of competition from companies organized for the purpose of tapping the profitable traffic between the large cities, "the very cream of the business." Mr. Scudamore added that he had been told that a company was on the verge of being organized for the purpose of competing for the business between the large towns as soon as the properties of the existing companies should have been transferred to the State.[28] [Sidenote: _The Companies' Proposal_] The telegraph companies proposed to give the public substantial safeguards against the possibility of being exploited by the proposed amalgamated company. They proposed that Parliament should fix maximum charges for the transmission of messages, in conjunction with a limit on dividends that might be exceeded only on condition that the existing charges on messages be reduced by a stated amount every time that the dividend be raised a stated amount beyond the limit fixed. The companies proposed also that shares to be issued in the future should be sold at public auction, and that any premiums realized from such sales should be invested in the plant with the condition that they should not be entitled to any dividend. Provisions such as these, at the time, were in force in the case of certain gas companies and water companies. They have for years past been incorporated in all gas company charters; and they have worked well. There was no reason, in 1866 to 1869, why the proposals of the telegraph companies should not be accepted; that is, no reason from the view-point of the man who hesitated to exchange the evils and shortcomings incident to private ownership for the evils and shortcomings incident to public ownership. FOOTNOTES: [17] _The Edinburgh Review_, July, 1870. [18] _Annales télégraphiques_, 1860, p. 547. The company obtained a concession covering the whole of Belgium. In September, 1846, it opened a line between Brussels and Antwerpen. The tariff charged was low, but the line was so unprofitable that, in 1847, the company declined to build from Brussels to Quiévrain, where connection was to be made with a proposed French telegraph line. [19] _Journal of Statistical Society_, March, 1881. [20] _Statistical Journal_, September, 1876, and current issues of _The Economist_ (London). [21] _Journal of the Statistical Society_, September, 1872. [22] _Miscellaneous Statistics for the United Kingdom_, 1868-9, and _Parliamentary Paper_, No. 416, Session 1867-68. Length of electric telegraphs belonging to railway companies and telegraph companies respectively. In placing the total mileage of telegraph line at 16,066, in 1865, Mr. Scudamore excluded the mileage of the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway Company.