Theodore N. Vail and the Civic Origins of Universal Service

Home , Alfred Vail, Bell System, Gardiner Greene Hubbard, Western Union

Theodore N. Vail and the Civic Origins of UniversalService

Richard R. John' DepartmentofHistory, Universify oflllinois at Chicago

In 1907,AT&T PresidentTheodore N. Vail proclaimeduniversal service to be a key corporategoal. The followingyear, at Vail'sprodding, AT&T popular- ized this goal in a major publicity effort that historianRoland Marchandhas termed"the first, the mostpersistent, and the mostcelebrated of the large-scale institutionaladvertising campaigns of the earlytwentieth century" [Marchand, 1998].Over the courseof the next decade,Vail himselfexplored its ramifica- tionsin a remarkableseries of reportsand addresses[Vail, 1917]. Though histo- riansquarrel about precisely what Vail meantby universalservice, few doubtits importance. For the next three-quartersof a century,it playeda major role in the firm's businessstrategy and wasa centralelement of its corporateculture. Historical scholarshipon universalservice has been greatlyinfluenced by the antitrustsuit againstAT&T that culminatedin its breakupin 1984. While this work is often suggestiveand revealing,it tends to be far more concerned with the consequencesof universalservice than with the contextout of which it emerged.This paper-which, I should emphasize,is preliminary and exploratory,and an invitation to critique-points the discussionin a different direction. It has three sections. The first sectionsurveys the literatureon the originsof universalservice. The secondproposes an alternativeaccount. The final sectionmakes a few observationsabout the implicationsof this alterna- tive for the Galambosian"organizational synthesis"-and, in particular,for its characterizationof the main lines of institutionaldevelopment in the nineteenth-centuryUnited States. Historicalscholarship on the originsof universalservice typically link the conceptwith the subjectof inquiry. Historiansof AT&T, for example,almost invariablytrace it back to the beginningsof the firm. Characteristicof this genre are the essayscollected in Ithiel de Sola Pool's SocialImpact of the •lephone,a projectthat grew out of a conferencethat AT&T sponsoredin the mid-1970sat MIT. Though Pool declaredin his introduction that AT&T exert- ed no influenceover the contentsof this volume,it would be hard to imagine a scholarlywork that wasmore congenial to the sensibilitiesof its patron[Pool, 1977,p. x]. With minor variations,all of the essaysin the volume sharea sim-

• I would like to thank Sheldon Hochheiserand Kenneth Lipartito for their suggestions and advice. BUSINESS,4NDECONOMIC HISTORY, Volume Twenty-eight, no. 2, Winter 1999. Copyright¸ 1999by the BusinessHistory Conference. ISSN 0894-6825 72 / RICHARD lh JOHN ilar point of view, making it possibleto treat them collectivelyas the product of a singlemind. From a PoolJanstandpoint, the originsof AT&T's commitmentto universal service could be found in the intentions of the founders of the firm. From the outset,these men-telephone inventorAlexander Graham Bell, telephone promoter Gardiner Greene Hubbard, and telephone managerTheodore N. Vail-envisionedthat the new technologywould eventuallybecome incorpo- ratedinto an integratednetwork that, under a singlemanagement, would bring the promiseof telephonyto familiesas well as businessesthroughout the country and around the world. Given the prescienceof Bell, Hubbard, and Vail, the subsequentrise of the Bell Systemwas a "self-fulfillingprophecy" that sprang,as it were, more-or-lessfully clad from the brow of its creators[Pool, 1977,p. 132]. The key to the founders'success was their ability to comprehendthe essen- tial nature of the new technology. They sawthe future with "such clarity"-or so Pool contended-becauseof the congruencebetween their outlook and the "verytechnology of the telephone" [Pool, 1977,p. 8]. From a Poolianstand- point, it wasbut a short stepfrom Bell'sfirst telephonepatent in 1876to the establishmentof AT&T as a long-distancesubsidiary in 1885 to the consolida- tion of the Bell Systemas a legallysanctioned national monopoly in the 1910s. In this decidedlywhiggish and resolutelytriumphalist narrative, the riseof inde- pendenttelephony was but a footnote,as was the role of law, public policy, and the regulatorystate. When read today,fifteen yearsafter the break-upof the Bell System,these essayscan be read as prooftexts of a kind of technologicaldeterminism that seemsstartlingly hubristic and naive. The politicalmessage was plain. AT&T's greatness-orso explainedJohn R. Pierce,a scientistat Bell Laboratories,and a contributorto the volume-wasattributable to a unique