The Wires
Are Carried Along The Rail Ways, Through Forests, And Across Cities,
Rivers, And Prairies.
Messages passing from one very distant point to
another have usually to be re-written at an intermediate station; though
by an improved plan they have been transmitted direct from New York to
Mobile, a distance of 1800 miles.
By the Cincinnati telegraphic route to
New Orleans, a distance from New York of 2000 miles, the news brought by
the British steamer to Sandy Hook at 8 in the morning has been telegraphed
to New Orleans, and before 11 o'clock the effects produced by it upon
speculations there have been returned to New York - the message
accomplishing a distance of 4000 miles in three hours. The receipts are
enormous, for, in consequence of the very small sum charged for
transmitting messages, as many as 600 are occasionally sent along the
principal lines in one day. The seven principal morning papers in New York
paid in one year 50,000 dollars for despatches, and 14,000 for special
messages. Messages connected with markets, public news, the weather, and
the rise and fall of stocks, are incessantly passing between the great
cities. Any change in the weather likely to affect the cotton-crop is
known immediately in the northern cities. While in the Exchange at Boston,
I witnessed the receipt of a telegraphic despatch announcing that a heavy
shower was falling at New Orleans!
It must not be supposed that there is no poverty in the New World. During
one year 134,972 paupers were in the receipt of relief, of whom 59,000
were in the State of New York; but to show the evil influence of the
foreign, more especially the Irish, element in America, it is stated that
75 per cent. of the criminals and paupers are foreigners.
The larger portion of the crime committed is done under the influence of
spirits; and to impose a check upon their sale, that celebrated enactment,
known under the name of the "Maine Law" has been placed upon the
statute-books of several of the States, including the important ones of
New York, Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Nebraska. This law
prohibits, under heavy penalties, the manufacture or sale of alcoholic
liquors. It has been passed in obedience to the will of the people, as
declared at the elections; and though to us its provisions seem somewhat
arbitrary, its working has produced very salutary effects.
When so much importance is attached to education, and such a liberal
provision is made for it, it is to be expected that a taste for reading
would be universally diffused. And such is the case: America teems with
books. Every English work worth reading is reprinted in a cheap form in
the States as soon as the first copy crosses the Atlantic. Our reviews and
magazines appear regularly at half price, and Dickens' 'Household Words'
and 'Chambers' Journal' enjoy an enormous circulation without any
pecuniary benefit being obtained by the authors.
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