A PRETTY QUARREL.

Temuka Leader, Issue 245, 20 March 1880, Page 3

A PRETTY QUARREL.

The London correspondent of toe Press writes :—“ A very pretty quarrel has the Post-office and the companies which have been formed to bring the telephone, in its various forms, into commercial use, and tins adds another to the many previous instances of the stagnation and indiffer ence to public wants which has been displayed by that department in modern times. Some eight or ten years ago Parliament allowed the PostmasterG<neral acquire a monopoly of ail the telegraphic lines with a this Kingdom, and in consideration of this the House of Commons granted amagnificent sum of money, though.; the expenditure, of course, was’found in the end to very largely exceed the estimate. It need scarcely, he said that since that day therehas been no advance in telegraphic invention in this country, and the 4,000,000 of people who occupy London to say nothing of the greater numb r in the provinces, are obliged to content themselves with badly written ill-spelled messages on the meanest little slips of paper that will suffice for the purpose I would be ashamed to show any of my telegrams to a person from Paris, or Berlin, where they employ the clean and plain Hughe’s printing telegraph. Now the Post-office, which refused to adopt the telephone when it was first brought out, is seeking to prevent its public adoption, and has commenced legal proceedings against two companies in order to restrain them from an infringement of what the Postxnaster-General calls hi monopoly 1 Why, the telephone was not dreamed of when he obtained his powers, and T shall bo much surprised if they are found :o prevent the public use of this valuable iirvention. Because both are worked by electricity he canuot s- e any difference between them.