"Watson," he said, "there's a young man in Washington who can handle this situation, and I want you to run down and see what you think of him." Watson went, reported favorably, and in a day or so the young man received a letter from Hubbard, offering him the position of General Manager, at a salary of thirty-five hundred dollars a year.

"We rely," Hubbard said, "upon your executive ability, your fidelity, and unremitting zeal." The young man replied, in one of those dignified letters more usual in the nineteenth than in the twentieth century.

"My faith in the success of the enterprise is such that I am willing to trust to it," he wrote, "and I have confidence that we shall establish the harmony and cooperation that is essential to the success of an enterprise of this kind." One week later the young man, Theodore N.Vail, took his seat as General Manager in a tiny office in Reade Street, New York, and the building of the business began.
This arrival of Vail at the critical moment emphasized the fact that Bell was one of the most fortunate of inventors.

He was not robbed of his invention, as might easily have happened.

One by one there arrived to help him a number of able men, with all the various abilities that the changing situation required.