Eureka Daily Sentinel

The Telegraph and Associated Press Monopolies.

No paper on the Pacific Coast, belonging to the Associated Press monopoly, has supported the recommendation of the President's Message, of a national postal telegraph. If any reason for this, besides self-interest, were required, it could be found in the terms of their contract with the Western Union Telegraph Company. As many readers on this side the Rocky Mountains may not have seen this evidence of complicity with the telegraph monopoly, we republish a notification of its terms which was sent a few years ago to certain members of the Associated Press in Ohio:

PRIVATE CIRCULAR, (NOT INTENDED FOR PUBLICATION.)

Cincinnati Commercial Office,

April 15, 1867.

To the Members of the Western Associated Press:

Your attention is invited to the clause in our contract with the telegraph company which forbids us to encourage or support any opposition or competing telegraph company. That clause was to the telegraph company a valuable consideration for the favorable terms upon which was based the contract with us.

(Signed) M. HALSTED,

Of the Executive Committee of the Associated Press.

The circular, it is said, came accidentally into the hands of the Ohio papers; hence the exposure. The Union, Alta, Bulletin and Call, undoubtedly received the same notification, reminding them of their contract, they having the monopoly of Associated Press news on this coast. This close corporation of the Associated Press, in combination with the telegraph company, have always defeated all efforts at forming other press associations, whereby the telegraph news might be furnished to the proprietors of other papers in the interior, thus promoting a healthy competition in the distribution of intelligence. No new journal is admitted to a share in the present associated monopoly, and no new association can get the news from the telegraph company. The St. Louis Globe was refused admission to the Eastern Associated Press, and is compelled to maintain its own correspondents in New York and other important points, who supply it with "special" dispatches at great expense—more than double what is incurred by its local contemporaries who belong to the association. The Globe is succeeding, and is breaking down its rivals solely through the great wealth, enterprise, and popularity of its proprietors, who are able to bear the enormous expense, and expect to succeed, in conjunction with other wealthy publishers, in finally destroying the monopoly in the western cities. On the Pacific coast, there is no newspaper establishment, not in combination with the monopoly, that is rich enough to imitate the Globe, and pay for full dispatches at the rates charged to papers outside the association. For these, and for the people at large, there is no remedy except in the national postal telegraph proposed by the Postmaster General. A contemporary truly says: "The Government owes it to the people to save them from this monopoly. We pay for a message to New York four dollars; the same message goes from Boston to New York for thirty cents. A letter from San Francisco to New York costs three cents postage; from Boston or Brooklyn three cents. Give us postal telegraphy and our commercial and social messages will be equally reduced, and uniform rates established all over the United States. A postal telegraph will give accommodations to the honest press; will put all journals upon an equality, and success will be proportioned to energy, talent and enterprise, and not be governed by the accident of being the slave of a rich master."