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It was months before those stories were used. But they were used. You read them. You thought they came over the wires direct from the Pacific coast. They'd been laying in the newspaper offices for months, and were just as true when you read them as they were when first written.
While we're on the subject of telegraphic news, let's go a step farther. Suppose you went to the telegraph office to-day and wished to send a ten-word message to San Francisco. What do you suppose it would cost you? You'd pay 75 cents. But suppose I wanted to send the same message to my newspaper in San Francisco for publication. If I walked into the same office, gave the same message to the same clerk and showed my reportorial star, how much do you suppose I'd have to pay? Twenty-five cents! I'd get a "press rate" and—
(Voice from the audience: "I paid a dollar for fourteen words three days ago.")
Oh, did you? Well, we're getting real well acquainted, aren't we?
But to continue: Let's suppose that fourteen words wouldn't be enough. Let's say it would take a hundred. You'd have to pay seventy-five cents for the first ten words and five cents a word thereafter; four dollars and a half for ninety words and seventy-five cents for ten words, or a total of five dollars and a quarter for one hundred words. On this same distance the newspapers get a flat rate of two and a half cents a word. They pay $2.50 for identically the same service that costs you five dollars and twenty-five cents. Remember that I'm speaking of day messages in both cases.
Now, perhaps you'll see why newspapers are not overly enthusiastic about government ownership of telegraph lines. They know that any concerted newspaper agitation along that line will result in the companies taking away their "press rates." Long ago the companies passed word to the papers that immediately they espoused government ownership of telegraph lines they, the newspapers, would pay the same tolls as the 'dear
