e switchboard,
copper wire, girl operators, underground cables, metallic circuit,
common battery, and the long-distance lines.

3. Expansion. 1896 to 1906. This was the era of big business. It was an
autumn period, in which the telephone men and the public began to reap
the fruits of twenty years of investment and hard work. It was the
period of the message rate, the pay station, the farm line, and the
private branch exchange.

4. Organization. 1906--. With the success of the Pupin coil, there came
a larger life for the telephone. It became less local and more national.
It began to link together its scattered parts. It discouraged the waste
and anarchy of duplication. It taught its older, but smaller brother,
the telegraph, to cooperate. It put itself more closely in touch with
the will of the public. And it is now pushing ahead, along the two roads
of standardization and efficiency, toward its ideal of one universal
telephone system for the whole nation. The key-word of the telephone
development of to-day is this--organization.

CHAPTER V. THE EXPANSION OF THE BUSINESS

The telephone business did not really begin to grow big and overspread
the earth until 1896, but the keynote of expansion was first sounded by
Theodore Vail in the earliest days, when as yet the telephone was a babe
in arms. In 1879 Vail said, in a letter written to one of his captains:

"Tell our agents that we have a proposition on foot to connect the
different cities for the purpose of personal communication, and in other
ways to organize a GRAND TELEPHONIC SYSTEM."

This was brave talk at that time, when there were not in the whole world
as many telephones as there are to-day in Cincinnati. It was brave talk
in those days of iron wire, peg switchboards, and noisy diaphragms. Most
telephone men regarded it as nothing more than talk. They did not see
any business future for the telephone except in short-distance service.
But Vail was in earnest. His previous experience as the head of the
railway mail service had lifted him up to a higher point of view.
He knew the need of a national system of communication that would be
quicker and more direct than either the telegraph or the post office.

"I saw that if the telephone could talk one mile to-day," he said, "it
would be talking a hundred miles to-morrow." And he persisted, in spite
of a considerable deal of ridicule, in maintaining that the telephone
was destined to connect cities and nations