The resolution was seconded by Mr. Cooper, and unanimously adopted.
On March 17th he addressed the produce merchants of New York, and on the 18th the Board of Brokers. It is quite impossible to give the names of the persons, companies, or corporations to whom he wrote, or from whom he solicited assistance, or the cities to which he went, making speeches, and urging every one he saw to subscribe to the stock of the new Atlantic cable, and early in June he was able to say: “The total subscriptions in America to the Atlantic telegraph stock to date are £66,615 sterling. Every single person in the United States and British North American provinces that owns any of the old stock of the Atlantic telegraph has shown his confidence in the enterprise by subscribing to the stock.”
These extracts are made from three letters written on March 24th, March 27th, and May 8th:
“For the last three weeks I have devoted nearly my whole time to obtaining subscriptions to the Atlantic telegraph stock, and, when you consider the rate of exchange on England, I think you will say that we have done well. At all events, I have worked very hard, going from door to door.”
“I never worked so hard in all my life.”
“We must all work until the necessary capital is subscribed. Within the last two weeks I have travelled over fifteen hundred miles, visiting Albany, Buffalo, Boston, and Providence on business of the Atlantic telegraph, and I have promises of subscriptions from all these places.”
The remarkable statement that follows is copied from a letter to Mr. C. F. Varley, dated March 31, 1863:
“There is a carriage-road all the way to California, and the mail is carried daily in wagons, and emigrants are constantly passing over the road alongside of which the telegraph line is built. The Indians are friendly and do not to injure the line.”
The week before he sailed for England, on the 27th of May, he wrote a letter to his firm and gave these directions:
“During my absence in Europe you will please not sell any rags or paper manufacturers’ stock except for cash, as in these times we had much better keep our goods than to sell them even on a few days’ credit. Any manufacturer that is A No. 1 can get all the money he wants at interest, and will prefer to buy cheap for cash.... I would only purchase such papers as I wanted for immediate sales and could sell at a good profit.”