Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made

by James Dabney McCabe

Cyrus West Field was born at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, on the 30th day of November, 1819, and is the son of the Rev. David Dudley Field, a distinguished clergyman of that State. He was carefully educated in the primary and grammar schools of his native county, and at the age of fifteen went to New York to seek his fortune. He had no difficulty in obtaining a clerkship in an enterprising mercantile house in that city, and, from the first, gave evidence of unusual business capacity. His employers, pleased with his promise, advanced him rapidly, and in a few years he became a partner in the house. His success as a merchant was uniform and marked—so marked, indeed, that in 1853, when only thirty-four years old, he was able to partially retire from business with a large fortune as the substantial reward of his mercantile career.

Mr. Field had devoted himself so closely to his business that, at his retirement, he resolved to seek recreation and change of scene in foreign travel, and accordingly he left New York, and passed the next six months in journeying through the mountains of South America. Upon his return home, at the close of the year 1853, he declared his intention to withdraw entirely from active participation in business, and to engage in no new schemes.

He had scarcely returned home, however, when his brother, Mr. Matthew D. Field, a successful and well-known civil engineer, informed him that he had just become acquainted with a Mr. Frederick N. Gisborne, of Newfoundland, who had come to New York for the purpose of interesting some American capitalists in a company which had been organized in Newfoundland for the purpose of procuring news in America and Europe, and transmitting it between the two continents with greater dispatch than was possible in the then existing mode of communication between the two countries. The scheme of Mr. Gisborne had commended itself to Mr. Matthew Field, and he urged his brother to meet that gentleman and hear his statements. Mr. Cyrus Field at once declined to undertake any share in the enterprise, and said that it would be useless for him to meet Mr. Gisborne; but his brother was so urgent that he at last consented to grant Mr. Gisborne an interview, and at least hear what he had to say. At the appointed time, Mr. Field received Mr. Gisborne at his house, and was there made acquainted with the proposed plan of operations of the "Electric Telegraph Company of Newfoundland." This company had gone into bankruptcy a short time previous, but Mr. Gisborne hoped to be able to revive it by the aid of American capital. The scheme which he laid before Mr. Field, can not be better stated than by quoting the following extract from the charter which the Legislature of Newfoundland had granted the bankruptcy company:

"The telegraph line of this company is designed to be strictly an 'Inter-Continental Telegraph,' Its termini will be New York, in the United States, and London, in the Kingdom of Great Britain; these points are to be connected by a line of electric telegraph from New York to St. John's, Newfoundland, partly on poles, partly laid in the ground, and partly through the water, and a line of the swiftest steamships ever built, from that point to Ireland. The trips of these steamships, it is expected, will not exceed five days, and as very little time will be occupied in transmitting messages between St. John's and New York, the communication between the latter city and London or Liverpool, will be effected in six days, or less. The company will have likewise stationed at St. John's a steam yacht, for the purpose of intercepting the European and American steamships, so that no opportunity may be lost in forwarding intelligence in advance of the ordinary channels of communication."

Mr. Field listened attentively to his visitor, but declined to commit himself to more than an expression of sympathy with the enterprise. After the departure of his guest, he took the globe which stood in his library, and turning it over, began to examine the proposed route of the telegraph line and the distance to be traversed by the steamers. While engaged in this examination, the idea flashed across his mind that instead of undertaking such a complicated scheme, it would be better to attempt to stretch a telegraph wire entirely across the ocean, from the shores of Newfoundland to the coast of Ireland. The vastness of this scheme pleased him, and its usefulness to the entire world, if it could be carried out, was clear to his mind from the first.

He at once set to work to ascertain if such an undertaking as an Atlantic telegraph was practicable. He wrote to Lieutenant Maury, then the Chief of the National Observatory at Washington, and asked if the laying of such a wire was possible; and to Professor Morse, the inventor of the telegraph, to know if such a wire would be available for sending messages if it could be laid. Lieutenant Maury promptly replied, inclosing a copy of a report he had just made to the Secretary of the Navy on the subject, from which Mr. Field learned that the idea of laying a telegraph across the ocean was not original with himself. In this report Lieutenant Maury demonstrated the entire practicability of such an enterprise, and sustained his conclusions by a statement of the recent discoveries concerning the bed of the ocean, made by Lieutenant Berryman. Professor Morse came in person to visit Mr. Field, and assured him of his entire faith in the possibility of sending telegraphic messages across the ocean with rapidity and success.

