What Hath God Wrought Analysis

Erin Boyd
Dr. Erika Bsumek
His 317L – Building America
10 April 2015

“What Hath God Wrought?”
An Analysis of the Telegraph in American History

As a child during frequent road trips through East Texas, I would press my face against the cool window of the family station wagon, look out, and wonder, “Who planted these rows of cotton? How did they make them so even? What are these black lines in the sky stretched between poles? Where do they begin and end? Who made all of this?”
I was looking at infrastructure, the prerequisite for the development of any nation. Transportation, energy, water, food, health, housing, educational facilities, and rapid communication are now the requirements for human existence. But for the purpose of this essay,

we’ll focus on the telegraph and those black poles and wires that spanned a nation, while simultaneously making the world a smaller place. The telegraph brought about cultural, economic, and political changes. Steel wires stretched across farmlands, prairies, and oceans in order to change the way we communicated and conducted business. Without this first form of rapid communication, there would be no telephone, faxes, Internet, smart phones, email, instant messaging or social media.
The idea of sending electrical currents over metal wires to communicate had been kicked around since the early 1700s.

And a rough form of a telegraphic device was already in use in France by 1798 (Coincidentally, the word “infrastructure” itself is also borrowed from the French.) But it wasn’t until 1838 that New York University professor Samuel Morse presented his version of the telegraph and its revolutionary means of communication, Morse Code, to the U.S. government. At the time, 62 other people were claiming to have invented the telegraph, but Morse was the only one who received political backing, thus he and his business model are largely credited for the invention. With a $30,000 grant from Congress, Morse built a telegraph line from Washington D.C. to Baltimore. In 1844, surrounded by politicians, Morse dispatched the first instant message over a commercial communication line – “What hath God wrought?” the first telegram read. Indeed. The impact that this new form of electro-telecommunication would have on humanity and the world was surely

unfathomable.
While Guttenberg’s printing press reigned as the golden child of information transmission during the mid-nineteenth century, the telegraph offered something printing could not deliver – instant communication over a distance. But it would be years before the public caught on and it would be brought into everyday use. People did not understand the science behind the invention and it was generally rejected as something mythical or magical. In his book, How the Telegraph Changed the World, William J. Phalen describes the social resistance to the new technology.
“Bafflement was the common reaction to Morse’s telegraph. It seemed to operate by ‘an almost supernatural agency,’ one newspaper said; ‘We stand wonder- stricken and confused.’ Americans compared it to a bottle- imp, a spell, a classical myth, something from Arabian Nights. The wonderment stemmed in part from the awesome harnessing of power they believed the telegraph represented.” (15)
In order to sway the bewilderment toward understanding, Morse held public demonstrations of the simple science by transmitting electrical signals over a wire lain between stations. Every time the station was tapped, an electrical pulse went through the wire and created a beeping sound or a pattern on a moving roll of paper at the other end. People became less skeptical and newspapers began predicting that the telegraph would diminish crime, bring civil order, and facilitate the transmissions of “joys and sorrows” between loved ones over vast expanses (Phalen 15,16). Ultimately, a large part of society “saw the telegraph as an agency of benign improvement—spiritual, moral, economic, and political. Now that thought could travel by ‘the singing wire,’ a new form of reporting and a new form of knowledge were envisioned that would replace traditional literature with a new and active form of scientific knowledge” (Carey 2). As people began to accept the telegraph as the wave of the future, Morse began to plan the next step for his invention.
Morse’s vision had been for the government to play a stronger role in regulating the telegraph and to avoid the traps of monopoly private ownership (Mercer 12). His attempts to sell the patent rights to the government failed, however, and Morse and his partners had to sell piece-meal to regional interests. This, in addition to the introduction of rival patents, resulted in multilateral oligopolies – markets in which a small number of firms strategically interact, and whose production process extends in multiple directions. By 1851, ten separate firms ran lines into New York City. There were three competing lines between New York and Philadelphia, three between New York and Boston, and four between New York and Buffalo. In addition, two lines operated between Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, two between Buffalo and Chicago, three between points in the Midwest and New Orleans, and entrepreneurs erected lines between many Midwestern cities. In all, in 1851 the Bureau of the Census reported 75 companies with 21,147 miles of wire (Nonnenmacher). Quality competition between the companies was fierce. Faulty transmissions and garbled messages were common because multiple companies could have handled the message before it reached its destination. And unfortunately, accuracy was crucial for businesses, which largely made up the customer base. These issues contributed to the consolidation of the telegraph industry. Western Union began to dominate the market by squeezing out competitors along the railroads. “Western Union’s contracts with rail companies stated that, ‘The railroad company is not to allow any other telegraph company to build a telegraph line upon its property.’ Once lines along the right-of-way were in place, Western Union controlled all of the railroad telegraph business” (Phalen 119). Consequently, they were able to charge cheaper rates, which in turn grew their business. By 1866, Western Union had absorbed all other major telegraph companies. By the end of the 19th century, the changes the telegraph brought to industry began to influence public policy. Demands for constraints on Western Union's power resulted in the passage of the Mann-Elkins Act of 1910, granting the Interstate Commerce Commission regulatory oversight of telegraph rates. Later, the Communications Act of 1934 switched regulation of the telegraph industry to the newly created Federal Communications Commission. By this time, the radio and telephone had diminished the value of the telegraph, but this still stands as one of the first examples of regulating private business.
Without a doubt, the telegraph changed the American economy and day-to day business. “… It saved time, cut down on the need for large inventories, decreased short-term financing requirements, and in some cases allowed for the elimination of middlemen and wholesalers. It assured equal access to commodity and financial markets and, coupled with the railroad, turned regional markets into national ones” (Phalen 121). The telegraph also added to the development of commodity exchanges. Between 1845 and 1854 exchanges for wheat, corn, oats, and cotton were established in Buffalo, Chicago, Toledo, New York, St. Louis, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee. Their dependence on the telegraph was unmistakable, and from the start they “were almost wholly devoted to the [national] grain trade rather than the general commercial interests of the cities in which they were located” (Phalen 22).

