Excerpt from Annual Report of the President of the Western Union Telegraph Company to the Stockholders: Submitted to and Approved by the Board of Directors, at Their Meeting, July 18th, 1869 In April, 1866, the lines of the United States Telegraph Com pany were consolidated with the Western Union. That com pany was organized in 1863, and constructed a system of rival lines, embracing sixteen thousand miles of wire, and covering considerable portions of the territory occupied by the Western Union and American lines. The United States Company, how ever, under the most vigorous administration, with all of its lines new, and worked to their utmost capacity, was unable to meet its current expenses - the net loss, during the last year of its opera tion, amounting to an average of more than ten thousand dollars per month. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.