USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > The story of Essex County, Volume I > Part 42
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The stagecoaches of those days must have presented a striking appearance, if we are to judge from the following directions as to their decoration which were issued in the early 1790's by Postmaster- General Pickering :
"The body painted green, colors formed of Prussian blue and yellow ochre; carriage and wheels red lead, mixed to approach vermilion as near as may be; octagon panel in the back, black; octagon blinds, green; elbow piece or rail, front rail, and back rail, red as above; on the doors, Roman capi- tals in patent yellow, 'United States Mail Stage,' and over these words a spread eagle of a size and color to suit."
The leather bag or portmanteau was the mail receptacle usually carried by riders and stagecoaches in New England at that time. Saddlebags were used on some unimportant lines, but as newspapers
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and larger packets began to come in quantity, the larger portmanteau was found necessary. When deposited in the boot of a stagecoach, a strap or chain was run through the handles of the several bags and locked. Pickering, in giving instructions to a contractor for the design of the portmanteau, says that "staples should be placed so near together that a small hand cannot be thrust in between them." The postmasters en route had keys to the portmanteau lock and opened it to take out their own mail.
The problem of keeping the mail dry also gave no little trouble. Bags of oiled linen and deerskin were tried, and the form of contract in use in 1826 specified that when the mail was carried on horseback, "it shall be covered securely with oil cloth or bearskin against rain or snow, under a penalty of $20 for each time the mail is wet with- out such covering."
A rule of the department was that "when mail goes by a stage wagon it shall invariably be carried within the body of it; and that when it stops at night it shall be put in a secure place and there locked up." A penalty of a dollar a mile was threatened for carry- ing mail outside the body of the coach. Robberies of the mail became rather frequent in the early part of the century. Often the thieves merely sneaked behind the vehicle at a stop, cut into the leather boot, and either abstracted a portmanteau, or if it was too securely chained, cut it open. The penalties for mail robbery were heavy in those days. From 1792 to 1799 any theft of valuable letters was punishable by death; from 1799 to 1810 only by whipping; but "aggravated mail robbery," if the court so described it, might be punished by death as late as 1872. Stagecoaches were considered safer for mail transportation than the solitary rider, it being argued that the presence of the passengers would deter robbers from open attacks, which was true. No robber of that early day ever sum- moned up sufficient nerve to hold the entire crew and passengers of a coach in awe at the point of his gun, as certain lone freebooters of the Far West did in later years.
THE PONY EXPRESS -- Although in 1800 the rural postman in New England was still of the old, leisurely, pre-Revolutionary type, the century was still young when demands for greater speed became insistent. Special messengers and express riders, who easily outrode
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the post, were resorted to by business houses, government offices, newspapers, and stock and commodity brokers, and in 1825 Post- master-General McLean sought to meet this need by installing express mail service between the larger cities, often referred to as the first pony express. Relays of horses were stationed twelve or fifteen miles apart, and by charging triple postage the bag was lim- ited to a few letters, thus making it possible, when all other condi- tions were right, for the rider to gallop along at eight or ten miles an hour.
The stagecoaches, too, improved their speed and regularity-in good weather. But the following traveler's account of his mail coach journey through New England in 1833 suggests that there was still plenty of room for improvement in the methods employed along our rural routes :
"Our progress was much delayed by the delivery of the mail bag at every small hamlet on the road. The letters in America, instead of being put into separate bags for each town as in England, are carried in one huge leather case, which the postmaster is allowed to detain ten minutes, so that he may pick his letters out of the general mass. The coachman (there being no guard) drives up to the office, sometimes a small tavern, and throws the bag, about the size of a flour sack, upon the hard pavement or muddy road, as most con- venient; it is then trailed along into the house and, being unlocked, the lower end is elevated and out tumble all the letters, newspapers, and pamphlets upon the floor. At the little village of Lenox I had the curiosity to look into the bar for the purpose of seeing the mode of sorting letters, and wit- nessed a scene which could never answer in any other country. The sorters consisted of an old, gray-headed man at least 75 years of age, an old woman 'with spectacles on nose,' the old gentleman's equal in point of years, and a great, fat, ruddy- faced damsel of twenty-five, backed by half a dozen dirty little barefooted urchins, who were all down upon their knees on the floor, overhauling the huge pile before them, flinging those letters which were for their office into a distant corner of the room, amongst sundry wet mops, brushes, molasses barrels, etc., and those which were for other towns on our route
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were again bagged in the same gentle style, part having to undergo the same process every five miles of our day's journey."
