ositions to "go around," so as to give each worthy
man a chance after he has mastered the essentials of the art. He feels,
therefore, that to remain at the key involves either stagnation or
deterioration, and that after, say, twenty-five years of practice he
will have lost ground as compared with friends who started out in other
occupations. The craft of an operator, learned without much difficulty,
is very attractive to a youth, but a position at the key is no place
for a man of mature years. His services, with rare exceptions, grow less
valuable as he advances in age and nervous strain breaks him down. On
the contrary, men engaged in other professions find, as a rule, that
they improve and advance with experience, and that age brings larger
rewards and opportunities.

The list of well-known Americans who have been graduates of the key is
indeed an extraordinary one, and there is no department of our national
life in which they have not distinguished themselves. The contrast,
in this respect, between them and their European colleagues is highly
significant. In Europe the telegraph systems are all under government
management, the operators have strictly limited spheres of promotion,
and at the best the transition from one kind of employment to another is
not made so easily as in the New World. But in the United States we have
seen Rufus Bullock become Governor of Georgia, and Ezra Cornell Governor
of New York. Marshall Jewell was Postmaster-General of President
Grant's Cabinet, and Daniel Lamont was Secretary of State in President
Cleveland's. Gen. T. T. Eckert, past-President of the Western Union
Telegraph Company, was Assistant Secretary of War under President
Lincoln; and Robert J. Wynne, afterward a consul-general, served as
Assistant Postmaster General. A very large proportion of the
presidents and leading officials of the great railroad systems are old
telegraphers, including Messrs. W. C. Brown, President of the New York
Central Railroad, and Marvin Hughitt, President of the Chicago & North
western Railroad. In industrial and financial life there have been
Theodore N. Vail, President of the Bell telephone system; L. C. Weir,
late President of the Adams Express; A. B. Chandler, President of the
Postal Telegraph and Cable Company; Sir W. Van Home, identified with
Canadian development; Robert C. Clowry, President of the Western
Union Telegraph Company; D. H. Bates, Manager of the Baltimore &
Ohio telegraph for Rober