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.