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The Telephone 165 Company, which was capitalised at £60,000,000, resigned. In the search for a new president the directors turned to Theodore Vail, offering him a salary of £20,000 a year. He refused it, urging that at his age—sixty-two years—he had acquired all the money he would ever require. But the directors pointed out that as he had rescued the telephone when in its infancy he was needed once again to put the house in order. At last he was per- suaded to re-enter the field of his former triumphs. Speedily gathering up the reins, he brought about the successful consolidation of the scattered com- panies and welded them into a harmonious whole. He not only revitalised the moribund concern, but he restored its former initiative. That was in 1907, and to accomplish his ideals he spent money like water. The Panama Canal is generally regarded as the most costly single enter- prise ever taken in hand, and in which the Ameri- can people sank £62,000,000 in the course of nine years. But during the selfsame period the Bell Telephone Company, under Mr. Vail’s direction, ex- pended over £120,000,000 in engineering construc- tion alone, and to-day it ranks as one of the biggest enterprises in the world, the whole system possess- ing 21,000,000 miles of wire, connecting 9,000,000 instruments. In this work of consolidation Vail succeeded in wreaking a terrible revenge upon his old enemy, the Western Union, which had spared no effort in its attempt to stifle and kill the telephone when it was in its infancy. Vail re-entered the arena to find his whilom rival moribund and in danger of strangula