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Another Cable Wanted

About This Item

  • Title: Another Cable Wanted
  • Date: 4 September 1858
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.01163
  • Source: Brooklyn Daily Times, 4 September 1858: 2. Our transcription is based on a digital image of a microfilm scan of the original issue. Microfilm of original issue held at Pennsylvania State University Libraries. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the journalism, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Editorial note: This piece is unsigned, as was the case for most of Whitman's journalism. However, this editorial is part of a series of texts that deal with a coherent theme that has been identified by the Whitman Archive journalism team as likely authored by Whitman. This decision is based on a combination of historical and (auto)biographical accounts, similarity to contemporary Whitman writings, a history of scholarly attribution, extant clippings retained by Whitman, computational stylometric analysis, and, in some cases, manuscript evidence in Whitman’s hand.
  • Contributors to digital file: Kaylen Michaelis Thara Michaelis Brandi Faulkner Stefan Schöberlein Karie Cobb
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "Another Cable Wanted." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 17 July 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.01163.xml (TEI)
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ANOTHER CABLE WANTED.

We trust that arrangements will be made in financial and commercial circles, by which one or more additional telegraphic lines to Europe will be ready to be laid at the very earliest period of next year when the weather permits of the enterprise being attempted with reasonable expectations of success. The more one looks at it, the greater appears the risk of accident to the pioneer cable,1 and the more evident is it that a single cable will be utterly insufficient to transmit a tithe of the communications required to be sent by it. The English Government's guarantee, it seems, only operates while the cable works. Should it be abraded on rocks; should a shark take a fancy to the gutta percha; should an iceberg in its bouleversement2 snip it through, it is "no play no pay" until the communication becomes re-established. But even on the very uncertain assumption that the cable will last, and that no accidents will interrupt the communication, the transmission of messages is so slow that it is very unlikely the messages will ever pay a fair dividend on the original investment. To send an express of 31 words took 35 minutes. The utmost speed did not accomplish more than 99 words in 67 minutes. Thus a very short message will take at least an hour; so that working day and night not more than 24 can go per day. Working every day in the week, Sundays included, the cost being equal to $175,000 a year for dividend, and charges at 5 per cent. or $480 per diem, each message must yield $20 to pay. Then what is to be done with arrears? Suppose 40 messages came, and only 24 were sent, here are 16 to take precedence of those going next day. A message from London to Calcutta yields only $7, which may be taken as the measure of what it is worth to the public. We think it unlikely that messages from England to the United States will yield more. Future cables must be manufactured and laid more cheaply and ways must be devised for transmitting more words per hour, than by the present one, or they will pay very badly as a speculation, risk of accident considered.

Notes:

1. The Transatlantic Telegraph was the first cable connection between the United States and Europe, built by Cyrus West Field and the Atlantic Telegraph Company. It sent its initial message—a note from the British Queen—in 1858 and, although the cable spanning from Canada's Trinity Bay to Ireland was only in operation for three weeks, had a major impact on transatlantic relations of the antebellum period. [back]

2. Bouleversement is a French word that means "an overturning, utter overthrow, violent displacement." (The Stanford Dictionary of Angelized Words and Phrases (1891), 166). [back]

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