MAKING MONEY OUT OF THE TELEGRAPH.

Bruce Herald, Volume XVII, Issue 1751, 21 May 1886, Page 4

MAKING MONEY OUT OF THE TELEGRAPH.

» I don't believe the telegraph is 0 ' very useful institution, except to make money for merchants and people ane save a little time that is mostly wasted in sitting in an office with youi feet on an elegant mahogany desk, 01 leaning over the bar of a saloon. ] remember the first introduction of the telegraph to China many years ago For a long time every means, from ■ moral suasion to bribery and corruption, was used at Pekin to obtain permission to bring the telegraph tc Shanghai. No power could possibly induce the Chinese authorities tc ' consent. The Great Northern Telegraph Company had a cable to Hong Kong. They did not say anything. [ They quietly laid a cable to the mouth j of the Wungpoo Eiver, fourteen miles below Shanghai. They fixed up tele- ' graph poles from an office there down J the river side some distance, and one ' ni»ht they laid the cable up tbe river, 1 connected it with their wires, and the day after they announced that the Chinese could visit their building and see it work. The Chinese came in ' crowds. They were asked to send 1 messages to Hong Kong to their friends t and they received answers, all free, and 3 inside of four hours the company discovered tbat the Chinese were getting quotations from Hong Kong and 3 speculating on the markets. The company shut up the free eliow suddenly and made piles of money, and the government never interfered with 7 the telegraph. — ' San Francisco Chron » icle.'