CONSOLIDATED.
PUCK, January 26th, 1881.
“The telegraph companies have been consolidated, which in simple language means that Mr. Jay Gould controls every wire in the United States over which a telegram can be sent,” said Puck of January 26th, 1881, and the statement was no exaggeration.
The editorial went on to express a fear that this monopoly of telegraphic facilities might be used for stock-jobbing purposes, as it made suppression or falsification of price-quotations not only possible, but temptingly easy. This fear was far from groundless at the time, although it has since been removed by the enormous growth of the business of electrical communication, which has now become a machine too huge to be readily perverted from its proper working by any one man. It is, however, undeniable that the Western Union wires were misused for parties and purposes in the doubtful and troublous days immediately succeeding the Presidential election of 1884. At the time when this cartoon was published there was a very general feeling that the federal government ought to take charge of the whole telegraphic system. This feeling, however, changed when the people realized that a postal telegraph scheme would practically involve the enrollment of a new army of office-holders who would be, under our inadequate and ineffective civil-service reform laws, merely the hirelings and henchmen of the party in power. Although the phrase “pernicious activity” had not yet been coined to characterize the performances of unscrupulous office-holders, the people had seen quite enough of the thing itself to want no more of it; and the project of government interference became unpopular. At the same time, it can not be said that Mr. Gould, who lived until 1892, ever inspired the people with confidence or made any recognizable attempt to that end.