The Press. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1910. THE ALL RED CABLE.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 13909, 7 December 1910, Page 8

The Press. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1910. THE ALL RED CABLE.

Among tho matters which Sir Joseph Ward intends to bring before the Imperial Conference is the extension of tho State-owned cable system by means of a new cablo between England and Canada, controlled by tho Pacific Cable Board, with power to erect a land-line across Canada to connect the two portions of the cable and so avoid change of control over-any part of the route. As the Australian Government has it in mind to bring forward the same ! question, it is not certain whether the task of moving in the matter at the Conference will fall to Sir Joseph Ward or Mr Fisher,, but whoever undertakes it will bo well supported. Sir George Reid, tho Australian High Commissioner, has been, for some months, pressing upon the Imperial Government tho importance of a State-owned Atlantic cable, and his efforts and those of other advocates of the stop should bo facilitated by recent developments in connection with the existing cable companies. The sixteen cables that now connect the Old Country with America are controlled by four different companies, whoso charges are identical and whose receipts are said to be pooled. Under such circumstances only a very sanguine man would look for any reduction by these companies in their rates, even though the general charge of a shilling a word across the Atlantic is out of proportion to the total cost of cabling from England to the remoter parts of the Empire. Close as the relationship between the cablo companies appears to be, it seems probable that it will very shortly be still closer. One of the two most powerful companies owning land lines in America, the American Telephone nnd Telegraph Company, has within the past few months "beeqme interested financially" in its great rival, the Western Union, and the new cable which-the chairman of the former company ordered while in England last May, was for the Western Union, "in "anticipation of its coining to terms "with still another company, the An-"glo-American Telegraph Company, "which, in its turn is allied not only "with the Western Union, but with "the Direct Company." The process of coming to terms, which was referred to in plain terms by tho chairman of the Anglo Telegraph Company as the annual meeting last July, •is expected to be consummated in a few weeks, and the Atlantic -cables will then be consolidated into one all-powerful trust. With this accomplished, as the London "Standard" remarks. "demand for a " cable controlled by the Bri- " tish Government will have be- " hind it a practical force hitherto " una.rrpreciated by those who have "treated the scheme as a mere vision "of the Empire builder." With the substitution of the Pacific Cable Board for the British Government as the controlling authority, this opinion will be shared by a great many citizens of tho overseas diminions. particularly if the experts are correct who have supplied Sir George Reid with figures showing that, even if only one-third of the present rates are charged, a Stateowned Atlantic cable would return a handsome profit. Of these estimates we shall no doubt hear more when Jie question is discussed at the Imperial Conference. In the meantime it may bo pointed out that, though tho Pacific cable shows at present an annual loss, the deficit is growing less and less every year, and if the Atlantic cable proved as profitable as is calculated it would assist to increase the traffic no the Pacific portion, and thereby further reduce the present loss on that line, possibly to the vf>r,isjffing point*