The government mail service fell into much disrepute during Jackson's administration, under Barry and Kendall. There was much lamentation for the loss of the efficient Postmaster-General McLean, who had left office at the beginning of Jackson's first term, in pro- test against Old Hickory's determination to remove hundreds of postal employees and supplant them with his own partisans.
There was a curious hodgepodge of conveyance in use in the 'thirties and 'forties. Dickens, for example, when he toured the country in 1842, traveled by railroad, steamboat, stagecoach, and canal boat; and the mails used not only these four, but horse and foot messengers as well, sometimes several varieties on one short journey. It was a bit difficult to make postal arrangements with some of the early railroads because they would consent to run trains only in daylight. In one case, for example, the president of the road positively refused to agree to his train's being scheduled to reach its destination after 4:30 p. m. for the reason that it might now and then be late, and "the safety of our passengers forbids our running in the dark." Another railroad, having practically got control of the State Legislature, began feeling its oats a bit, and at first demanded one hundred dollars per mile for carrying the mail, shortly afterwards raising this to three hundred dollars. The Postmaster- General indignantly refused to pay such a rate, and for a long time used the stages. But as the railroads increased their efficiency, they realized that they had the department at their mercy. In 1832 their speed was only ten or twelve miles per hour, barely holding them even with the stagecoaches; but a few years later they were attain- ing at times a speed of twenty miles an hour.
The navigable rivers of the country had all been declared official post roads in 1823, and now that distinction was also applied to rail- roads; this not only to shut off private carrying of letters over them, but likewise to give Congress that power over them which many believed had been conferred by the constitutional clause upon post roads.
THE FIRST RAILWAY POST OFFICES-In 1838 the first American railway post office was put into service. As fast as new railroads were
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built, their superiority over horsedrawn vehicles compelled the govern- ment to use them for the mails, although the rapid throwing out of long lines through sparsely settled country, where expenses must neces- sarily be heavy and receipts small, caused a considerable deficit every year during the 'twenties and 'thirties. Yet there was an insistent public demand for cheaper postage, and in the light of present rates, those of a century and more ago were indeed excessive. For many years six cents was the lowest possible postage on a letter. This would carry it only thirty miles. From there the fee ranged up to twenty-five cents for four hundred and fifty miles or over. And it must be remembered that any additional bit of paper enclosed made it a double letter, two enclosures a triple letter, which doubled and tripled the postage, and so on, practically without limit. Many cried out that the whole postal system was a fraud upon the public, and turned for relief to private conveyance by friends, associates, or hired messengers. It was at one time proposed to establish a great carrier line from Boston to Baltimore, which should travel faster than the mail and handle letters more cheaply. As a matter of fact, the rapid rise in "express" and "dispatch" companies in the next few years was brought about by the exorbitance in the postal rates. In 1843 there were twenty of these concerns operating out of Boston alone. Merchants and others having correspondence in the same direction made up packages of letters which were carried by these lines for fifty cents, though they often contained letters on which the postage would have been twenty or thirty dollars.
COMMON EVASION OF POSTAL CHARGES-Anyone who made a trip was apt to have his bags so full of other people's mail that he scarcely had room for his toothbrush, and many of the senders expected him to deliver their letters to the addressees. It came to such a pass that those who contemplated a journey carefully con- cealed the fact to avoid being swamped with this gratuitous service. Francis Lieber, a German traveler in the early 'thirties, thus relates his experience :
"Suppose me, then, on board a Delaware steamboat, leaving Philadelphia early in the morning. 'Sir, do you go to New York ?' -- 'Yes, sir; why ?'-'Please take these letters and throw them into the post office.' I did not know the gen-
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tleman; I took the letters, at least five in number, and had no sooner opened my carpet bag to put them in, than letters rained in from all sides, as if epistolary matter had broken loose from the clouds. The liberty which everyone takes in this country, in asking you to carry letters, bundles, and now and then a bandbox, though very great, is what everyone is equally ready to do for you; and so, on the whole, the matter neutralizes itself and is rather a convenience. I believe this is the only civilized country in which no law exists to prohibit private persons from carrying sealed letters. It would be con- sidered a strange interference with private concerns if ever a law of this kind should be attempted here."
