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 the Western Union Telegraph Company.
This great corporation was at the time their natural and inevitable enemy.

It had swallowed most of its competitors, and was reaching out to monopolize all methods of communication by wire.