combinationof tech- nologicalvirtuosity and visionaryleadership. Both were imperiled by govern- mental meddling. Telephonenetworks, Pierce reminded us, were the "largest and most complexsystems in the world." And the foremostof thesenetworks was the Bell System. Yet, if it cameto be imperiledby "drasticgovernment actions"aimed at bringingit in line with "current ideology,"it might swiftly "degenerate"in a veryfew years[Pool, 1977, pp. 181,187]. ThoughPierce was a bit vagueabout the kinds of degeneracyhe had in mind, he expressedspe- cial concernabout the evils of interconnection. Should somegovernment reg- ulator, for example,have the temerity to permit telephone usersto attach a non-Belltelephone to the network,serious injury or even electrocutionmight well be the result [Pool, 1977,p. 192]. Vestigesof the Pooliantradition lived on in GeorgeDavid Smith's_/lnatomy ofa BusinessStrategy and RobertW. Garnet's7•lephone Enterprise, the first two vol- umes of the Johns Hopkins/AT&T seriesin telephone history. Like the Poolians,Smith and Garnet found in the earliestyears of the Bell Company the seedsof its later glory. For Smith, a key turning point wasthe acquisition of WesternElectric in 1881-an event that set the stagefor Bell'spreeminence THEODORE N. VAIL AND THE CIVIC ORIGINS OF UNIVERSAL SERVICE/ 73 in industrialresearch; for Garnet,it wasthe firm's establishment,beginning in the late 1870s,of closerelations with the operatingcompanies-a precursor to the Bell System. Interestinglyenough, one historianwho appearedto dissent from this view was Louis Galambos-the editor of the series. Indeed, in a notable essayon Vail, Galambostook careto distinguishhis businessstrategy during his first careerat Bell-which ended in his departurefrom the firm in 1887-from the strategythat he pursued in his second career following his return in 1907 [Galambos,1992]. Both Smith and Garnet groundedtheir monographsin the structural-func- tionalist frameworkthat Alfred D. Chandler,Jr., used so effectivelyin the VisibleHand [John, 1997a]. Far different in approachwas the fourth volume in the Hopkins/AT&T series-KennethLipartito's study of telephonyin the South. In this monograph,and also in a relatedseries of articles,Lipartito movedfrom an internalisttoward a contextualistunderstanding of Bell'sstrategy. It was not technologyand markets,Lipartito contended,but skillful entrepreneurship,in conjunctionwith an "almostirrational" commitment to interconnection, and-most important of all-the activecooperation of stateregulatory bodies,that translateduniversal service into a reality [Lipartito, 1989a,p. 225; Lipartito, 1989b]. Lipartito did not rejectoutright the possibilitythat the origins of universalservice antedated Vail's articulation of this ideal in 1907. Yet his primary interestwas the conjunctionof eventsthat Vail's return helpedto inspire. Indeed, to a greaterextent than any other historianwho focusedpri- marily on AT&T, he wasopen to the possibilitythat, had AT&T executivesnot provedso successfulin manipulatingthe political setting,government regula- tors could conceivablyhave made a superior"public choice"[Lipartito, 1989b]. Historianswhose main interestlies elsewherethan AT&T have been, perhaps not surprisingly,markedly less inclined to trace the originsof universal serviceto the foundersof the firm. A casein point was Milton L. Mueller, Jr.'s., UniversalService, the most extensiveanalysis of the economicdimensions of universalservice in American telephonyduring the opening yearsof the twentiethcentury [Mueller, 1997]. If the Pooliansread at timesa bit like defen- dantsin the AT&T antitrust suit, Mueller was a star witnessfor the prosecu- tion. In the Vail era, Mueller explained,the conceptof universalservice had far more to do with the interconnectionof existingtelephone service than with the extensionof telephoneservice to under-servedregions. Only later would the conceptbecome synonymous with the establishmentof a nation-wide,low- cost, cross-subsidizedresidential phone networkthat, during the antitrustpro- ceedings,AT&T's championsmisleadingly claimed to have been one of its defining featuresall along. How, then, did Mueller explain the originsof universalservice? Its true creators,he contended,were the swarm of daring, imaginative,and (at least implicitly) sociallyprogressive independent telephone promoters who, following the lapseof the Bell telephonepatents in 1894,established telephone service for the many regions that Bell managershad declined to serve. Given Mueller'stheme, it is, perhaps,not entirelysurprising that his book appeared 74 / RICHARD R. JOHN in a seriesthat was sponsoredby the conservative,free-market-oriented AmericanEnterprise