Take the case of a cable laid across the ocean to send messages to foreign countries. How much a word is the company to charge for the messages? If the charge is a pound a word very few people can afford to send them. If the charge is a penny a word the cable will be crowded with messages all day and all night. Yet the profit may be the same; and, if it is, it will be far less trouble to send one word at a pound than two hundred and forty words at a penny. The same is true of the ordinary telegraph service. When it was in the hands of private companies, the service was restricted and expensive. When the Government took it over, it not only extended lines of all sorts to out-of-the-way places; cheapened the service; and did without a profit: it actually ran it at what the private capitalist calls a loss. It did this because the cheap service was such a benefit to the whole community, including the people who never send telegrams as well as those who send a dozen every day, that it paid the nation and was much fairer as well to reduce the price charged to the actual senders below the cost of the service, the difference being made up by everybody in taxes. This very desirable arrangement is quite beyond the power of private Capitalism, which not only keeps the price as high as possible above the cost of production and service for the sake of making the utmost profit, but has no power to distribute that cost over all the people who benefit, and must levy it entirely on those who actually buy the goods or pay for the service. It is true that business people can pass the cost of their telegrams and telephone messages on to their customers in the price of the things they sell; but a great deal of our telegraphing and telephoning is not business telegraphing and telephoning; and its cost cannot be passed on by the senders to anyone. The only objection to throwing the cost entirely on public taxation is that if we could all send telegrams of unlimited length without having to pay across the counter enough ready money to prevent us using the telegraph service when the post would do as well, or sticking in “kind regards from all to dear Aunt Jane and a kiss from Baby” at the end of every message, the lines would be so choked that we should not be able to send telegrams at all. As to the telephone, some women would hang on to it all day if it made no difference to their pockets. Even as it is, a good deal of unnecessary work is put upon the telegraph service by people spinning out their messages to twelve words because they are not allowed to pay for less, and they think they are not getting full value for their money if they say what they have to say in six. It does not occur to them that they are wasting their own time and that of the officials, besides increasing their taxes. It seems a trifle; but public affairs consist of trifles multiplied by as many millions as there are people in the country; and trifles cease to be trifles