With the most heroic optimism, this Rocky Mountain Company persevered until, in 1906, it had created a seventy-thousand-mile nerve-system for the far West.
Chicago, in this year, had two hundred thou-sand telephones in use, in her two hundred square miles of area.

The business had been built up by General Anson Stager, who was himself wealthy, and able to attract the support of such men as John Crerar, H.H.Porter, and Robert T.Lincoln.
Since 1882 it has paid dividends, and in one glorious year its stock soared to four hundred dollars a share.

The old-timers--the men who clambered over roof-tops in 1878 and tacked iron wires wherever they could without being chased off--are still for the most part in control of the Chicago company.
But as might have been expected, it was New York City that was the record-breaker when the era of telephone expansion arrived.

Here the flood of big business struck with the force of a tidal wave.

The number of users leaped from 56,000 in 1900 up to 810,000 in 1908.