THE ELECTRO-MAGNETIC TELEGRAPH [From the Melbourne Argus.]

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume IX, Issue 845, 7 September 1853, Page 4

THE ELECTRO-MAGNETIC TELEGRAPH [From the Melbourne Argus.]

The electro-magnetic telegraph, which, by the way, was invented by Mr. Ronalds, who published his discovery and experiments in 1823, has worked a revolution everywhere ; but no country has felt its effect so greatly as America ; and no other country possesses an equal length of telegraph line, or can boast of equal cheapness or regularity in the transmission of information. With us the telegraph has hitherto been the instrument of the Stock Exchange, and the slave of commerce and the rich, rather than a universal agent used by all classes of the people. I noticed with interest the tall, red or white poles surmounted by insulators, and bound together by long lines of telegraphic wire, planted like trees through many of the main streets oi New York, of Boston, of Philadelphia, of Baltimore ; and contrasted this sacrifice of the feelings of street commissioners with the ridiculous regulations enforced at home, by which the ordinary telegraphic wires laid through towns are, to the great injury and obstruction of the enterprise, buried in the ground under flaps and pavements. In riding out amongst tL- torests, too, far away from any cleared country, along roads cut straight out of the woods for miles, there again were rough poles, and a single, thin, dangling wire, stretching away into the distance. There were wires under the rivers and over them ; across prairies and over mountains. Indeed, the single wire telegraph, erected at a cost of some £20 or £30 a mile, is pushed out everywhere, almost in advance of the population, the pioneer of civiltzation. There are now above 11,000 miles of telegraphic line in the States. You may transmit information from Quebec or Montreal in the north to New Orleans in the south, a distance of 2000 miles, or 4000 miles there and back, and have your reply in about two Lours, including delivery and all delays. You may telegraph from New York to Fond dv Lac in Wisconsin, a distance by the telegraph route of 1500 miles, or 3000 miles there and back, and have your reply delivered to you in an hour, including all delays. A tenth of the time would suffice for mere transmission and reply ; but I speak now of the practical interval within which, in the most adverse average circumstances, the message may be sent, written out aud delivered ; and the reply received, transmitted, written out, and placed in your hands by messenger. Your message is not, however, invariably written. The printing telegraph is much in rogue ; and, although in our own country it has made no progress, and has been considered rather as a toy, or pretty trifle for experiment, than as adapted to everyday working, and its accidents, in the United States its inventor appears to have so perfected it, that its action is certain and unexceptionable. It i-s relied upon for a large mass of important daily intelligence, including the price list of stocks and funds, and the market rates for staple commodities. People in America 1 buy by the telegraph, and sell by it ; order their beds at hotels, and their clean linen from home, by it ; notify all domestic wants of urgency by it ; use it as the fairy wand, by which distant relatives and friends are brought to speak to them, as it were, under their very

