Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 May 1895 — TRANSATLANTIC CABLES. [ARTICLE]

TRANSATLANTIC CABLES.

What the Twelve Existing Cables Cost and How Many Miles They Coyer. There are now twelve transatlantic cables connecting Europe with Canada and the United States, and steps have been taken to lay a cable across the Pacific from British Columbia to Australasia, by way of the Fiji Islands, says the Boston Journal. The circle of the earth will then be completed, but not so directly as it would be by a cablo from America to Japan. There are now 152,000 miles of submarine cable, in round numbers, of which 10 per cent, has been supplied by various governments, and the rest by private enterprise. They connect into one system over 2,000,000 miles of land wires, ramifying in different countries. The cables have cost about £200,000,000, and the land lines $325,000,000. Telegraphy controls the commerce of the world, which has risen to nearly $20,000,000,000 a year, or, more precisely, $9,700,000,000 of exports and $8,000,000,000 of imports. It enables international disputes to be settled without recourse to arms, as in ISBI, when the British cabinet was in direct communication with the Boer leaders of the Transvaal. It brings a war that lias broken out to a speedy conclusion, and keeps tne public Informed of its hourly progress, as in the case of Egypt, where the bombardment of Alexandria was known in London a few minutes after the first shot was fired, and telegrams were dispatched from the battlefield of Suaklm, la the Eastern Soudan, while tlie fight was going on. Above all, by putting the remotest parts of the earth in contact with each other, It tends to destroy the barriers of isolation and prejudice, making antipathy give way to sympathy, and hatred to loving kindness.