Indeed Vail had hardly seen the telephone when a picture portraying the development which we are familiar with today unfolded before his eyes.

That the telephone has had a greater development in America than elsewhere and that the United States has avoided all those mistakes of organization that have so greatly hampered its growth in other lands, is owing to the fact that Vail, when he first took charge, mapped out the comprehensive policies which have guided his corporation since.
Vail early adopted the "slogan" which has directed the Bell activities for forty years--"One System! One Policy! Universal Service." In his mind a telephone company was not a city affair, or even a state affair; it was a national affair.

His aim has been from the first a universal, national service, all under one head, and reaching every hamlet, every business house, factory, and home in the nation.

The idea that any man, anywhere, should be able to take down a receiver and talk to anyone, anywhere else in the United States, was the conception which guided Vail's labors from the first.

He did not believe that a mass of unrelated companies could give a satisfactory service; if circumstances had ever made a national monopoly, that monopoly was certainly the telephone.