windows, and at their doors, from the other side of a migbty country. And, in fine, it serves them universally from the cottage to the palace, if such a thing be allowed in so " practical" a country. An old woman, the mother of a laborer in Wisconsin, addressed me, in the steamer on Lake Erie, to ask if the telegraph had been extended to Fond dv Lac. She bad come all alone from some out-of-the-way place in Maine, and was on her way to Fond dv Lac to join her son, she said; and she wished to telegraph from New Buffalo, on the east side of Lake Michigan, to meet her at Chicago. A glance at the map will show the wonder of this. New Buffalo has sixty miles of water between it and Chicago, and Fond dv Lac is 350 miles north of Chicago. Fond dv Lac is a place of yesterday, and yet it is placed within a few minutes, in point of intelligence, of New York, Boston, or Philadelphia. Thus prices are equalised ; the only distributing element being cost of conveyance. Labor flows at once to the place where a demand exists for it. A broker, consul, or employer, has merely to telegraph to some, great centre, a thousand miles off, with the word high wages, cheap bread, and good privileges, the newspapers get hold of the intelligence, and the stream turns in that direction as truly as water in coining to its level. The secret of this extensive use of the telegraph is the low charge, stimulated, of course, by the locomotive and enterprising habits of the people, and by the special demand for economy of time in so wide and so new a country, But the connection between ' the telegraph and the press is the great aspect of thisquestion : — 'There are in America some 2500 separate newspapers published daily, weekly, or at other periods. The total circulation of these newspapers averages one million copies per dayNow see the working of this cheap telegraph. The steamer from England comes in at New York or Boston, say at two o'clock ; at a quarter to four the beads, or leading " items" of news, are printed and circulated in New York by aa issue of 30,000 evening papers. And in two hours the same news is transmitted, printed, and in circulation all over those parts of the Union where the telegraph and the daily papers exist. Thus you may be sleeping or musing at some-out-of-the-way place, in a newly settled state, having the events of two months ago in your head, when an " extra" of the local paper is put into your band, and you learn, perhaps, as " important news from Europe," that Lord Palmerston has put on a " stiff upper lip" to Russia ; that a horrid accident happened on the Great Western Railway ; or that some Italian songstress is coming over by the next packet. This news is perhaps an hour, or at' most two or three hours old in New York, while a passage of nine-and-a-half days has brooght it from England. The telegraphic communication is outstripped only by the diffusion of light : and, just as in that beautiful and glorious phenomenon of nature, rapidity of progress is accompanied by universality. Not one line or course of country only, but the whole Union, far and near, accessible or otherwise by travel, is thus made by it to ring with the same intelligence, to weep at the same woes, to rejoice at the same successes, and to discuss the same political information on tha same day. Is it strange, therefore, that news is taking the place of mere leading articles ; and that the truth, the daily history of the world anJ its leaders, little and big, is becoming, happily, of far more interest than the cloudy speculations and dreary pointless abuse with which the hacks of political parties still disfigure the press of America ? Men are now reading for news desiring to form their own opinions, and requiring in connexion with the data they search for, and now obtain at first hand, no better speculations than their own. I confess to have been startled over and over again by being questioned, far away from those places which seemed to me to be the circles of population and intelligence, on some English or conti*nental events of which my letters of three days back contained no mention ; and by hearing daily from the mouths of the humblest, discussions upon what was passing, which showed, to use an Americanism, that every one was " posted up" to the latest date with all the important news of the world. The telegraph, during Congress time, supplies all the principal daily papers with two, three, or sometimes five columns of debate per d?y, throughout the session. I should not wish to draw any parallel between the systems pursued by the telegraph companies of the States and of England. I perceive that the telegraph company have reduced their charges very recently, for messages not exceeding twenty words, and for distances of one hundred miles and under, to 2s. 6d.; and for distances over 100 miles to 55., and 3d. for every additional word. This is a great step, and I hope it may increase the revenue of the company. That the English scale of charges can ever approach the American, with profit in the working, is a question upon which I have considerable doubts, founded on the natural differences of the two countries, and on the lesser necessity for the telegraph in an older, far smaller, and more settled dominion, than in a new and widely-extending republic. The North American Telegraph Line stands in a similar position to that of our Electric Telegraph Company. It has the largest extent of communication* under its command ; and, though competed with, has the great run of business in its extended district between New York, Philadelpba, Baltimore, Washington, and the south and west. It connects with O'Reilly's Atlantic, Lake, Ohio, and Mississippi telegn phs. It transmits information to some 400 through stations, and works over several thousand miles of wires. The directions issued by this company to parties sending messages are :—": — " Write your message plain, so that it can be read by the operator f also give dates, full address, and signature, as no charge is made for either." The practice of making no charge for addresses is at once a curtailment of one-third of the cost of short messages as charged with us. But even with this concession, and with low,, rates also, the company notify to the public, that they " respectfully solicit a share of telegraphic business, and, in return, every effort will be made to give satisfaction to their numerous patrons."