In 1888, the _Select Committee on Revenue Departments Estimates_ reported as follows: "Your Committee are of the opinion that the reasons urged against treating the Post Office as a commercial business are not applicable in anything like the same degree to the Telegraph Department; and that the increasing annual deficit in the accounts of the latter cannot be viewed otherwise than with grave concern. Looking to the increasing costliness of the service as a whole, and to the constant pressure upon it of demands for increased and unprofitable expenditure, your committee deem it their duty to call attention to the fact that the Department of the Postmaster General, in all its branches, is a vast Government business, which is most likely to continue to be conducted satisfactorily, if it should also continue to be conducted with a view to profit [beyond the payment of interest on the debt outstanding], as one of the revenue yielding departments of the State. Excessive expenditure appears to your committee to be sooner or later inevitable in a great Government business which is not administered with a view to an ultimate profit to the State." =========+============+============++=========+============+=========== Year | Number of |Net Revenue,|| Year | Number of |Net Revenue | Messages | $ || | Messages | $ ---------+------------+------------++---------+------------+----------- 1884-85 | 33,278,000 | 1,371,000 || 1894-95 | 71,589,000 | -50,000 1885-86 | 39,146,000 | 839,000 || 1895-96 | 78,840,000 | 646,000 1886-87 | 50,244,000 | 442,000 || 1896-97 | 79,423,000 | 678,000 1887-88 | 53,403,000 | 614,000 || 1899-00 | 90,415,000 | 326,000 1888-89 | 57,765,000 | 1,061,000 || 1901-02 | 90,432,000 | -848,000 1889-90 | 62,403,000 | 1,451,000 || 1902-03 | 92,471,000 | -548,000 1890-91 | 66,409,000 | 1,259,000 || 1903-04 | 89,997,000 | -1,530,000 1891-92 | 69,685,000 | 922,000 || 1904-05 | 88,969,000 | -917,000 1892-93 | 69,908,000 | 94,000 || 1905-06 | 89,478,000 | -63,500 =========+============+============++=========+============+=========== The minus sign denotes an excess of operating expenses over receipts. Had the House of Commons permitted the successive Governments of the day to act upon the doctrine contained in the foregoing quotation, the State telegraphs would have been self-supporting ever since the year 1880-81. They would have paid the full interest upon the whole capital invested in them; in spite of the high prices paid to the telegraph companies and the railway companies for the sale of those companies' plants and rights. FOOTNOTES: [73] _Report from the Select Committee on Revenue Estimates_, 1888; q. 2,396, Mr. C. H. B. Patey, Third Secretary to the Post Office. [74] _Report from the Select Committee on Revenue Estimates_, 1888; q. 950, Sir S. A. Blackwood, Secretary to the Post Office.