Telegrams reached their peak popularity in the 1920s and 1930s when it was cheaper to send a telegram than to place a long-distance telephone call. People would save money by using the word “stop” instead of periods to end sentences because punctuation cost extra while the word was free. Additionally, new phrases entered the American lexicon such as “saving time,” “having no time,” “running out of time,” “and being “up with the times.” For example, Western Union published a pamphlet entitled, “Suggestions for Social Messages via Postal Telegraph.” The pamphlet’s purpose, according to the company was, “merely to assist you … to save your time and effort when it comes to phrasing your words for suitability in telegrams” (Phalen 186). The way humans interacted changed in society and commerce. Gone were the days of lengthy letter writing and face-to-face, personal communication. Soon, however, the telephone would replace the telegraph as the optimum form of communication. And it too would soon be supplanted by a more efficient method – email and instant messaging. But, none of these technologies or infrastructures would exist without the telegraph. Western Union sent its last telegram in 2006 and the last commercial telegram in the world was sent in India on July 14, 2013, and the technology that so dramatically changed the way the world communicates became history.

Works Cited
Primary source: Phalen, William J.

How the Telegraph Changed the World. Jefferson: McFarlane & Company, Inc., 2015. Print.
Carey, James W. Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society, Revised Edition, pp. 155–177. Taylor & Francis. 2009. Print.
Mercer, David. The Telephone the Life Story of a Technology. Westport: Greenwood, 2006. Print.
Nonnenmacher, Tomas. History of the U.S. Telegraph Industry. EH.Net Encyclopedia, edited by Robert Whaples. August 14, 2001. WEB. URL http://eh.net/encyclopedia/history-of-the-u-s-telegraph-industry/
"Imagining the Internet." Imagining the Internet. Elon University School of Communications. WEB.
URL

http://www.elon.edu/e-web/predictions/150/1830.xhtml