Time once was that America’s state of the art national network was the telegraph and the railroad. Together they made swift communication throughout the country economical, and allowed Western Union to become a near immediate monopoly.

As Charles Sumner said at the time:

“This glorious invention was vouchsafed to mankind that we might salute and converse with one another respectively stationed at remote and isolated points for a nominal sum.”

But instead, he continued, “A wicked monopoly has seized hold of this beneficent capacity and design, and made it tributary, by exorbitant tariffs, to a most miserly and despicable greed.”

So quotes Matthew Lasar in a brief, eye-opening account of US battles over control of the telegraph or — with a steampunk wink and nod — the “Victorian Internet.”

When juxtaposed against current Network Neutrality debates it should give pause to the argument that we hand over the keys to future Internet growth and development to the Verizons, Time Warners, and Comcasts operating today.

Take a trip down Lasar’s memory lane and you see how Western Union’s monopoly controlled the telegraph by throttling competition, and curried political favor by disrupting opposition party information and communication.

In turn, the Associated Press struck a deal with Western Union and agreed, as Lasar writes, that they would never “encourage or support any opposition or competing Telegraph Company.” With that that relationship in their pocket, the AP went on it own merry way and crushed competing news and information organizations that were beginning to crop up around the country.

You could argue that the telegraph and the Internet are apples and robots, but the similarities between media consolidation and desired control over information access between now and then are clear.

Lasar’s evocative article is available via Ars Technica.