POSTAL REFORMS-In 1845 Congress passed the first low postage act, and the first which made weight rather than the number of pieces of paper the basis of the postage charge. A letter weighing not more than half an ounce could now be sent three hundred miles for five cents, and anywhere save to the Pacific Coast for ten cents. There were still no postal arrangements to the coast, California being at that time the property of Mexico. The rate reduction was not so great as was desired, but it was enough to cause a greatly increased flow of letters into the mails. Envelopes had been introduced, but were not yet widely used. In 1847 another forward step was taken when postage stamps were introduced, to be used on paid letters, for Congress could not yet make up its mind to do away with the practice of sending letters collect, if one so desired, notwithstanding the fact that it had long been admittedly a nuisance. Numberless were the occasions when a recipient paid the postage on a letter which he would have refused had he known its contents. The increasing number of unpaid letters refused by addressees had much to do with the found- ing of the Dead Letter Office in 1829; and when, in 1850, postage was again reduced, the stipulation was made that it must be prepaid. The new rates were three cents per half ounce for any distance under three thousand miles, and five cents for a greater distance, always excepting the Pacific Coast. These rates stood until 1863, when the coast was likewise given the benefit of cheap postal rates. But it was a long time before the new prepayment rule was fully grasped by the public.
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Probably few people know today that our post office once held the telegraph business in its hands. S. F. B. Morse suggested to the Post Office Department in 1837 that it make use of the electric tele- graph which he had designed several years before. In 1843 Con- gress appropriated money to build a line between Washington and Baltimore, and for two years Morse was in the service of the gov- ernment as superintendent of this line. But after long dalliance, the government failed to purchase Morse's rights to the invention, and it passed into private hands. The United States today is the only great nation in the world in which the telegraph system is not oper- ated by the government. In most countries it is under the supervision of the post office authorities.
VIII-THE STORY OF THE TELEPHONE IN ESSEX COUNTY6
The invention and early development of the telephone by Alex- ander Graham Bell took place in New England in the late 1870's, and Essex County figures largely in that eventful story. Essex County contributed both men and setting for Bell's experiments : Thomas A. Watson, of Salem, was the inventor's faithful assistant and closest associate during the long period of trial and error which culminated so triumphantly on the night of March 10, 1876; Thomas Sanders, of Haverhill, loyally and generously provided a large share of the financial backing for those experiments; and Salem was the northern terminus for the first successful long distance, two-way telephone con- versation ever held; namely, that between Watson in Salem and Bell in Boston, over the telegraph line of the Eastern Railroad Com- pany, on November 26, 1876.
THOMAS AUGUSTUS WATSON -- How Thomas Watson, the mea- grely educated young apprentice machinist of Salem, came to be the assistant and later the business associate and trusted friend of the already distinguished Englishman makes an interesting story. Its details will be found in Mr. Watson's autobiography, "Exploring Life,"7 but they may be summarized as follows: In the fall of 1874, Bell went to a small machine shop in Boston for assistance in con- structing certain apparatus for the multiple telegraph instrument on
6. For much of the material on the telephone grateful acknowledgment is made to William Chauncy Langdon, Historical Librarian of the American Telephone and Tele- graph Company.
7. Thomas A. Watson: "Exploring Life." Appleton, 1926.
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ยท which he was working at the time. Watson, a minor employee in the shop, was assigned to the work, and by his skill and intelligence quickly won the respect of Bell, who confided in him his plans for an electrical speaking machine which was still in embryo in Bell's fertile mind. Watson's ready grasp of the idea encouraged Bell to experi- ment in a small way with a crude telephone which he had had Wat- son construct for him, and out of those experiments grew the appara- tus which successfully transmitted the human voice on the memorable night of March 10, 1876, in the words, "Mr. Watson, come here; I want you."
