907 came the directors of the company went to him
on his Vermont farm and pleaded with him to return and again resume
the leadership. Other and younger men would not do in this business
crisis. They also pointed out that the nation's telephones had not
yet been molded into the national system which had been his dream--a
system of universal service in which any one at any point in the
country might talk by telephone with any other. So Vail re-entered
the telephone field and again took the presidency of the American
Telephone and Telegraph Company.

One of his first official acts was to appoint John J. Carty his chief
engineer. Vail had selected the right man to make his dreams come
true; Carty now had the executive who would make it possible for
him to accomplish even larger things. He set about building up the
engineering organization which was to accomplish the work, selecting
the most brilliant graduates of American technical schools. He set
this organization to work upon the extension and development of the
long-distance telephone lines.

As a "hello boy" Carty had believed in the possibility of the
long-distance telephone when others had scoffed. He has told of an
early experience while in the Boston exchange:

One hot day an old lady toiled up the inevitable flights of
stairs which led to the telephone-office of those times.
Out of breath, she sat down, and when she had recovered
sufficiently to speak she said she wanted to talk to Chicago.
My colleagues of that time were all what the ethnologists
would rank a little bit lower than the wild Indian. These
youngsters set up a great laugh; and, indeed, the absurdity of
the old lady's project could hardly be overstated, because
at that time Salem was a long-distance line, Lowell sometimes
worked, and Worcester was the limit--that is, in every sense
of the word. The Lowell line was so unreliable that we had a
telegraph operator there, and when the talk was not possible,
he pushed the message through by Morse. It is no wonder that
the absurdity of the old lady's proposal was the cause
of poorly suppressed merriment. But I can remember that I
explained to her that our wires had not yet been extended to
Chicago, and that, after she had departed, I turned to the
other operators and said that the day would come when we could
talk to Chicago. My prophecy was received with what might
be called