On May 15, 1868, Mr. Scudamore had written the Committee of the newspaper proprietors: "As a matter of course the Post Office would not undertake to collect news any more than it would undertake to write letters for the public, but the news being collected, it could, and I submit, ought, to transmit it at rates at least as low as those now charged, and which though they are unquestionably low, are still believed to yield the companies a considerable profit.... It seems to me, indeed, that the transmission of news to the press throughout the United Kingdom should be regarded as a matter of national importance and that the charge of such transmission should include no greater margin of profit than would suffice to make the service fairly self-supporting."[102] Thereupon the newspaper proprietors demanded: "That the maximum rate for the transmission of telegraphic messages [for newspapers] should not exceed that which is now paid by each individual proprietor [as a subscriber to the companies' press bureau], which is, for transmission, exclusive of the cost of collection, 4 cents per 100 words."[103] This demand assumed that the companies' charge of 8 cents per 100 words was remunerative; that it was made up of two separable parts: a charge for transmission, and a charge for collecting and editing; and that the charge ascribed to transmission still would remain remunerative even after the charge ascribed to collecting and editing had been withdrawn. Upon none of these several points were the officers of the telegraph companies asked to testify, the statements of the newspaper proprietors being allowed to stand unsupported. [Sidenote: _Mr. Scudamore yields to the newspapers_] In order to insure the payment of an average sum of 4 cents or 5 cents per 100 words, the newspaper proprietors proposed that messages be transmitted for the newspapers "at rates not exceeding 24 cents for every 100 words transmitted at night, and at rates not exceeding 24 cents for every 75 words transmitted by day, to a single address, with an additional charge of 4 cents for every 100 words, or for every 75 words, as the case may be, of the same telegram so transmitted to every additional address." By way of compromise, Mr. Scudamore proposed a charge of 24 cents for 75 words or 100 words for each separate town to which each message might be sent, and the limitation of the 4 cent copy rate to copies delivered by hand in the same town. Mr. Scudamore, however, withdrew that proposal, and accepted the proposition of the newspaper proprietors, which became the law. It is needless to add that the opposition of the newspaper press to the Bill of 1868 would have delayed the passage of that Bill even more than any opposition on the part of the telegraph companies and railway companies could have done. Indeed, it is probable, that the newspaper press could have defeated the Bill.