Several
of his captains deserted, and he was compelled to take control of their
unprofitable exchanges. There was scarcely a mail that did not bring him
some bulletin of discouragement or defeat.

In the effort to conciliate a hostile public, the telephone rates had
everywhere been made too low. Hubbard had set a price of twenty dollars
a year, for the use of two telephones on a private line; and when
exchanges were started, the rate was seldom more than three dollars
a month. There were deadheads in abundance, mostly officials and
politicians. In St. Louis, one of the few cities that charged a
sufficient price, nine-tenths of the merchants refused to become
subscribers. In Boston, the first pay-station ran three months before it
earned a dollar. Even as late as 1880, when the first National Telephone
Convention was held at Niagara Falls, one of the delegates expressed the
general situation very correctly when he said: "We were all in a state
of enthusiastic uncertainty. We were full of hope, yet when we analyzed
those hopes they were very airy indeed. There was probably not one
company that could say it was making a cent, nor even that it EXPECTED
to make a cent."

Especially in the largest cities, where the Western Union had most
power, the lives of the telephone pioneers were packed with hardships
and adventures. In Philadelphia, for instance, a resolute young man
named Thomas E. Cornish was attacked as though he had suddenly become a
public enemy, when he set out to establish the first telephone service.
No official would grant him a permit to string wires. His workmen were
arrested. The printing-telegraph men warned him that he must either quit
or be driven out. When he asked capitalists for money, they replied that
he might as well expect to lease jew's-harps as telephones. Finally, he
was compelled to resort to strategy where argument had failed. He had
received an order from Colonel Thomas Scott, who wanted a wire between
his house and his office. Colonel Scott was the President of the
Pennsylvania Railroad, and therefore a man of the highest prestige in
the city. So as soon as Cornish had put this line in place, he kept his
men at work stringing other lines. When the police interfered, he showed
them Colonel Scott's signature and was let alone. In this way he put
fifteen wires up before the trick was discovered; and soon afterwards,
with eight subscribers, he founded the first Philadelphia exchange.

As may