Institute. After all, it can be read-which,indeed, seems to have been Mueller's intention-as a brief for today'stelecommunications upstarts,and a forthrightcritique of any effort to re-regulatethe industryfol- lowingthe breakupof AT&T. Equally critical of Poolian orthodoxy was Claude S. Fischer'sAmerica Callin&a prize-winningstudy of telephoneusers in the period prior to the SecondWorld War [Fischer,1992]. Framinghis inquiry as an explorationof the "consumptionjunction," Fischer contended, predictably enough, that it washere that the promiseof universalservice was first realized. For Fischer, the true championsof universalservice were neither Bell managers,as the Pooliansand Lipartitohad claimed,nor independenttelephone entrepreneurs, as Mueller had contended. Rather,they were the millionsof rural and small town telephonepatrons who pioneeredin the social(as opposedto the com- mercial)uses of the telephone. It wasthese ordinary Americans, Fischer con- cluded,who finallypersuaded Bell managersto stopthinking of the telephone aslittle morethan a telegraphthat talked,and to embracefully its actualpotential as a medium for two-waysocial communication. Like Lipartito-and,to a certainextent, the Poolians-Fischerconceived of the Bell managers'outlook as a mindsetwith a distinctivecultural cast. Yet Fischer treated this mindset as an obstacle to be overcome rather than an asset to be exploited.Trapped as they were by their blind relianceon inappropriate telegraphicanalogies-or so Fischerassumed-Bell managers failed to recognize the actualpotential of the new technology.Not until the 1920s,fifty yearsafter the initial establishmentof the industry,would customersliving in rural locales finally showthem the way. Or, to put it somewhatdifferently, for Fischer,no lessthan for the Poolians,the foundersof the telephoneindustry were tech- nologicaldeterminists-only, now, technologicaldeterminism was not a func- tionalgiven but, instead,a culturalnorm. Existing scholarshipon the origins of universalservice highlights the salienceof technologyand markets,and devoteslittle attentionto develop- mentsthat antedatedthe commercializationof the telephone.Yet long before the 1870s,there already existed an expansiverationale for communicationspolicy that owedlittle to electricalscience or consumerdemand, yet whichwould exert a major influence on the ideal of universalservice as it would later come to be understood.Ever since the campaignfor "cheappostage" in the 1840s, countlesspamphlets, magazine articles, and governmentreports had hailedthe inexpensive,uniform, and geographicallyextensive distribution of socialcorre- spondenceas a publicgood. And eversince the passageof the PostOffice Act of 1792,the governmenthad movedvigorously to hastenthe rapid transmis- sion of time-specificinformation on commerceand public affairsthroughout the length and breadth of the United States. This civic rationale for communicationspolicy had little influenceat WesternUnion-which was,in the 1870s, the largesttelegraph firm in the country. Yet it wastaken for grantedat the PostOffice Department,which remained,throughout the nineteenthcentury, THEODORE N. VAIL AND THE CIVIC ORIGINS OF UNIVERSALSERVICE / 75 the largestand most influential element of the information infrastructurein the United States[John, 1995; John, forthcoming]. The existenceof this civic rationale for communicationspolicy best explains the origins of universalservice as a businessstrategy at AT&T. Universalservice was, at bottom a culturalheritage with an unmistakablypolit- ical cast,rather than an intrinsic attribute of the new technology,or a fortu- itous byproductof the impersonalworkings of the competitivemarket. The civic rationale for communicationspolicy had a particularlylasting influence on Hubbard-the telephonepromoter who, in addition to funding Bell'searly experiments in telephonyand makingseveral key earlyadministra- tive decisionsat the Bell Company,recruited Vail to becomeBell's first general manager. Hubbard's preoccupationwith universalservice began well before his involvementin telephony.Its impetuswas his dissatisfactionwith what he took to be the unduly narrow,business-oriented strategy that WesternUnion offi- cials pursued following the consolidationof the firm in 1866 as a deJ•cto national monopoly. WesternUnion, Hubbard believed,had conspicuously failed to realize the democraticpotential of the new technology. From his standpoint,its rateswere too high, its servicetoo limited, and its officestoo few. "Asa telegraphfor business,where dispatch is essentialand price is of little account"-Hubbarddeclared in 1883, articulatinga position that he had held for fifteen years-"theWestern