f-and-line method of organization into business.
It was doing for the forty or fifty Bell Companies what Von Moltke
did for the German army prior to the Franco-Prussian War. It was the
creation of a central company that should link all local companies
together, and itself own and operate the means by which these companies
are united. This central company was to grapple with all national
problems, to own all telephones and long-distance lines, to protect all
patents, and to be the headquarters of invention, information, capital,
and legal protection for the entire federation of Bell Companies.

Seldom has a company been started with so small a capital and so vast a
purpose. It had no more than $100,000 of capital stock, in 1885; but
its declared object was nothing less than to establish a system of
wire communication for the human race. Here are, in its own words, the
marching orders of this Company: "To connect one or more points in each
and every city, town, or place an the State of New York, with one or
more points in each and every other city, town, or place in said State,
and in each and every other of the United States, and in Canada, and
Mexico; and each and every of said cities, towns, and places is to be
connected with each and every other city, town, or place in said States
and countries, and also by cable and other appropriate means with the
rest of the known world."

So ran Vail's dream, and for nine years he worked mightily to make it
come true. He remained until the various parts of the business had grown
together, and until his plan for a "grand telephonic system" was under
way and fairly well understood. Then he went out, into a series of
picturesque enterprises, until he had built up a four-square fortune;
and recently, in 1907, he came back to be the head of the telephone
business, and to complete the work of organization that he started
thirty years before.

When Vail said auf wiedersehen to the telephone business, it had passed
from infancy to childhood. It was well shaped but not fully grown. Its
pioneering days were over. It was self-supporting and had a little money
in the bank. But it could not then have carried the load of traffic that
it carries to-day. It had still too many problems to solve and too
much general inertia to overcome. It needed to be conserved, drilled,
educated, popularized. And the man who was finally chosen to replace
Vail was in many respects the appropriate leader for such