IMPERIAL TELEGRAPHS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3172, 24 April 1909, Page 7

IMPERIAL TELEGRAPHS.

In the "Fortnightly Review" Mr Charles Bright, a son of the eminent telegraphist, Sir Charles T. Bright, writes of Imperial telegraphy at a popular tariff. He thinks the subject requires to be approached with caution and reserve. We must not be unkind to vested interests. We have always to bear in mind those who have risked their capital to serve theic country—and reaped a substantial profit. He says that, considering the risk involved, Bor 9 per cent, is not too much return for a cable shareholder to expert. As to Mr Henniker Heaton's penny-a-word cable proposition, he looks on it as a wild dream, whose finance is a matter of faith rather than figures. At the same time, Mr Bright cannot deny that cheaper cables have an imperial significance that cannot be too strongly stated. The inherent difficulties are the cost' of cable business, the limitations to the work a single cable can do, and the large increase in expenses that would follow from wholesale reduction of rates. Nevertheless, he goes so far as to say that an all-round Imperial 9d tariff may "someday" be practicable. He strongly advocates All-British cables laid along strategic lines, and not along trade routes. Still he is nervously afraid that the cable companies may not like this, and he hopes whatever happens they will not be unduly interfered with.