silence in the constitution on this subject would have effectually withheld the power from the general government, and would have caused the business of carrying letters, newspapers, &c., to remain where all other branches of the carrying trade are actually left—namely, in the hands of individual enterprise, subject to State legislation, and to such (and no other) federalcontrol as is involved in the power of Congress to regulate commerce among the States.
The functions thus devolved on the government, of performing for the people the office of universal letter carrier and news carrier, is a matter of the very highest consequence in every light in which it can be viewed. The bare fact that our ancestors refused to leave it dependent on individual enterprise or State control, and vested it expressly in Congress, abundantly attested their anxious sense of its importance, and their conviction of the impracticability of realizing the requisite public advantages from it, otherwise than by giving it a federal lodgment and administration.
Had not these advantages been regarded as attainable in no other way, while, at the same time, they were felt to be virtually necessary, the framers and adopters of the constitution, devoted as they are known to have been to the power and importance of the States, and jealously apprehensive of the undue preponderance of the federal branch, would never have consented to engraft on that branch a power so great, so growing, so penetrating and pervading, as that of the post office system—a power involving the direct exercise of the carrying trade by the government on a vast scale, and requiring, in order to its exercise, the organization and maintenance of a huge and distinct administrative department, which, in its operations, touches daily and intimately the private affairs as well as public interests of the people; receives and expends millions of money every year; and continually employs, pays, and controls many thousands of persons, scattered through all parts of the country—thus adding mightily to federal power, and especially to the influence and patronage of the federal executive. These are all consequences which result directly and necessarily from the bestowment of the post office power on the general government. And inasmuch as the government thus derives from that power so great an addition to its own weight and influence, it certainly ought to be considered as contracting therefrom a correspondently heavy obligation to make the power advantageous and useful to the people, to the utmost extent of which it is capable.
The government has ever shown itself fully sensible of this obligation, and alive to its fulfilment. Hence, that immense and minute machinery of post offices and post roads, of postmasters, contractors, and carriers, which overspreads the country, and meets us everywhere—all designed and kept up for the sole purpose of bringing the contents of the mail-bag, with frequency, regularity, and celerity, near to the doors of our whole population. For many years, no better or more expeditious means of conveyance could be found than horse-power in the various forms in which it might be applied on ordinary highways. But in those times, as well as now, the government acted on the principle of not regarding even a heavy increase of expense as an objection sufficient to outweigh so important an object as the regular,frequent, and rapid transmission of the mail between all the great points, and along all the chief arteries of the country. On such routes, accordingly, the mail was kept running without interruption—by night as well as by day—and at the best speed that could be secured by a well organized and costly system of relays of men, horses, and vehicles.
But, at length, the ever advancing discoveries and improvements of science and art threw into the shade, as slow and inadequate, all the old and long used modes of travel and transportation. Steamboats and railroads burst upon the world, introducing a new and wonderful era in its commerce and intercourse; private capital and enterprise soon built them up, and put them in operation, whenever a sufficiently tempting prospect of gain appeared; and all private persons, as well as public departments, saw presented to their option more perfect and expeditious modes of transportation than could have possibly entered into the anticipations of the framers of the constitution. But, though not anticipated or foreseen, these new and improved modes were as clearly within the purview of the constitution, as were the older and less perfect ones with which our ancestors were familiar. And there being no doubt entertained either on this point, or as to the obligation of the government to lay hold of the best and most rapid methods of transmission which the improvements of the age put in its reach, steam-power commended itself at once to adoption, and has long been extensively employed, both on land and water, for the carriage of the mail.
It is not without full reflection that the committee insist on the principle that it was the duty as well as the right of the government thus to avail itself, even at heavy additional expense, of the powerful agency of steam, for the purpose of accelerating the mails. It would have been a gross and manifest dereliction to have permitted that vitally important concern, the transportation of the mail—a concern so anxiously intrusted by the constitution to the federal authority—it would have been, in the opinion of the committee, a gross and manifest dereliction to have permitted it to lag behind the improvements of the age, and to be outstripped by the pace of ordinary travel and commercial communication. Such is the view which the Post Office Department avowedly takes of its own obligations, and upon which it habitually acts. To be outstripped by private expresses, or by the ordinary lines of travel, is deemed discreditable to the department, injurious to the general interests of the country, and a thing, therefore, not to be permitted.
This great and fundamental principle upon which the departments acts, (of not being outstripped in the transmission of correspondence and intelligence,) led necessarily to subsidizing the steam-engine into the service of the post office; and it must and will lead, with equal certainty, to a like adoption of any other newly discovered agency orcontrivance possessing decided advantage of celerity over previously used methods. It is not probable, however, that the government will ever find itself called upon to make any transition wider or more striking than that already so familiar to us—a transition from the use of animal power to the tremendous enginery of the steam-engine; from common roads to iron railways; from land carriage to the conversion of rivers, lakes, and the ocean itself, into post roads.
