He had been absent for twenty years, developing water-power and building street-railways in South America.

In the first act of the telephone drama, it was he who put the enterprise upon a business basis, and laid down the first principles of its policy.

In the second and third acts he had no place; but when the curtain rose upon the fourth act, Vail was once more the central figure, standing white-haired among his captains, and pushing forward the completion of the "grand telephonic system" that he had dreamed of when the telephone was three years old.
Thus it came about that the telephone business was created by Vail, conserved by Hudson, expanded by Fish, and is now in process of being consolidated by Vail.

It is being knit together into a stupendous Bell System--a federation of self-governing companies, united by a central company that is the busiest of them all.

It is no longer protected by any patent monopoly.