features of European systems, leaving matters of administration largely to the Postmaster-General, subject to Congressional disapproval.

The bill fixes a popular uniform rate of one cent per word for all distances, with reductions for the press, and provides for the transmission of telegrams by mail between postal-telegraph offices and all post-offices where telegraph offices are not established under its provisions. Postaltelegraph offices are to be opened at all places where telegraph offices now exist by July 1, 1887.

The telegraphic service of the country ought not to be performed upon the methods of private business operations, the governing principle of which is necessarily that of obtaining the greatest profit and charging the highest rate which the business will bear. The people are entitled to telegraphic communications upon the methods of an enlightened public service, not looking at all to pecuniary gains, and not even insisting as a necessary condition that the cost shall at all times be directly reimbursed in money, but having regard to the indirect benefits of stimulating trade, diffusing intelligence, and strengthening social and family ties. The postal service by the telegraph ought, in short, to be governed by the same policy which we have so long and with such manifest and admitted advantage applied to the postal service in transmitting letters and newspapers.

Upon considerations of public policy, and because we believed it to be for the common advantage of the people, we have long since, without regard to the relative cost of transmitting letters over long and short distances, adopted a uniform rate of postage for the entire country.

The reasons are stronger in the case of the telegraph than of the mail for the adoption of a uniform rate.

The telegraph has already so largely taken the place of the mail, and will in the future, under the benignant and fostering administration of the Government, supersede the mail to such a degree that the people of the remote and thinly settled districts are entitled to be placed upon the

same footing in respect to this mode of communication as the people of our densely populated cities.

No time can be more auspicious than the present to encounter the expenditures of the new policy, including the cost of the lines and other plant of a Government telegraph. Our revenues are so abundant that in order to reduce them, and for the mere sake of reducing them, propositions are made to repeal the taxes on articles such as whisky and tobacco, taxes which oppress nobody, and on articles which are admitted on all hands to be the most fitting objects of taxation. Under a condition of things which gives rise to suggestions, which receive no inconsiderable support, to throw away money by the repeal of such taxes for the sake of throwing it away, it will not be denied that now is the accepted time to meet the first cost of a Government telegraph service, if it is ever to be undertaken.

I am aware that the passage of such a bill would increase by several thousands the number of Government officers and employes, and that this is an objection which has been raised by opponents of a Government-telegraph system; but the same objection would prevent the extension of the postal service, which is growing with enormous rapidity and benefit to the country. If the telegraph is properly, as I claim it is, only a branch of the postal system which the Constitution authorizes Congress to provide, we should not be alarmed at the number of employes which it requires. To quote once more from the late Postmaster-General Howe :

I know of no law but necessity limiting the employment of officials. That government is not wise which employs a single officer not needed; it is unwise if it refuse to employ thousands when they are needed. Again, he says that

The increase has doubtless been exaggerated. At a very large percentage of the offices the telegraph operator would not supplement the postmaster, but would supplant him, and that would result in giving to the administration of not a few offices men who have learned to do one thing in place of those who have never learned to do anything.

To this extent at least the adoption of a postal telegraph would reduce political patronage and be a movement in the

direction of civil service reform, and I am assured it would also to some extent reform the personnel of the telegraph. By amalgamating the two establishments better salaries could be paid without an increase of the present expenditure. The best educated operators would then be content to serve at the smaller offices instead of crowding into the cities, striking for higher wages, and seeking other occupations where their efforts to better themselves in their own have failed.

The foregoing considerations negative the idea that the telegraph would be used as a political machine by the party in power. The system would require the service of the whole body of telegraphers in the country. Its officers and employes would necessarily be appointed for their technical skill, without regard to their political affiliations. The ward striker and the more genteel campaign organizer would thus both be excluded from its service. A system in the hands of men of all parties, appointed for their efficiency, could not be used largely for the benefit of any party. In my judgment, founded upon some experience, there is much more political interference by the present telegraph employes than there would be under a postal system regulated by law. But if this were not so, it seems that the public would suffer less from the active efforts of a few more place-holders to elect this or that man to office than it is likely to suffer from the control of its communications by monopolists seeking their own profit and aggrandizement.

It is doubtless of great importance who shall direct, make, and execute our laws, but it is of much greater importance that the system of telegraphic intercourse should not be left to grow under private control into one of those strong yet subtle forces which are constantly operating in this country to transfer the production of the many to the pockets of the few and to reduce the reward of labor, and make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

Whatever abuses there may be in the post-office, no one would propose to surrender our postal communication wholly to a corporate monopoly; yet if we fail to assume the tele

graph, we may sooner or later find that we have substantially done so.

The use of the telegraph is now restricted by its cost to extraordinary communications, and by its nature to messages which do not need to be in the handwriting of the sender. Under these conditions the proportion of telegrams to letters is about one to thirty. But who shall say how soon some great discovery no more wonderful than the telephone may enable fac-simile messages to be sent instantaneously and cheaply over the wires instead of by the slow and costly process by which they are now transmitted in Europe. If that result shall be accomplished (and it is being earnestly sought by inventors), the post-office will be stripped of its most important business. Every letter which does not require absolute secrecy or which can be written in cipher will be taken from the mails and sent by electricity. Drafts will be drawn and balances settled daily by telegraph, and the monopoly which shall have grown up in the control of this business will overshadow not only the Post-office Department but the Government itself.

I move that the bill be referred to the Committee on Post-offices and Post-roads.

The motion was agreed to.

THE BACKBONE LAND GRANT.

FORFEITURE OF LANDS GRANTED TO THE NEW ORLEANS, BATON ROUGE AND VICKSBURG RAILROAD COMPANY.

Speech delivered in the United States Senate, May 7, 1884, the Senate, as in Committee of the Whole, having under consideration the bill (S. 2031) to declare a forfeiture of lands granted to the New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Vicksburg Railroad Company, and for other purposes

MR. PRESIDENT: On the 10th of December the Senate passed a resolution, proposed by me, directing the Secretary of the Interior to furnish to the Senate copies of all papers then on file in the Interior Department relating to the transfer of the land grant of the New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Vicksburg Railroad Company. The copies called for were transmitted to the Senate on the 7th of January, and have been printed and constitute Executive Document No. 31 of this session.

After a careful perusal of these papers I deemed it to be my duty to introduce a bill, which I offered on the 10th of April, declaring a forfeiture of the land grant conditionally made in 1871 to the New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Vicksburg Railroad Company.

Before moving the reference of this bill to the Committee on Public Lands I will, with the leave of the Senate, state my reasons for believing that it ought to be passed.

The question involved in this case is the validity of the claim of the New Orleans Pacific Railway to the lands conditionally granted to the New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Vicksburg Railroad Company by the twenty-second section of the act of Congress of March 3, 1871, creating the Texas Pacific Railway Company.