The same principle which justified and demanded the transference of the mail on many chief routes, from the horse-drawn coach on common highways to steam-impelled vehicles on land and water, is equally potent to warrant the calling of the electro magnetic telegraph—that last and most wondrous birth of this wonder-teeming age—in aid of the post office, in discharge of its great function of rapidly transmitting correspondence and intelligence. And the only question to be considered, in determining whether it ought to be so called in aid, is a question of fact—namely, whether said telegraph possesses, over the modes of transmission now in use by the department, any advantages of sufficient value to justify the expense of engraftment on the system.
Its first and most signal advantage consists in the truly electrical celerity with which it transmits intelligence and communications through the greatest distances. It supplies, with a perfection like magic, the first and most important and difficultdesideratumin a post office establishment—especially in one which has to serve a country so vast as ours. That desideratum is despatch—rapidity of transmission. It is to secure this, that the government pays a hugely greater price for the carrying and delivery of the mails, than any other equalquantumof transportation costs in the world. Nature seemed to have fixed certain limits to the speed of transmission, which it seemed impossible to pass; and those limits appeared to be reached by the steam-engine. But they have been utterly transcended by the electro magnetic telegraph, which has literally demolished time and space for all purposes of correspondence between places connected by its wonder-working wires.
Another inestimably important advantage of Professor Morse’s telegraph consists in the fulness, precision, and variety of matter which it is capable of communicating. Its alphabet contains representatives of all the letters of our language, and of all the numerals of arithmetic; and they are capable of infinite combination and repetition under the magnetic impulse. Hence it is obvious that thecapacityof the instrument is competent to the communication of a long discourse of the greatest variety of thought and expression. But, as the telegraph letters must necessarily be despatched along the wire, and marked down, one by one, at the station to which they are transmitted, it is obvious that a long discourse must occupyconsiderable time, although the letters follow each other in the most rapid succession.
This brings the attention of the committee to a very material point, namely: the quantum of matter, or amount of intelligence, which the instrument would be capable of transmitting in a given time. The ordinary average of transmission is about thirty letters per minute along each wire. Six wires can be erected at an expense of somewhat less than $500 per mile, which would make the telegraph competent to the transmission of one hundred and eighty letters per minute, on an average. The words of our language are estimated to average six letters to a word. A telegraphic line composed of six wires, would, consequently, be able to transmit per minute thirty words fully spelt. But it is wholly unnecessary that the words should be fully spelt by the instrument. By a well-contrived system of abbreviations, the number of letters to be transmitted, in order to communicate a given number of words, is greatly diminished; and, of course, the number of words transmissible in a given time is proportionably augmented. To such great perfection has this system of conventional abbreviations been carried, as to have enabled the telegraph, on one occasion, to transmit in thirty minutes, from Washington to Baltimore, congressional intelligence enough to fill a column of the Baltimore Patriot. This was done, too, with only one wire. Increase the number of wires to six, as proposed in the bill introduced by the Committee on Commerce, and it follows that the capacity of the instrument will be adequate to the transmission of six long newspaper columns of matter in half an hour. Then it is to be further noted, that the telegraph is capable of working throughout the whole twenty-four hours, without intermission—in darkness as well as in daylight—in stormy weather as well as in serene—which would enable it to communicate in a single day two hundred and eighty-eight long newspaper columns of matter. All these facts put together, evince that the capacity of the instrument, in reference not only to the celerity of its communications, but in reference also to the kind and quantity of matter it can communicate in a given time, is such as to recommend it as a most efficient medium both of private correspondence and public intelligence.
That it is capable of being, and will actually be, at no distant day, extensively employed as such a medium, it seems to the committee there can be but little room to doubt. Such a result seems, indeed, to be rendered altogether certain, when, in addition to the capacities of the instrument, we take into consideration its cheapness. For little more than $100,000, Baltimore can be connected with New York; and for a like sum, New York with Boston. There would then be an unbroken telegraphic line from Boston to Washington; passing through New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and the other considerable towns on the route.What a vast number of short commercial letters would such a line be able to attract to itself, and to despatch every day, far in advance of the ordinary transportation by mail. Nor would any danger of a detrimental divulgence of their affairs exist to deter merchants and men of business from resorting to the telegraph; because, in the first place, the simple expedient of a concerted cipher between distant correspondents would protect their communications with a shield of secrecy impenetrable even to the officers and managers of the telegraph. And in the next place, the very nature of their functions will require that these persons shall be men of great trustworthiness, and that they shall moreover be placed under the most stringent official obligations of secrecy in regard to the contents of private communications. Under such circumstances, men of business need no more apprehend danger of improper publicity from employing the telegraph, than from the necessity of having clerks in their counting-houses to pen and copy their correspondence.
If all these advantages should have the effect of attracting to the telegraph the amount of custom which to the committee seems probable, it is obvious that a very moderate tariff of charges would produce income enough to make it a gainful property—at least upon such a line as that from Boston to Washington. It is upon this ground the committee base the belief that it is destined soon to be established along that whole line, if not by government, certainly by private capital and enterprise; and then a state of things will immediately develop itself, which the people will never endure nor tolerate the government in permitting to exist. That state of things would be that the post office, in its transportation of all correspondence and news, would lag not hours, but days, behind the transmission of the same things through another medium; and that, a medium belonging to private individuals, and controlled by private views and interests.
