Enterprise and Society 1:739-761 (2000)
© 2000 Business History Conference
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A comparison of the postal telegraph movement in Great Britain and the United States, 1866-1900
IEEE History Center, Rutgers University, 39 Union Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA
E-mail: hochfeld@rci.rutgers.edu
This article places the British and American postal telegraph movements in the broader context of a transatlantic reform tradition. More specifically, British nationalization in 1870 gave American reformers both a rallying point and a rationale for postalizing the telegraphs. The legacies of both movements were mixed. In Britain, the postal telegraph provided inexpensive and accessible service, but it soon ran a large deficit and retarded the development of the telephone industry. In the United States, reformers failed to nationalize the telegraph or to secure a place in historical memory, but they succeeded in pressuring Western Union to provide better service, and they provide the impetus for the municipal ownership movement of the Progressive Era.
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