the use of its political influence to prevent communities from
giving franchises to the Bell Company. But this corporation
mainly relied for success upon the wholesale manner in which it
infringed the Bell patents. It raked together all possible
claimants to priority, from Philip Reis to Elisha Gray, in its
attempts to discredit Bell as the inventor. The Western Union had
only one legitimate advantage--the Edison transmitter--which was
unquestionably much superior to anything which the Bell Company
then possessed. Many Bell stockholders were discouraged in face
of this fierce opposition and wished to abandon the fight. Not so
Vail. The mere circumstance that the great capitalists of the
Western Union had taken up the telephone gave the public a
confidence in its value which otherwise it would not have had, a
fact which Vail skillfully used in attracting influential
financial support. He boldly sued the Western Union in 1878 for
infringement of the Bell patents. The case was a famous one; the
whole history of the telephone was reviewed from the earliest
days, and the evidence as to rival claimants was placed on record
for all time. After about a year, Mr. George Clifford, perhaps
the best patent attorney of the day, who was conducting the case
for the Western Union, quietly informed his clients that they
could never win, for the records showed that Bell was the
inventor. He advised the Western Union to settle the case out of
court and his advice was taken. This great corporation war was
concluded by a treaty (November 10, 1879) in which the Western
Union acknowledged that Bell was the inventor, that his patents
were valid, and agreed to retire from the telephone business. The
Bell Company, on its part, agreed to buy the Western Union
Telephone System, to pay the Western Union a royalty of twenty
per cent on all telephone rentals, and not to engage in the