lifting of thousands to a higher
plane of living, the annihilation of strikes by uprooting the causes of
them,[7] the improvement of the service as already stated under the
seventh sub-head of this section, etc., etc.

[7] Joseph Medill, the publisher of the Chicago _Tribune_,
expressed the opinion to the Blair Committee that, with a
postal telegraph, there would be no strikes any more than
among the clerks in the Treasury or the officers of the army.
Government employees do not resign _en masse_. Their pay is
good as a rule, and, anyway, they could not get it raised till
Congress thought it right; and a strike would not be apt to
hasten the achievement of their purposes, but would place them
face to face with the limitless power of the United States.
Instead of occupying a position of brave revolt against
corporate oppression, impervious to petition, the strikers
would place themselves in the position of deliberately
departing from ready and hopeful redress by peaceful petition
and discussion, to the very objectionable method of
obstructing the public business, defying the people's
government, and dictating terms to the nation."

The telegraph system would no longer be subject to such
disasters as that so well described by the Hon. Wm. Roche in
the Ohio legislature Jan. 29th, 1885: "A convulsion of the
trade and commerce of the entire country resulted, when, on
the 19th of July, 1883, 12,000 operators left their posts
after the flat refusal of the magnates to give audience to
their representatives to state their case."

12. _The press will be relieved of an ever present tyranny_ likely at
any moment to transfer itself from the potential to the real.[8] Sen.
Report 242, 43-1, p. 5, says:

[8] We have seen in Part VI (ARENA, June, 1896) how rates were
raised on papers that criticised the Western Union's president
or advocated a postal telegraph too vigorously, how papers
were ordered not to criticise news reports under penalty of
loss of news facilities, etc. It is interesting to note that
even the largest and most influential papers do not always
escape persecution. In his speech in the House, Mar. 1, 1884,
the Hon. Jo