Western Union Telegraph Company

“ This agreement proved of the greatest benefit to both organizations, and did much to make possible the present development and universal service of both the telephone and telegraph. By the terms of the agreement the Western Union recognized Bell's patent and agreed to withdraw from the telephone business. The Bell company agreed not to engage in the telegraph business and to take over the Western Union telephone system and apparatus, paying a royalty on all telephone rentals. Experience has demonstrated that the two businesses are not competitive, but supplement each other. ”

“ Those who had been unwilling to help at first were anxious to share profits. To save all from bankruptcy in the cutting of rates, Mr. Cornell and a few others consolidated the various interests in the Western Union Telegraph Company, now grown so large that it has nearly five hundred thousand miles of wire, employs twenty thousand persons, sends over forty-one million messages yearly, and makes over seven and one-half million dollars profits. ”

“ It does not matter if they have no contract with the Exchange, directly. It does not matter that if the Telegraph Companies did not deliver to any given one the Exchange could not complain. If the normal, contemplated and followed course is a transmission as continuous and rapid as science can make it from Exchange to broker's office it does not matter what are the stages or how little they are secured by covenant or bond. ”

“ However, the plaintiffs are not without redress.'
The court found as matter of law 'That the condition on the application for the transmission of the money order filed by The Western Union Telegraph Company with the Federal Communications Commission limiting its liabilities to five hundred ($500) dollars is a valid undertaking. ”

“ Although intercourse by telegraphic messages between the states is thus held to be interstate commerce, it differs in material particulars from that portion of commerce with foreign countries and between the states which consists in the carriage of persons and the transportation and exchange of commodities, upon which we have been so often called to pass. It differs not only in the subjects which it transmits, but in the means of transmission. Other commerce deals only with persons, or with visibl and tangible things. But the telegraph transports nothing visible and tangible ”

“ Even if there had been any duty on the part of the Telegraph Company to confine the transmission to North Carolina, it did not do so. The transmission of a message through two states is interstate commerce as a matter of fact. ”

“ The issue is not whether the child labor provisions of Section 12 (a) apply to a company solely engaged in interstate commerce or in the transporting of goods in such commerce. Rather the crucial problem is whether Western Union, in preparing messages for transmission in interstate commerce, may fairly be said to be a 'producer' of 'goods' which it 'ships' in interstate commerce so as to come within the purview of Section 12 (a) . That Western Union may also be the interstate transmitter of messages is beside the point ”

“ Has the Company engaged in 'shipping telegraph messages in interstate commerce and in delivering telegraph messages for shipment' as alleged? The learned trial court said, 'More troublesome is the question whether the defendant 'shipped' goods in commerce.' But he concluded on the basis of our decisions that the defendant was a 'carrier of messages' to be compared to a railroad as a 'carrier of goods,' citing Western Union Telegraph Co. ”

“ The statistics of the business before the recent reduction in rates show that more than eighty per cent of all the messages sent by telegraph related to commerce. Goods are sold and money paid upon telegraphic orders. Contracts are made by telegraphic correspondence, cargoes secured, and the movement of ships directed. The telegraphic announcement of the markets abroad regulates prices at home, and a prudent merchant rarely enters upon an important transaction without using the telegraph freely to secure information. ”

“ Contention that this section is applicable to the Western Union is predicated on three steps, viz.: telegrams are 'goods' within its meaning; the Company 'produces' these goods within the Act because it 'handles' them; and transmission is 'shipment' within its terms. If it can maintain all three of these positions, the Government is entitled to an injunction; if it fails in any one, admittedly the effort to bring the employment under the Act must fair. ”

“ Telegraph companies resemble railroad companies and other common carriers, in that they are instruments of commerce, and in that they exercise a public employment, and are therefore bound to serve all customers alike, without discrimination. ”

“ Although it is hard to see how telegraph companies can have 'machinery employed in any branch of manufactures,' unless they make their own machines, yet railroad corporations, which are coupled with telegraph companies in the statutes in question, as well as other corporations embraced in those statutes, might have such machinery. ”

