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 his own instrument,
making his selection from about forty different varieties. That
certain dangers were inherent in this universal system Vail
understood. Monopoly all too likely brings in excessive charges,
poor service, and inside speculation; but it was Vail's plan to
justify his system by its works. To this end he established a
great engineering department which should study all imaginable
mechanical improvements, with the results which have been