rights of way--that was the immediate problem that confronted the new of course, could not be had in a moment, and the five months that of his captains deserted, and he was compelled to take control of their that day of small things, and amidst the confusion and rough-and-tumble followed were the darkest days in the childhood of the telephone. capital, and a first claim upon all newspapers, hotels, railroads, and clamored with one voice for "a transmitter as good as Edison's." This, transmitter, a host of agents, a network of wires, forty millions of routed by the Old Guard of the Western Union. He was scarcely seated in instrument of marvellous alertness. It was beyond all argument superior trifle late, but in time to prevent the telephone forces from being telephone system. His central idea, from the first, was not the mere twice as many telephones as there are in all other countries combined. his managerial chair, when the Western Union threw the entire Bell army Vail arrived very much as Blucher did at the battle of Waterloo--a How to compete with the Western Union, which had this superior unprofitable exchanges. There was scarcely a mail that did not bring him this goes far to explain the fact that there are in the United States leasing of telephones, but rather the creation of a Federal company that General Manager. Every inch of progress had to be fought for. Several would be a permanent partner in the entire telephone business. Even in These various measures were part of Vail's plan to create a national of pioneering, he worked out the broad policy that prevails to-day; and at that time fairly started in his career of wizardry, had made an into confusion by launching the Edison transmitter. Edison, who was to the telephones then in use and the lessees of Bell telephones factories that made it.