The two highest authorities in the world thus having assured him of the entire practicability of the undertaking, Mr. Field declared his readiness, if he could procure the assistance of a sufficient number of capitalists in the United States, to undertake the laying of a telegraph across the Atlantic between Europe and America. Further deliberation only made him better satisfied with the undertaking, and he set to work to find ten capitalists, each of whom he proposed should contribute one hundred thousand dollars, making the capital of the proposed company one million of dollars. Mr. Field was convinced that the undertaking would be expensive, but he had then but a faint conception of its magnitude, and was very far from supposing that "he might yet be drawn on to stake upon its success the whole fortune he had accumulated; that he was to sacrifice for it all the peace and quiet he had hoped to enjoy, and that for twelve years he was to be almost without a home, crossing and recrossing the sea, urging his enterprise in Europe and America."

The scientific questions involved in the undertaking were so little understood at the time by the public, and the popular judgment regarded the attempt to stretch a cable across the deep, mysterious ocean with so much incredulity, that Mr. Field had considerable trouble in finding gentlemen willing or prepared to share his faith in the enterprise. His first effort was to induce Mr. Peter Cooper, of New York, his next door neighbor, to join him, and he succeeded so well that Mr. Cooper consented to do so if several others would unite with them. Encouraged by his success with Mr. Cooper, whose name was a tower of strength to his cause, Mr. Field renewed his efforts, and succeeded in winning over the following gentlemen, and in the order named: Moses Taylor, Marshall O. Roberts, and Chandler White. These gentlemen were very slow to accept the views of Mr. Field, but, once having done so, they never lost faith in the ultimate success of the undertaking. The more thoroughly they became acquainted with its magnitude and costliness, the stronger grew their confidence in it, for this increase of knowledge not only showed them more plainly its difficulties and dangers, but developed new grounds on which to base their hopes.

Mr. Field was about to continue his efforts to procure additional names, when Mr. Cooper proposed that the five gentlemen already pledged to the scheme should undertake its entire cost without waiting for the other four. The proposition was agreed to, and it was decided to take the necessary steps to procure a charter for their company from the Legislature of Newfoundland. Mr. Field consented to undertake this, and at once set off for St. John's, accompanied by his brother, Mr. David Dudley Field, who was made the legal adviser of the company. At St. John's they were greatly aided by Mr. Archibald, then the Attorney-General of the Colony, and afterward the British Consul at New York, and by the Governor of Newfoundland. They succeeded in obtaining a charter from the Legislature under the name of the "New York, Newfoundland, and London Telegraph Company," with liberal grants in land and money. This accomplished, they assumed and paid the liabilities of the old Telegraph Company which had been brought to Mr. Field's notice by Mr. Gisborne, and thus removed the last difficulty in their way. This much accomplished, Mr. Field hastened back to New York, and on the 6th of May, 1854, the Company was formally organized at the residence of Mr. David Dudley Field. Messrs. Cooper, Taylor, Field, Roberts, and White were the first directors. Mr. Cooper, was made President of the Company, Mr. White, Vice-President, and Mr. Taylor Secretary. A capital of one million and a half of dollars was subscribed on the spot, Mr. Field contributing about two hundred thousand dollars in cash.

Work was at once begun on the section between New York and St. John's. There was no road across the island of Newfoundland, and the Company had not only to build their telegraph line, but to construct a road by the side of it through an almost unbroken wilderness. It was a work which required the highest executive ability, and the services of an army of men. The distance across the island was four hundred miles, and there were numerous rocky gorges, morasses, and rivers in the way. The country was a desolation, and it was found that supplies would have to be transported from St. John's. The execution of the work was committed to Mr. White, the Vice-President, who went to St. John's to act as the general agent of the Company, and to Mr. Matthew D. Field, who was appointed constructing engineer. These gentlemen displayed such skill and energy in their respective positions that in two years the Company had not only built a telegraph line and a road of four hundred miles across the island, but had constructed another line of one hundred and forty miles in the island of Cape Breton, and had stretched a submarine cable across the Gulf of St. Lawrence. [^[F]] The line was now in working order from New York to St. John's, Newfoundland, a distance of one thousand miles, and it had required about a million of dollars for its construction. It now remained to complete the great work by laying the cable between Newfoundland and Ireland.