esent time. A natural bent
had apparently directed Vail's mind towards methods of communication, a
fact that may perhaps explain the youthful enthusiasm with which he took
up the new venture and the vision with which he foresaw and planned its
future. For the chief fact about Vail is that he was a business man
with an imagination. The crazy little machine which he now undertook to
exploit did not interest him as a means of collecting tolls, floating
stock, and paying dividends. He saw in it a new method of spreading
American civilization and of contributing to the happiness and comfort
of millions of people. Indeed Vail had hardly seen the telephone when
a picture portraying the development which we are familiar with
today unfolded before his eyes. That the telephone has had a greater
development in America than elsewhere and that the United States has
avoided all those mistakes of organization that have so greatly hampered
its growth in other lands, is owing to the fact that Vail, when he first
took charge, mapped out the comprehensive policies which have guided his
corporation since.

Vail early adopted the "slogan" which has directed the Bell activities
for forty years--"One System! One Policy! Universal Service." In his
mind a telephone company was not a city affair, or even a state affair;
it was a national affair. His aim has been from the first a universal,
national service, all under one head, and reaching every hamlet, every
business house, factory, and home in the nation. The idea that any man,
anywhere, should be able to take down a receiver and talk to anyone,
anywhere else in the United States, was the conception which guided
Vail's labors from the first. He did not believe that a mass of
unrelated companies could give a satisfactory service; if circumstances
had ever made a national monopoly, that monopoly was certainly the
telephone. Having in view this national, universal, articulating
monopoly, Vail insisted on his second great principle, the
standardization of equipment. Every man's telephone must be precisely
like every other man's, and that must be the best which mechanical skill
and inventive genius could produce. To make this a reality and to secure
perfect supervision and upkeep, it was necessary that telephones should
not be sold but leased. By enforcing these ideas Vail saved the United
States from the chaos which exists in certain other countries, such as
France, where each subscriber purchases