THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1901.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11576, 14 February 1901, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1901.

The reopening of the Pacific cable question, by the peculiar convict of New South Wales in going behind the partnership agreement on. behalf of the Eastern Extension Company, may not be without good results if it induces the public to consider the whole subject and to realise how absolutely necessary for our commercial development, social intercourse, and national expansion is the ultimate public ownership of a complete Imperial cable service. For underlying this most unhappy and discreditable instance of contract-break-ing on the part of our neighbouring Australian State is the stubborn determination of the great cable monopoly to impede to the uttermost, to block altogether, if possible, the only rivalry which it need ever fear. The hand is the hand of New South Wales, but the voice is the voice of the Eastern Extension. And we may better estimate the tremendous issues which are at stake, the powei and subtlety of the great corporation which dominates the cable business of the southern oceans and the won-

derful gain which will come to us if we can utilise to the fullest the means of communication now generally barred by this great monopoly, when we realise how even the commercial honour of a great commercial State can be made subordinate to the influences brought to bear against the Pacific cable. For we may dismiss, as unworthy of discussion, the absurd arguments used in New South Wales. It is not the question whether the cable-senders of that colony will or will not be gainers for the moment, if its Government accepts the concessions offered by the Eastern Extension people in return for the right to open their own receiving and distributing offices, and to eract their own land-lines. The point clear to all honourably-minded men is that the local conditions existing when New South Wales became a partner in the Pacific cable agreement have been altered without the consent of the other partners, and at the solicitation and in the interest of a notoriously oppressive monopoly, whose prohibitive charges were among the chief influences which led to the Pacific agreement. This is beyond discussion, unless Ave propose to forfeit our national character for scrupulous adherence to our public pledges. What we would have oar readers conscious of is the fact that behind this agreement question looms the coming issue of an Imperial cable service, conducted wholly and solely in the public interest, and that the Eastern Extension Company is sagaciously fighting for its monopoly, while the public is unconscious, and while the first public cable is still in embryo.

The Imperial penny post is almost an accomplished fact. At the minimum of expense and trouble, written communication can now be carried on throughout the British worldexcepting Australia. And on land, wherever the sea does not intervene, the electric spark annihilates distance, and binds us into complete unity. It makes us a people. On this cable question, for instance, the New Zealand Herald asked Mr. Seddon to express the views of our Government. Within a few hours every newspaper reader in the colony was informed through the daily press of our Premier's stand, and in a position to understand intelligently the difficulty which had arisen. Land telegraphy has become a part of our everyday life, private as well as public, social as well as commercial. The day is forgotten when the average woman,felt a thrill of terroi at the knock of a telegraph-messenger. It is doubtful if the closing of the postal system would create such general disorganisation as the, closing of the telegraph service. But this is landtelegraphy ! When we come to the deep sea, when we speak of the cables, what are the facts'? The most amazing and astounding fact is that the overwhelming bulk of cable business is commercial,, that the average citizen has no direct business with the undersea message-service, even in this twentieth century, excepting on the most momentous and urgent occasions. The commercial community is compelled to use the cable because of the annihilation of time, a phase of the communication question in which even the Penny Post cannot complete. The newspapers, by combination and special rates, furnish the public with the leading world-news of the day*, but would be the last to contend that their cable columns are worthy of the scientific achievements of the Victorian age. In short, the cable message is a commercial necessity or a private luxury, and in either case is confine:! within the most contracted limits possible, and used only on pressing occasion* The wonderful electricity of the past century, which quivers on land with the virile pulsations of a healthy and energetic public service, faintly pulsates under the sea beneath the stifling weight of nearly prohibitive private monopoly. The cable has been almost closed to all ; the cable has been almost unused by the average citizen ; only because of the deleterious influence of corporations like the Eastern Extension, which the Postmaster-General of New South Wales supports against the first link in an Imperial system, which would ultimately make electricity serve us under sea as it does over land, which . would ultimately bind our world-nation as intimately and instantly together as it already binds the people of New Zealand. ' Until 1870 the telegraphic business of the United Kingdom itself was in the hands of private companies. Ifc cost six shillings to send an ordinary message to Scotland or Ireland from London. Under 7,000,000 messages were earned yearly. Yet when the lines were taken over by the Government the charge for the same ordinary message was reduced to a shilling. What was the result? As Sir j Sandford Fleming, the great Cana- i dian advocate of public cables, points out, the immediate effect was to increase messages 50 per cent., and the effect in ten years to make an annual business of nearly 30,000,000 messages, with a profit of £354,000. In 20 years the yearly business was ! 94,000,000 messages, with a profit of £250,000, in spite of a reduction in \ charges by one-half. As the British* public becomes more and more familiar with the telegraph and the volume of business lifts by leaps and bounds, until now a threepenny message is thought possible by experts. But Sir Sandford Fleming, whose persistent work largely influenced Canada to lead the way in the Pacific cable agreement, can point to even more convincing argument in the experience of the Eastern Extension Company itself. When the Pacific cable was first proposed the charges between Australia and London were 9s 4d per word. In 1890, under this rate, the business done was only 827,278 words for the whole year. The rate was then reduced to 4s 9d per word, in the attempt to block the Pacific scheme, and in the seventh year business had expanded to 2,349,901 words. While there is an immediate loss experienced from all reductions in cable, telegraph, andpostal rates, the increase of business ultimately recoups it. We cannot, and do not, expect private corporations to conduct their business on such a basis for the public benefit. The management of the Eastern Extension cannot be expected to reduce their- dividends in order'to facilitate

the development and increase the well-being of the Empire. But we most emphatically maintain that since we cannot expect anything from the great company, excepting a- determined effort to prevent its profitable monopoly being weakened, it is a public duty to assist and forward a cable system which will be conducted in the public spirit of the postal and telegraph services. Such a public system, approved and supported by the Imperial Government, supported by'all the self-governing Pacific States, has been initiated in the Pacific cable scheme. To allow it to be thwarted by the Eastern Extension Company would be most lamentable, and we rely upon Mr. Seddon exerting all his official influence to prevent such a truly national disaster.