A NEW TELEGRAPH COMPANY AND OTHER COMBINATIONS.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2331, 22 September 1881, Page 4

A NEW TELEGRAPH COMPANY AND OTHER COMBINATIONS.

LFrom the San Francisco Correspondent of the “ Otago Witness.”]

Some time ago I wrote yon describing the concentration of the various telegraph companies in this country into a huge monopoly under Jay Gould. The thing was fixed and done, and millions were made on the concentrated stock. Gould next set to work to checkmate Leland Stanford and Charles Crocker of the Central Pacific railroad, their Southern Pacific opening an independent through road to Atlantic seaboard by the Gulf of Mexico, and making them less tributary to his Union Pacific and Eastern combinations. Accordingly, he acquired control of the Texas Pacific and Kansas Pacific, and brought suit to seize and confiscate the Southern Pacific railroad by virtue of a lapsed charter and land grant through Now Mexico. This suit is in progress now, and Leland Stanford is in England arranging for his fleet of new steamers in connection with the Southern Pacific road at its New Orleans terminus. Gould met his match in the Pacific Ooasters, who never dealt in railroad stock, but who knew how to build and operate railroads better than any other men in America, While the legal war was progressing another Californian sprang a mine under Gould, which threatens both his railroad ard telegraph combinations.' Jim Keene, the well-known California stoCK operator (winner of the Grand Prize of Paris), now of New York, was not let into the telegraph pool, and he laid his plans to get even. Perceiving clearly that the great outlet of the Mississippi Valley was down the river, and not across the St. Louis bridge to New York, thus paying tribute to the railroads, he Bet to work and has organised a company, with a capital of 30,000,000 dollars, to control the river freight. Steamers and barges are being built, and they will be able to ourry freight from Chicago and St. Louis and points along the river to New Orleans mnch cheaper than the railroads can transport it from the river East to New York. It is a shorter route even. New Orleans, which is now a healthy city, as ia Memphis since sanitary measures wore adopted, will thus become the great outlet for the Western States and of the Faoifio Slope up to the Oregon line by the Southern Pacific Railroad ; and this threatens serious trouble to the Vanderbilt • Gould combination. Adequate capital has taken hold of the river transport, find it is not in the Gould interest. Keene has also organised the Postal Telegraph Company, backed principally by Californian capital, the Bonanza people stand ing in with him t and ho is likely to revolutionise the entire telegraph business. The details have just been published, and they are of sufficient importance to publish in your paper, because they are of economic value all the world over. It is proposed to construct a system of telegraph lines in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, connecting with the several cable lines, and to do a general telegraph business. By January Ist, 1883, a system equivalent to the working capacity of the Western Union monopoly will be in operation. This is done by acquiring the patents of a new system of automatic and facsimile telegraphs. These patents have been assigned "to the Eleclrographio Manufacturing Company, incorporated last October, and the price paid by the latter for the exclusive right to use the L-gge automatic facsimile machine is said to be 100,000doi. Tho Eleotrographic Company does not propose to go into a general telegraphic business, but will continue to perfect and manufacture machines. By the automatic system messages can be sent at an average rate of 2000 to 2300 words per minute, while by the old method 25 words a minute is tho capacity of the instruments, with the paper, wire, and instruments in perfect order. The managers of tho new company eay that they have every reason to believe that the rate of 5000 words per minute is practicable. The machine used by the American Rapid Telegraph Company is similar to this in many respects, but practically their speed is limited to less than 1000 words per minute. At the rate of 2000 words per minute, tho new company can transmit more words in a quarter of an hour than by the ordinary method in two hours. By this mechanism 150,000 words can be transmitted in an hour on one wire, and in a day nearly 4,000,000 words. They can do more business with one wire between any two points than Western Union can do with all their wires.

The new method will reduce the cost of telegraphing to a fraction under the ordinary postal rates. One advantage claimed by the now company is the possession of Gray’s harmonic multiple, and the Way duplex system of telegraphy. The Gray harmonic system allows six messages to be sent simultaneously over a single wire in the same or opposite directions, euoh message being sent in a different key or tone from the others. This embraces the Way duplex system, by which any number of stations on a line may communicate with each other on a single wire, on which through business is simultaneously being done. The conductive capacity of the wire to be used is much greater than that of any other wire in use, the resistance being so much less than that on ordinary telegraph wire to bring Chicago telegraphically as near New York as Syracuse now is, compared with the best wire now in use, and bringing Ban Francisco this aide of Chicago. The patents covering this wire and machinery, and the appliances used in its manufacture, as w. 11 as the factory, have recently been purchased by the Postal Telegraph Company. The price paid is said to have been 1,500,000d015. This will prevent the American Rapid Telegraph Company from extending their existing lines, except or. terms stipulated by the Postal Telegraph Company. The estimated cost of the company’s lines, carrying 33,000 miles of wire, with all equipments, offices, repairs and incidentals, is IS.OOO.COOdoIs.