"By August, 1877, when Bell's patent was sixteen months' old, Casson's History tells us there were seven hundred and seventy-eight telephones in use and the Bell Telephone Association was formed. The organization was held together by an extremely simple agreement which gave Bell, Hubbard, and Saunders a three-tenths' interest apiece in the patents and Watson one-tenth. The business possessed no capital, as there was none to be had; and these four men at that time had an absolute monopoly of the telephone business,—and everybody else was quite willing they should have.
"In addition to these four associates was Charles Williams, who had from the first been a believer in the venture, and Mr. Holmes who built the first telephone exchange with his own money, and had about seven hundred of the seven hundred and seventy-eight instruments on his wires. Mr. Robert W. Devonshire joined the others in August, 1877, as bookkeeper and general secretary and has since become an official in the American Telephone and Telegraph Company.
"Mr. Holmes rented the telephones for ten dollars a year and through his exchange was the first practical man who had the temerity to offer telephone service for sale. It was the arrival of a new idea in the business world.
"Now the business world is not a tranquil place and as soon as the new invention began to prosper, every sort of difficulty beset its path.
"There were those who denied that Mr. Bell had been first in the field with the telephone idea, and they began to contest his right to the patents. Other telephone companies sprang up and began to compete with the rugged-hearted pioneers who had launched the industry. Lawsuits followed and for years Mr. Bell's days were one continual fight to maintain his claims and keep others from wresting his hard-earned prosperity from him. But in time smoother waters were reached and now Alexander Graham Bell has been universally conceded to be the inventor of this marvel without which we of the present should scarcely know how to get on."
"I don't believe we could live without telephones now, do you?" remarked Laurie thoughtfully.
"Oh, I suppose we could keep alive," laughed Mr. Hazen, "but I am afraid our present order of civilization would have to be changed a good deal. We scarcely realize what a part the telephone plays in almost everything we attempt to do. Certainly the invention helps to speed up our existence; and, convenient as it is, I sometimes am ungrateful enough to wonder whether we should not be a less highly strung and nervous nation without it. However that may be, the telephone is here, and here to stay, and you now have a pretty clear idea of its early history. How from these slender beginnings the industry spread until it spanned continents and circled the globe, you can easily read elsewhere. Yet mighty as this factor has become in the business world, it is not from this angle of its greatness that I like best to view it. I would rather think of the lives it has saved; the good news it has often borne; the misunderstandings it has prevented; the better unity it has promoted among all peoples. Just as the railroad was a gigantic agent in bringing North, South, East, and West closer together, so the telephone has helped to make our vast country, with its many diverse elements, 'one nation, indivisible.'"
CHAPTER XII
CONSPIRATORS