EARLY DIFFICULTIES-Between that night in March, and Sun- day, November 26 of the same year, when the first long distance, two-way conversation was held between Salem and Boston, Bell sub- jected his new invention to many exacting tests, including a successful demonstration in June before the judges at the Centennial Expo- sition in Philadelphia. In July of that year he attempted, unsuccess- fully, to talk between two points in Boston connected by a telegraph wire reaching to New York and back, the circuit exceeding four hun- dred miles in length. In August, while vacationing in Canada, Bell succeeded for the first time in transmitting articulate speech over a telegraph wire for a distance of eight miles. This was a notable event in the history of the telephone, but the fact remained that it was telephonic transmission in one direction only, it still being neces- sary for the man at the receiving end of the wire to communicate with the sending end by telegraphing over another wire. It remained to be proved that a sustained conversation, in both directions alter- nately, could be carried on over one wire. This step was taken on October 9, 1876, when Bell and Watson conversed freely over a telegraph wire connecting Boston with Cambridge, a distance of about two miles. The same instrument at each end was used alter- nately for talking and listening, and to test the accuracy of transmis- sion each speaker kept a record of the words spoken and received. In the Boston "Daily Advertiser" of October 19, 1876, these records appeared in parallel columns, in an article describing the experi- ment, and establishing the substantial accuracy of the new means of communication.
THOMAS SANDERS AND G. G. HUBBARD BECOME BELL'S PART- NERS-Thomas Sanders' association with Bell commenced in 1872, when the wealthy Haverhill leather merchant persuaded Bell to
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undertake complete charge of the education of his young son, who was totally deaf. Largely out of gratitude for Bell's success in teach- ing the boy the art of lip-reading, Mr. Sanders, in the fall of 1874, made the youthful inventor an offer of financial assistance looking toward the development and exploitation of his multiple telegraph idea. At about the same time Bell received a similar offer from the Hon. Gardiner G. Hubbard, of Cambridge, who knew of Bell's ideas
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SWAMPSCOTT-HUMPHREY HOUSE
Owned by the Swampscott Historical Society, as it appears at No, 99 Paradise Road Courtesy of Henry S. Baldwin, President
for multiple telegraphy and telephony and saw in them promises of practical commercial value. A meeting of the three friends was arranged, and the result was an agreement between them that Sanders and Hubbard should each supply half the money that Bell needed to carry on his experiments, each receiving in return a one-third interest in such patents as Bell should take out on his inventions. This was an oral contract which was not reduced to writing until several years later, a fact which illustrates the extremely informal character of the carlier organization.
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THE FIRST TELEPHONE COMPANY-Assured of financial back- ing, Bell now applied himself assiduously to the development of his inventions. The unquestioned success of the first long distance, two- way telephone conversation between Salem and Boston in November, 1876, mentioned above, led almost at once to the formation of a commercial company, known as the Boston & Northern Telephone Company, which proceeded to establish agencies in several towns in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont, and to begin the manufacture of telephone instruments for installation, on a rental basis, in the homes and offices of subscribers. Bell, Watson, Hub- bard, and Sanders were the principal stockholders in the new com- pany, which soon changed its name to the New England Telephone Company as its business rapidly extended beyond the limits origi- nally established.
Essex County again enjoyed priority in these and successive devel- opments of the early telephone industry. The first telephone line authorized by the new company was a personal line installed June 5, 1877, for Mr. Sanders, between his home and his office in Haverhill. Of interest, in this connection, is the fact that later, when Mr. Sanders was treasurer of the Bell Telephone Company, he made the Haver- hill National Bank and the First National Bank of Salem, the two banks that had lent money to him for the use of the original tele- phone company, the depositaries for the accounts of the company.
Also of interest is the fact that the Boston, Revere Beach & Lynn Railroad was the first to use the telephone for dispatching trains, and it has continued the use ever since. This service was first arranged in May, 1877.
