THE TELEGRAPH DEPARTMENT.

Evening Star, Issue 3292, 8 September 1873, Page 2

THE TELEGRAPH DEPARTMENT.

. i Were the financial condition of the Telegrapp department the only thing to he oohsicTeredi’ tjis annual report, of i Mr Lemon, its general manager, which now lies before us, would.be an eminently satisfactory document. It speaks of estimates of revenue largely exceeded—always a pleasant subject to write upon—and of business extending to dimensions, that will soonbe enormous. A glanoo at the figures justifies Mr.'Lemon's assertion that the progress of the department during’lß72.&. hap bton most marked, ”.i The estimated revenue was L33|oo9ji being an increase or more than L 6,000 over the receipts during 1871-2 ; but the -anticipated Increase has been more than doubled, it having reached L 11,54317» lOd, which gives a' clear ex* cess ef L 6,543 over the estimate. 1 v v And this fepresenta actual cash business; os the increase of General Government messages is so ktoalj that it is not wdrtli tokihg 'mto acgwfiht. * Tfie fevenue’ for 1872-3 was' L 39,600 as t* w ** o

tenance shows a slight decrease when the increased mileage is allowed for. So far so good; but Mr Lemon launches into troubled water, when he comes to discuss the manner in which the work of the department has been performed during the past twelve months. Terribly conscious of the shortcomings of his department, he seeks to sloss5 loss them over by a subterfuge, “ Occasional elays” is the term the General Manager applies to those constant interruptions and slow transmission of messages of which the public in general and the press in particular complained so bitterly about at the beginning of the year, and which the erection of an additional wire to Christchurch has not materially lessened. These delays were attributable to two causes —to the lesser and natural one of an unexpectedly large increase of business, but principally to the rival Press Associations, which were the “chief producers of public dissatisfaction.” The latter part of Mr Lemons defence is so ingenuous that we give it in its entirety “On the arrival of a steamer from Australia, the Associations endeavoied to excel each other in supplying to their customers English and Australian news; consequently there was a substantial repetition of a very long message to each of the principal stations; and it was precisely when the department was temporarily overweighted by those long repetitions, that the commercial public sent in most messages, and was most sensitive if the delivery of any of them was at all delayed. Again, for reasons inseparable from the Telegraph system in New Zealand, long Press telegrams transmitted from the Bluff have a greater tendency to monopolise the wires than have equal messages transmitted from Hokitika or from Auckland ; and it was at the Bluff that the longest messages were received for transmission during the period of constant fressure and of complaint.’ Of necessity the ’ress use the wires to a large extent on the arrival of a Melbourne steamer at the Bluff; and when the two Associations existed, long messages were sent inordinately. The cheapness of the tariff encouraged the compilers of news to be more prolix than they should have been, to Mr Lemon s annoyance and the dissatisfaction of newspaper proprietors, as we well know. -Hut it is unfair to say that the Press in the main is the cause of these “ occasional delays,” which are as frequent now that only one association is in existence as they were when we had the competition of both. Surely Mr Lemon cannot have forgotten the complaints that the public and the Press have made of intolerable delays in the transmission of messages from northern stations, of downright blundering and of positive carelessnes, if not worse, on the of some operators ? Does he forget the (Jhristchurc hj case, when a Press agent was suspended because it was supposed that he had wilfully misrepresented for party purposes, an important political event, when in truth the telegraphic operator had omitted the salient part of the message ? If we had desired to be troublesome, we could have furnished Mr Lemon with innumerable instances of the sense of messages destroyed, portions of sentences left out, and in some cases positive grammatical and orthographical errors on the part of the operators. But these are matters which touch upon the efficiency of the department, and Mr Lemon drtes not choose that that should be questioned, and is silent. In previous reports, some reference has been made to complaints made during the year; and if there were none, or if the number was few, it was a peg to hang a congratulatory sentence upon. There is neither a word of affirmation or negation this year. Can Mr Lemon say that not a single complaint reached him ? t The truth of the matter is, we are afraid, that the general manager is too anxious to make his department eminently reproductive; and, while studiously economical, jeopardises its efficiency. He tells us with a smile of self-satis-faction that he now almost wholly obtains his supply of operators from the cadet classes. It is very gratifying to learn that the Colony can produce its own operators, thus furnishing “ skilled employment to a large number of men and boys”; but we take leave to question the policy of pitchforking lads into prominent positions in the department. Naturally these young men are content with smaller salaries than the skilled and reliable man would be; and Mr Lemon has not found it answers his purpose better to employ the cheaper article. We have heard it said more than once that the salaries offered to competent men are so small that when opportunity occurs many of those in it leave to better themselves ; and the vacancies are filled up from the cadets. We are prepared to admit—nay, we know it —that some of the young men trained in the department have proved themselves to be firjt-class operatives ; but is it not the exception rather than the rule ? We are forced to think that the “ occasional (we should have written frequent) delays” referred to by Mr Lemon, which give rise to the existing dissatisfaction, are not bo much attributable to the Press endeavoring to monopolise the Wires, as to the false economy of the General Manager in having underpaid and unreliable operators. With the tables and other matters touched upon in the report we shall deal in another occasion.