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 described.He gave the greatest attention to every detail of the service and particularly insisted on the fairest and most courteous treatment of the public.The "please" which invariably accompanies the telephone girl's request for a number--the familiar "number, please"--is a trifle, but it epitomizes the whole spirit which Vail inspired throughout his entire organization.Though there are plenty of people who think that the existing telephone charges are too high, the fact remains that the rate has steadily declined with the extension of the business.Vail has also kept his company clear from the financial scandals that have disgraced so many other great corporations.He has never received any reward himself except his salary, such fortune as he possesses being the result of personal business ventures in South America during the twenty years from 1887 to 1907 that he was not associated with the Bell interests.
Vail's first achievement was to rescue this invention from the greatest calamity which would have befallen it.The Western Union Telegraph Company, which in the early days had looked upon the telephone as negligible, suddenly awoke one morning to a realization of its importance.This Corporation had recently introduced its "printing telegraph," a device that made it possible to communicate without the intermediary operator.When news reached headquarters that subscribers were dropping this new contrivance and subscribing to telephones, the Western Union first understood that a competitor had entered their field.
Promptly organizing the American Speaking Telephone Company, the Western Union, with all its wealth and prestige, proceeded to destroy this insolent pigmy.Its methods of attack were unscrupulous and underhanded, the least discreditable one being 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 telegraph business.Had this case been decided against the Bell Company it is almost certain that the telephone would have been smothered in the interest of the telegraph and its development delayed for many years.
Soon after the settlement of the Western Union suit, the original group which had created the telephone withdrew from the scene.
