paid a salary of $3500 a year and that for the first ten years
Vail did not succeed in collecting a dollar of this princely
remuneration. Yet it was a happy fortune, not only for the Bell
Company but for the nation, that placed Vail at the head of this
struggling enterprise. There was a certain appropriateness in his
selection, even then. His granduncle, Stephen Vail, had built the
engines for the first steamship to cross the Atlantic. A cousin
had worked with Morse while he was inventing the telegraph. Vail,
who was born in Carroll County, Ohio, in 1845, after spending two
years as a medical student, suddenly shifted his plans and became
a telegraph operator. Then he entered the Railway Mail service;
in this service he completely revolutionized the system and
introduced reforms that exist at the present 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.