Passing over the charges of “waste, irresponsibility, and irresolute councils,” which serve to round the paragraph in which they occur, the focal idea is the efficiency secured by a united control. That is the very basis of this company’s organization. Discarding as false and perilous any general assumption of the enterprises of the people by the government, and accepting its refusal to attach the telegraph to its administration, when offered to it by its inventor, as for the best interest of the nation, this company early saw that united action between the extremes of our territorial limits was as essential to its own success as to public convenience. With numerous companies, of limited jurisdiction, and tariffs on all bases,—which had to be added and dovetailed to each other whenever a despatch passed between two distant places,—there was neither certainty of correctness, promptitude, nor the possibility of a low and uniform tariff. To secure all of these the leading telegraph organizations combined. It was a step necessary alike for public usefulness and success, and is accomplishing all that could be desired. The system has penetrated farther, and compassed more territory than separate organizations could have attempted or than even government itself would have been willing to undertake. Its administration is vast, harmonious, liberal, exact, economical, and just. It uses its revenues largely to extend its realm of usefulness to the people of every section of the country. It seeks to secure the highest skill and character in its employees. Its aim is to give the wires to the use of the whole people on the lowest terms consistent with proper self-support and the just return which capital and skill demand. It will accomplish all the nation requires of it, if allowed to solve its own problem, making the wires the accepted right arm of the public industries, and the emblem of universal unity and good-will. ESTIMATE OF THE COST OF BUILDING TELEGRAPH LINES. Mr. Washburne says:— “Any one at all familiar with the prices of materials and labor in the various countries will see that, as to materials for the construction of lines, they are cheaper here than in any European country, and that the whole cost of constructing telegraphic lines must be less here than in Belgium or Switzerland. In the latter country a large proportion of the lines are erected upon iron posts, the prime cost of which with the stone base is from $6 to $9 each, or from five to seven times the cost of the posts usually employed in America.