ney would be
needed. He was not rich. His entire business, which was that of cutting
out soles for shoe manufacturers, was not at any time worth more than
thirty-five thousand dollars. Yet, from 1874 to 1878, he had advanced
nine-tenths of the money that was spent on the telephone. He had paid
Bell's room-rent, and Watson's wages, and Williams's expenses, and
the cost of the exhibit at the Centennial. The first five thousand
telephones, and more, were made with his money. And so many long,
expensive months dragged by before any relief came to Sanders, that
he was compelled, much against his will and his business judgment, to
stretch his credit within an inch of the breaking-point to help Bell and
the telephone. Desperately he signed note after note until he faced a
total of one hundred and ten thousand dollars. If the new "scientific
toy" succeeded, which he often doubted, he would be the richest citizen
in Haverhill; and if it failed, which he sorely feared, he would be a
bankrupt.

A disheartening series of rebuffs slowly forced the truth in upon
Sanders's mind that the business world refused to accept the telephone
as an article of commerce. It was a toy, a plaything, a scientific
wonder, but not a necessity to be bought and used for ordinary purposes
by ordinary people. Capitalists treated it exactly as they treated the
Atlantic Cable project when Cyrus Field visited Boston in 1862. They
admired and marvelled; but not a man subscribed a dollar. Also, Sanders
very soon learned that it was a most unpropitious time for the setting
afloat of a new enterprise. It was a period of turmoil and suspicion.
What with the Jay Cooke failure, the Hayes-Tilden deadlock, and the
bursting of a hundred railroad bubbles, there was very little in the
news of the day to encourage investors.

It was impossible for Sanders, or Bell, or Hubbard, to prepare any
definite plan. No matter what the plan might have been, they had no
money to put it through. They believed that they had something new and
marvellous, which some one, somewhere, would be willing to buy. Until
this good genie should arrive, they could do no more than flounder
ahead, and take whatever business was the nearest and the cheapest. So
while Bell, in eloquent rhapsodies, painted word-pictures of a universal
telephone service to applauding audiences, Sanders and Hubbard were
leasing telephones two by two, to business men who previously had been
using the private lines of th