Mr. Scudamore held that it was a serious indictment of the manner in which the telegraph companies had discharged their duties to the public, that the small tradesman had not learned to order goods by telegraph, and had not thereby enabled himself to get along with a smaller stock of goods kept constantly on hand; that the fishing villages on the remote coasts of Scotland that had no railways, had no telegraphs; that the public did not send "millions of messages" of this kind: "I shall not be home to dinner;" "I will bring down some fish;" "You can meet me at four;" and that the wife and children, away from their home in the country village, did not telegraph to the husband and father: "Send me a money order." Mr. Scudamore's notions of the uses to which the telegraphs ought to be put were shared by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Hunt, who looked forward to the day when "persons who have a difficulty in writing letters will have less difficulty in going to a telegraph office and sending a message to a friend than writing a letter."[6] [Sidenote: _Argument from Foreign Experience_] Mr. Scudamore supported his position with the subjoined reports from countries in which the State operated the telegraphs. The Danish Government had reported that the telegraph was used by merchants generally and for social and domestic purposes. Prussia had reported that in the early days, when the charges had been high, the use of the telegraph had been confined almost exclusively to bankers, brokers, large commercial houses and newspaper correspondents, but that with each reduction in the charges, or extension of the telegraphs to small towns, the number of those who regularly sent out and received messages had increased considerably. Switzerland had reported that messages relating to personal business and family affairs formed as important a part of the whole traffic as the messages of banking interests and other trading interests. France had reported that 38 per cent. of the messages related to personal business and family affairs; and Belgium had reported that nearly 59 per cent. of the messages related to personal business and family affairs.