The importance of prompt action in the matter on the part of the government is further apparent from the fact that the invention is a private patented property. It is a property to the production of which Professor Morse has devoted years of the highest order of labour—the labour of genius and science combined. Under the patronage and at the expense of the government, he has been enabled to give to the world, in the line between Baltimore and Washington, a visible and perfectly triumphant demonstration of the success and utility of his invention. But the pecuniary reward, to which he is so justly entitled, remains yet in abeyance. It depends upon his being successful in making contracts with the government, or others, for the use of his invention. And, of course, if government shall not speedily embrace the project, and enable him to realize a compensation for his discovery, he will be necessitated to look elsewhere for his indemnification and reward. And, should the arrangements into which he may find it necessary to enterwith private individuals or associations, stipulate exclusive rights in their favour, it is manifest how greatly government and people would lie at their mercy. Having in their hands the monopoly of such a medium of intelligence on the important lines, they could make such use of their advantages over the government and the community as would at length enable them to exact their own terms as the price of the surrender of their exclusive right; for the truth cannot be too often repeated, or too deeply impressed in relation to the subject, that the people will never submit long to the mischiefs and discredit of the public post office transmission of correspondence and intelligence being outstripped by any private monopoly or establishment whatever. The loss of revenue will co-operate with the complaints and sufferings of the people to compel the government, in the long run, to do what were better done at once—namely, to establish the telegraph in connection with, and as a branch of, the post office, on such great lines of communication as the correspondence and commerce of the country may indicate.
An accident has occurred, during the present winter, in the administration of the post office, to which the committee beg leave to call the attention of the House, as illustrative of the principles and policy by which the Department avowedly feels itself bound, as the public organ for the transmission of correspondence and intelligence. It is well known that, from Boston to Covington, in Georgia, the great southern and New Orleans mail is transported wholly by steam-power, either on water or on rail roads. It is carried this whole distance in five days. From Covington to Mobile, it is carried in stages, with the exception of a short interval of rail road in approaching Montgomery, Alabama. At Mobile, the mail is again committed to steam-carriage, by sea, to New Orleans. Now, of so much importance was a single day’s anticipation of the mail deemed in all the great cities on the route, that a private express was established with that view, to be carried on horseback between Covington and Montgomery. All matter destined for the private express was addressed to the agents of the company at Covington and Montgomery, according as such matter should happen to come from the north or south. The express carrier at Covington, receiving his despatches from the northern mail on the arrival of the steam-cars, delivered them at Montgomery to the post office again in such time that they were sent from Montgomery to Mobile and New Orleans by mail one day in advance of the other letters, which reached Covington at the same time. The effect was, the anticipation of the northern mail by one day at Mobile and New Orleans; and the same operation, from Montgomery to Covington, resulted in one day’s anticipation of the Mobile and New Orleans mails at New York. What did the Post Office Department do, under this state of facts? The answer to this question is to be foundon the records of the Department. The Postmaster General, after watching these anticipations for a short time, issued an order for their prevention by the establishment of a post office express between Covington and Montgomery, to run alongside the private express. In the same manner, if the government shall not soon establish the telegraph on public account on the great routes, it will find the mails anticipated in the hundred-fold greater degree by the establishment of private telegraphs, which it will have to meet, either by purchasing them out on exorbitant terms, or by erecting a rival public telegraph line by their side.
The facts and reasonings which have now been submitted, satisfy the committee that it is important that the government should lose no time in occupying, with a telegraph of its own, the ground between Baltimore and New York. The committee look to the probability that the line will afterwards he progressively extended northwardly, southwardly, and westwardly, on routes the business and correspondence on which shall justify and require telegraphic facilities of communication.
Apart from the post office power, the government undoubtedly possesses the authority to establish the telegraph for its own use in the transmission of official orders and communications. On this ground, as well as on that growing out of the post office power, the committee deem the constitutionality of the measure incontrovertible.
The committee might easily add to the views and arguments which they have now presented, others of a highly commanding character—especially those which relate to the extreme value of which the magnetic telegraph would be in the emergencies of war, and its singular adaptedness to render our system of government easily and certainly maintainable over the immense space from the Atlantic to the Pacific, which our territory covers. Doubt has been entertained by many patriotic minds how far the rapid, full, and thorough intercommunication of thought and intelligence, so necessary to a people living under a common representative republic, could be expected to take place throughout such immense bounds. That doubt can no longer exist. It has been resolved and put an end to forever by the triumphant success of the electro magnetic telegraph of Professor Morse, as already tested by the government.
The fact that a bill has been long pending in the House, introduced by the Committee on Commerce, for the extension of the telegraph from Baltimore to New York, renders it unnecessary for this committee to report a bill. Without pronouncing positively on the sufficiency of the provisions of that bill, the committee consider the whole subject worthy the prompt attention of Congress.
Having thus presented their views on the subject referred to them, the committee beg to be discharged from its further consideration.