What with the message rate and the pay station, the telephone was now on its way to be universal.
It was adapted to all kinds and conditions of men.

A great corporation, nerved at every point with telephone wires, may now pay fifty thousand dollars to the Bell Company, while at the same time a young Irish immigrant boy, just arrived in New York City, may offer five coppers and find at his disposal a fifty million dollar telephone system.
When the message rate was fairly well established, Hudson died--fell suddenly to the ground as he was about to step into a railway carriage.
In his place came Frederick P.Fish, also a lawyer and a Bostonian.

Fish was a popular, optimistic man, with a "full-speed-ahead" temperament.
He pushed the policy of expansion until he broke all the records.

He borrowed money in stupendous amounts--$150,000,000 at one time--and flung it into a campaign of red-hot development.

More business he demanded, and more, and more, until his captains, like a thirty-horse team of galloping horses, became very nearly uncontrollable.
It was a fast and furious period.