Jasper County Democrat, Volume 14, Number 95, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 March 1912 — Page 2 Advertisements Column 4 [ADVERTISEMENT]

An armful of old papers for 3 nickel at the Democrat office.

WHAT HAVE YOB TO SAY ABPBT THIS?

To the People of Jasper County: “THIS TELEPOST MUST BE CRUSHED OUT, REGARDLESS OF THE COST.” In these words a prominent Wall Street financier announced that the "Interests” had declared war on us and on you. Why he wished to crush it, —the many attempts to ruin * t ’" — why *h c y failed, —the great benefits of the I elepost to you and to the entire country,—and how, with your co-opcration, it can never be crushed, — prompt me to address you. It concerns you. It is your fight as well as ours.

The Teiepost is an independent telegraph company owning a System of automatic machine telegraphy recognized as the highest development to date in its field. It is in active commercial operation between Chicago, St. Louts, Indianapolis, Louisville and other cities of the Middle West, with the lowest rates and best service ever given in the United States. Its purpose is to extend these advantages to all parts of.the country. It gives a fiat rate, regardless of distance, of one-quar-ter cent to one cent a word, according to service furnished. It sends 1,000 words a minute on one wire and illows telephone conversation over it at the same time. By all other methods it requires iron: seventeen to ixty wires to do what the Teiepost does on one. For over thirty-five years there lies been no real competition in telegraphy. The Interests behind this utility control it more completely than the Steel, Beef, Tobacco and Oil Trusts control their respective lines and products. By means of “Gentlemen’s Agreements,” admitted under oath to the New York Legislature, they have stifled competition, extorting, according to former Postmaster-General John Wanamaker, sioo,oco,coo from the people in exorbitant charges for an indifferent service. The purpose of these "Agreements” is to maintain present high charges, and to block the introduction of any better system by others. The methods employed to destroy the Telepost have been notoriously unfair, and un-American:—Spies dogging the footsteps of visitors to our offices; men of prominence, associated with us, threatened; employees bribed to betray us; timid shareholders stampeded into sacrificing their shares; our wires mysteriously cut, and our customers urged to leave us. Periodicals, and other publications, in alliance with the money powers behind the telegraph interests, have maliciously attacked us in order to discourage popular support for our enterprise, in much the same manner as they did Alexander Graham Bell when l.e introduced the telephone. , * With the low rates of the Telepost, the wires will be used almost as freely as the mails. We plan to build a line from our terminal in Chicago to New York, having secured entrances into both cities and practically all of the right-of-way. This line will pass near your town, with which we shall ultimately connect it. The New York-Chicago line will put the Telepost on such a solid and big dividend-paying basis that extensions to all parts of the country will rapidly f0110w... The opposition has declared that it will make it impossible for us to build this extension by PREVENTING OUR GETTING THE MONEY NEEDED. In this they do not reckon on your having anything to say, and seemingly forget that the original telegraph lines were built, —not by Wall Street, —but, with profit to them--•elvCs, by the merchants, farmers and small investors of the country who were independent of capitalistic (P