“ The telegraph company was organized in 1851, and immediately thereafter began the work of constructing and operating telegraph lines. Its system extended throughout the United States and Canada, and connected with lines in Mexico and Central and South America by means of submarine cables, and with telegraph systems of foreign countries. ”

“ St. Louis v. Western Union Telegraph Co., 148 U.S. 92, 100, 13 Sup. Ct. 485, 37 L. Ed. 380; Western Union Telegraph Co. v. New Hope, 187 U.S. 419, 425, 23 Sup. Ct. 204, 47 L. Ed. 240; Atlantic, etc., Telegraph Co. v. ”

“ Those lines are free to transmit any messages that may be forwarded on them. But the complaint seems to be, that at the points where the operations of the Western Telegraph cease, whether it be east, north, or west, the messages are not forwarded by the Western Telegraph, but they are, by the means used, diverted from those lines, and sent by circuitous routes, or at least by lines of increased length. ”

“ Technically and financially, AT&T gradually steamrollered the opposition. Independent telephone companies never became entirely extinct, and hundreds of them flourish today. But Vail's AT&T became the supreme communications company. At one point, Vail's AT&T bought Western Union itself, the very company that had derided Bell's telephone as a "toy." Vail thoroughly reformed Western Union's hidebound business along his modern principles; but when the federal government grew anxious at this centralization of power, Vail politely gave Western Union back. ”

“ There is no obligation on a person sending a telegraphic message to select the shortest or the longest line. He may consult his own interest or choice in such a matter, and he incurs no responsibility to any one, unless he has entered into a contract to forward all such messages on a particular line. No such allegation is contained in the bill, and there is no charge that the Western Telegraph Company has been molested in the exercise of its patented rights, except by the transfer of its business to other lines ”

“ But it does not appear that the defendants were limited as to the use of the lines owned by the Western Telegraph Company, although the points on their lines were shortest. Each person, in using a telegraph line, is free to select his own conveyance. There are several things which recommend telegraphic lines. The machinery should be kept in proper order; strict attention should be given to the transmission of messages, and competent persons engaged in the office. Where there is much competition, great energy is required ”

“ The right to operate a telegraph line, and to fix and to collect tolls for the use of the same, is, to say the least, the most valuable part of the franchise conferred by congress upon the railroad company, as a telegraph company. ”

“ It must be expected that great competition will exist in the transmission of intelligence, where telegraphic lines have been established throughout the country. But it would be difficult to find a remedy for these evils, whether real or supposed, which are not founded on contract. ”

“ It was in the power of the Western Telegraph Company to form connections with other lines, so as to secure uninterrupted communications. But if these precautions have not been observed, and a supposed convenience or dispatch has been deemed a sufficient security for the co-operation of the lines connected with the Western Telegraph Company, and no contract, express or implied, is shown, the complainant is without remedy.
Men, unless legally bound to certain duties, may, from whim or caprice, indulge their supposed interests or resentments with out responsibility. ”

“ None had been invented, so it made telegraphic apparatus, burglar-alarms, electric pens, and other such things. But in 1878, when the Western Union made its short-lived attempt to compete with the Bell Company, the Western Electric agreed to make its telephones. Three years later, when the brief spasm of competition was ended, the Western Electric was taken in hand by the Bell people and has since then remained the great workshop of the telephone.
The main plant in Chicago is not especially remarkable from a manufacturing point of view. ”

“ In the sphere of telegraphy the progress has not been less marked. Unlike Canada and the United States, but as in the mother country and most other countries, the telegraphs are under the control of the government, and administered by the postmaster general. Until 1901, this was not the case. By a concession granted by the legislature in 1854, the Anglo-American Telegraph Company obtained the exclusive privilege of communicating abroad by telegraphy, and of erecting and operating lines within the colony. ”

“ Compared with the formidable and very convincing evidence on which these conclusions rest, the testimony introduced by the City is meager and unsatisfactory, and we agree with the District Court that upon the record before us the allowance was reasonably sufficient.
Second and third: The American Telegraph & Telephone Company owns substantially all of the stock of the Company and a large majority of the stock of the Western Electric Company. ”