eighborhood of the whole country.

"If the Government is disposed to test this mode of telegraphic
communication by enabling me to give it a fair trial for one hundred
miles, I will engage to enter into no arrangement to dispose of my
rights, as the inventor and patentee for the United States, to any
individual or company of individuals, previous to offering it to the
Government for such a just and reasonable compensation as shall be
mutually agreed upon."

We have seen that Morse was said to be a hundred years ahead of his time
as an artist. From the sentences above quoted it would appear that he was
far in advance of his contemporaries in some questions of national
policy, for the plan outlined by him for the proper governmental control
of a great public utility, like the telegraph, it seems to me, should
appeal to those who, at the present time, are agitating for that very
thing. Had the legislators and the people of 1838 been as wise and
clear-headed as the poor artist-inventor, a great leap forward in
enlightened statecraft would have been undertaken at a cost inconceivably
less than would now be the case. Competent authorities estimate that to
purchase the present telegraph lines in this country at their market
valuation would cost the Government in the neighborhood of $500,000,000;
to parallel them would cost some $25,000,000. The enormous difference in
these two sums represents what was foretold by Morse would happen if the
telegraph should become a monopoly in the hands of speculators. The
history of the telegraph monopoly is too well known to be more than
alluded to here, but it is only fair to Morse to state that he had sold
all his telegraph stock, and had retired from active participation in the
management of the different companies, long before the system of
stock-watering began which has been carried on to the present day.

And for what sum could the Government have kept this great invention
under its own control? It is on record that Morse offered, in 1844, after
the experimental line between Washington and Baltimore had demonstrated
that the telegraph was a success, to sell all the rights in his invention
to the Government for $100,000, and would have considered himself amply
remunerated.

But the legislators and the people of 1838, and even those of 1844, were
not wise and far-sighted; they failed utterly to realize what a
magnificent opportunity had been offered to them for a mere song; and
this i