The first form of telephone service in Essex County was the pri- vate line. By this arrangement, two telephones, or multiples of two, were rented to the subscriber, who at first was expected to supply his own wire and who installed his two instruments where he pleased. Later the company supplied the wire and installed the instruments. The earliest form of telephone service, of course, allowed of no intercommunication between subscribers, but this objectionable fea- ture was eliminated within a very short time by the establishing of exchanges which for the first time made possible communication not only between subscribers within a district, but also between subscribers in neighboring and more distant districts by means of trunk lines between exchanges.
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EARLY COMPANIES ARE MERGED-Within five years of the installation of the first telephone line, a number of independent tele- phone companies, licensed by the parent company, had sprung up in various parts of New England. Among these were National Bell Telephone Company of Maine, the Bay State Telephone Company, the Suburban Telephone Company, and, previously mentioned, the Boston & Northern Telephone Company. These independent com- panies were merged in October, 1883, to form the New England Telephone & Telegraph Company, under license from the Ameri- can Bell Telephone Company, the parent or central company at that time. A few years later, so rapid was the expansion of the telephone business in response to the imperative demands of busi- ness throughout the country, the American Telephone & Telegraph Company, in virtually its present system of organization, came into being. But before that occurred, Alexander Graham Bell had withdrawn from active participation in the practical affairs of the industry in order to devote his time and energies to the development and promotion of other fields of inventive research in which he had long been interested.
BELL'S FAMED LECTURE IN SALEM-Meanwhile, in response to invitations extended by representative groups of distinguished men in several cities, Professor Bell undertook the delivery of a series of lectures explaining the many uses of the telephone and exhibiting it in operation. The experiments and inventions of Bell and Watson had received considerable publicity in the newspapers, and this in turn had aroused widespread public curiosity, and the desire to see a telephone actually in use and to hear it explained by its already famous inventor. The first two in this series of public lectures were delivered by Bell before the Essex Institute in Lyceum Hall, Salem, on February 12, 1877, and again on February 23, so great was the number of people unaccommodated on the first occasion. Bell's laboratory in Boston was connected with the hall in Salem by a wire of the Atlantic & Pacific Telegraph Company. Mr. Watson oper- ated the telephone in Boston, and his articulation was distinctly audi- ble to the audience in Salem. This was also the occasion of the first report ever sent to a newspaper by telephone, Henry M. Batchelder, later the well-known banker of Salem, reporting the proceedings of the meeting in Salem to the Boston "Globe" over the same telephone
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which Bell had just been demonstrating to his audience. Concerning this interesting feat, the "Globe," in its issue of February 13, 1877, stated :
"This special by telephone to the 'Globe' has been trans- mitted in the presence of about twenty, who have thus been witnesses to a feat never before attempted-that is, the send- ing of a newspaper dispatch over the space of eighteen miles by the human voice-and all this wonder being accomplished in a time not much longer than would be consumed in an ordi- nary conversation between two people in the same room."
These Salem exhibitions of the telephone by Bell attracted wide publicity in the newspapers of the United States and were also noticed in the "Daily News" and the "Athenaeum" of London, England.
AN AMUSING INCIDENT-An amusing incident in the early use of the telephone occurred in England in the fall of 1877, at the time of Professor Bell's visit there in the interests of his new invention and its potentialities as a public utility in Great Britain. Bell deliv- ered a lecture explaining the telephone before the Society of Tele- graph Engineers at London on the evening of October 31. At the close of the lecture the president of the society said that he should be "glad to hear the opinions of men eminent for their knowledge of physical science, of whom there were many in the room." One of these, a Mr. W. H. Preece, arose and in the course of his remarks spoke of Mr. Bell's allusion to the fact that expectancy sometimes led him to anticipate what was said through his early telephone. Mr. Preece said that he himself had recently exhibited the telephone before a very large audience, including many learned men. He selected "one of the leading scientific men of the day" and placed the telephone in his hand, expecting to hear from his lips some words of special wisdom. The sage shouted through the telephone, "Hi diddle diddle-follow up that !" Then putting the telephone to his ear for the response, he stated with great satisfaction, "He says-'The cat and the fiddle.'" The person who was supposed to have made the answer was fifty miles away. The next day Mr. Preece met him and asked him if he understood the "Hi diddle diddle." The man said, "No, I asked him to repeat."
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