ABSTRACT
Nationalisation was supported by most newspapers, which resented the telegraph companies’ monopoly of the news, and by Chambers of Commerce which felt the service was too expensive, inaccurate and insufficiently widespread geographically. A portion of the greater profitability is attributable to the reduction of maintenance expenditure and the ending of expansion after 1866, when the nationalisation debate began. During the nationalisation debate, Belgium and Switzerland were often held up as countries with telegraph administrations of the type to which the United Kingdom should aspire. Alternating price competition and cooperation expanded output from just under 65,000 public messages in 1850 to about 100 times than number when the nationalisation Act was passed in 1868. The clustering of offices and the small number of messages per office indicates adverse effects of competition. Compared with a merger or with working arrangements, the form of co-operation chosen, the price cartel, was inefficient.
