The Commercial Cable Company, Executive Offices, 253, Broadway, New York, 4th February 1904.
My Dean Mx. Scuwan,—In reply to your letter of January 29th, I beg leave to say that there must be} some misapprehension in the minds of your Shanghai friends in regard to the Practice of transmitting the dates and hours of the dispatch of cablegrams. This information has never been transmitted in the free parts of cablegrams from or to America.
Until the Commercial Pacific Cable was laid, cablegrams for China and Japan were sent by the Atlantic cables. The Gates and hours of dispatch were not transmitted. If dates have appeared on cablegrams delivered in China to Japan, they must hare been the dates and hours of arrival at, or dispatch from, some intermediate point, and no doubt this was the case, as we are aware that Administrations operating telegraph systems between Europe and China find it necessary, for their own purposes, to transmit dates and times. We are under no such nec sity. It will be seen that such dates any times were not the true times of dispatch from America, which, not being transmitted, could not have been known. It is clear that the information so given was false information, which we should judge was more dangerous than no information, and this points to the conclusion that the dates and hours of dispatch cannot be 80 important as your friends at Shanghai seem to think.
The Commercial Cable Company in connection with the Commercial Pacific Cable Company is transmitting cablegrams now exactly as they have always been transmitted.
The business day at New York closes at say 6 pin., which corresponds to 7 am, at Shanghai, therefore the New York business day is closing as the Shanghai business day is opening. The New York messages intended for the opening of the business day at Shanghai are usually filed in the afternoon, about 4 p.m, which corresponds to 5 a. m. of the next day at Shanghai. Messages filed in the afternoon or evening of the New York day are always delivered in the morning of the Shanghai day.
We cannot admit that under these circumstances, and in view of the important reduction made in the rates, and of the regularity of the service furnished by the Commercial Pacific Cable Company, that there is good reason for requiring the Company to transmit this extra free information.
Yours very traly, (Signed) Groxcr G. Wax, Vice-Pres. and General Manager. Gvstay H. Scuwan, Esq., Chairman, Committee on Foreign Commerce and the Revenue Laws, Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, City.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.