Scribner, Barrett, Pupin --and say of each one, "Without his work
the present telephone system could not exist." But business
genius, as well as mechanical genius, explains this achievement.
For the first four or five years of its existence, the new
invention had hard sailing. Bell and Thomas Watson, in order to
fortify their finances, were forced to travel around the country,
giving a kind of vaudeville entertainment. Bell made a speech
explaining the new invention, while a cornet player, located in
another part of the town, played solos, the music reaching the
audience through several telephone instruments placed against the
walls. Watson, also located at a distance, varied the program by
singing songs via telephone. These lecture tours not only gave
Bell the money which he sorely needed but advertised the
innovation. There followed a few scattering attempts to introduce
the telephone into every-day use and telephone exchanges were
established in New York, Boston, Bridgeport, and New Haven. But
these pioneers had the hostility of the most powerful corporation
of the day--the Western Union Telegraph Company--and they lacked
aggressive leaders.

In 1878, Mr. Gardiner Hubbard, Bell's earliest backer, and now
his father-in-law, became acquainted with a young man who was
then serving in Washington as General Superintendent of the
Railway Mail Service. This young man was Theodore N. Vail. His
energy and enterprise so impressed Hubbard that he immediately
asked Vail to become General Manager of the company which he was
then forming to exploit the telephone. Viewed from the
retrospection of forty years this offer certainly looks like one
of the greatest prizes in American business. What it signified at
that time, however, is apparent from the fact that the office