THE CHEAPENING TELEGRAPH.
THE increase in the use of the telegraph for business purposes, says Ainslee's Magazine, has been accompanied by a steady reduction in the cost of messages. When the first Atlantic cable was laid, the price of a twenty-word message between London and New York was $100, or $5.00 per word. Now the commercial rate between the two cities is twenty-five cents per word. To telegraph ten words from Chicago to New York in 1866 cost $2.05. Now it costs forty cents. Telegraphing to distant parts of the world is still an expensive business. The rate per word for a message from San Francisco to Auckland, New Zealand, for example, is $2.87. From New York to Manila the rate is $2.45. The charge is not always in ratio to the distance. The rate from New York to some South American or West Indian ports is nearly two dollars per word, but in reaching these points the messages travel twice across the Atlantic.