TELEGRAPHING IN THE UNITED STATES. 357 
written. The annual expenses of the Company fall but little below the 
great sum of 700,000 dols. No common men can be employed ; the 
businesci demands persons of intelligence, quickness, and parts, and such 
men cannot be had without a good compensation. It takes 275,000 dols. 
to meet the demand of the pay roll — 39,000 dols. is paid for messages 
alone, and the batteries call for the outlay of 26,000 dols. 
The building is a curiosity. It smacks of mystery. Well was it 
that Morse lived not when witchcraft was an "abomination and a wizard 
was not allowed to live in the land." The office for messages is on the 
street floor, fitted up as elegant as a bank, where system and quietness 
rules disturbed only by the endless click, click, of the hundred instru- 
ments that fill the room. Here Morse, House and Paine meet, and each 
do their work. The House printing instrument is a model of accuracy 
and swiftness ; no less than seven thousand words can be transmitted to 
Philadelphia in an hour. The telegraphing is done by the ear. The 
messages are written as they come clicking over the wires. The ear is 
proved to be more accurate than the eye, and fewer mistakes are made 
than in the old method of words or symbols. When the messages are 
over the words are all written, for they are taken down as fast as they 
come, and the message is ready for immediate distribution. All messages 
are numbered and recorded in a book with the accuracy of a bank 
acccount. The system is becoming an important source of evidence 
in our courts. The fact that a message was sent, to whom, from whom, 
the date, and the import, are all recorded. 
' The battery room is a study. The company use 1,700 cups or cells, 
and the complicated simplicity of the wires and the cupola on the roof 
where all the wires are concentrated, is a theme of constant wonder. 
Special wires are devoted to special kinds of business. The Brokers' 
board have one exclusively employed for their use. Express men, Kail- 
road men, the Press, the Police have each a line to themselves. One 
line is devoted to Philadelphia exclusively ; another to Boston. The 
messages are sent by one instrument and returned by another, so that 
message after message can be sent along with wonderful rapidity, one 
after the other in rapid succession and accuracy — despatch will follow 
despatch with no interruption. One of the most curious things in this 
office is a telegraph switch, not unlike in practical use the railroad 
switch on a railroad track. By this invention messages can be switched 
off at any moment to let an " incoming dispatch have the track." Thia 
is the invention of the talent of the office, Gen. Lefferts, the engineer, 
leading in the invention. It is a most curious machine. 
The forecast of the men who conduct this business induced them to 
attempt to make the telegraph a common necessity — like the Croton 
water, the Express, the Post-office. It has been brought to the door of 
each man. Men buy and sell, travel and live by lightening. The 
American Telegraph Company embraces various companies, stretching 
from Halifax to New Orleans, from Sandy Hook to Montreal, covering 
the whole intermediate country with a net-work of wires vibrating with 