Union systemis unrivaled;but as a telegraphfor the peopleit is signalfailure" [Hubbard, 1883, p. 522]. To rectifythis situation,Hubbard lobbied Congress repeatedly to chartera "postaltelegraph" that would underbidthe telegraphgiant and provideuniversal service for all. Hubbard'scritique of WesternUnion callsinto questionFischer's assertion that Bell'sfounders were trapped by telegraphicanalogies. How, one wonders, could this be true of Hubbard-Western Union's most insistent critic? Hubbard'spronouncements also raise questions about Mueller'sblanket claim that the conceptof universalservice dated back no further than the competi- tive flurry of the 1890sand the 1900s. Few studentsof nineteenth-century communicationspolicy would find sucha claim persuasive.After all, universal accessto informationon commerceand public affairshad been a goal of postal policy for over a century-and, indeed,had furnishedHubbard with much of the rhetoricalammunition that he deployedin his struggleagainst WesternUnion [John,1998]. Hubbard's critique of Western Union's businessstrategy led him, pre- dictablyenough, to establishthe telephoneindustry on a broaderand more inclusivefoundation. In markedcontrast to telegraphofficials, Hubbard took it for grantedthat, eventually,the new technologywould be administeredas a publicutility, and that it would servea large,and constantlygrowing, clientele. Later Bell investorswould be decidedlymore restrainedin their assumptions about the industry'sfuture course,particularly in the yearsimmediately pre- cedingthe expirationof the key Bell patents. Yet Hubbard'svision was never entirelyeclipsed, and, beginningin 1907,would reemerge,in a distinct,yet rec- 76 / RICHARD R. JOHN ognizableguise, in Vail's commitmentto universalservice. By the FirstWorld War, the Bell Systemwould come to resemblethe other networktechnologies with which Hubbard was familiar-such as the gas and water works that were beginningto proliferatein Americancities and towns,and which, in the years prior to his initial involvementin telephony,Hubbard himself had done a good deal to promote[Carlson, 1994]. Hubbard neverdoubted that the telephonewould be quicklyadopted by banks,hotels, and retail establishmentsof all kinds. Yet he was equallyconfi- dent that it would one day prove useful within the home. Middle-class Americanslike himself-as Hubbard knew well, and as he had frequentlycon- tended in his essayson telegraphicreform-were one market that Western Union had conspicuouslyignored. To encouragehomes as well as officesto installtelephones, Hubbard offeredresidential users special low rates. And to promote its widespreaduse, he offered subscribersunlimited monthly service for a singlefee. This rate structurehad the advantageof beingrelatively sim- ple to administer.Yet other, message-unit-basedpricing schemescould have been, and were, devised,particularly in Europe. AlexanderGraham Bell echoedHubbard's convictionthat the telephone would play a major role within the home. In particular,he envisionedthe telephonereplacing the speakingtubes, pull bells,and other devicesthat well- to-do Americanshad come to rely on to maintain contact with their house- hold staff. Once householdersbecame accustomed to the new technology,he reasoned,they would urge its extensionto stores,offices, and other similar locationsthat would then be linked togetherby a central exchange. In an age when even modest middle-classhouseholds employed one or more servants, this was an ingeniousstrategy, and one well calculatedto insure that the arbitersof taste and fashionwould come to regardthe new technologyin a favorable light. To make his point, Bell cited gas and water companies- though, significantly,not districttelegraph firms-as prototypesfor the new enterprise[Bell, 1878,pp. 89-92]. Theodore N. Vail's approachto telephonywas predicatedon a similarly expansiveconception of its potential. Indeed,like Hubbard's,it oweda good deal more to postalprecedent than to the exampleof WesternUnion. This was true even though Vail had himself worked for a time as a Western Union telegraphoperator, while his cousin,Alfred Vail, had been a key figure in the earlyyears of the telegraphindustry. Prior to Vail's arrival at Bell, the most formativeexperience in his adult life-and, indeed, the reason Hubbard offered him a position in the Bell Company-hadbeen his successfultenure as the generalsuperintendent of the Railway Mail Service. Hubbard met Vail during a stint that Hubbard served as chairmanof a specialpostal commission that Congressestablished in 1876 to devisea better method for allocatingrailway mail pay. Vail worked closely with Hubbard and preparedan elaboratereport on postalcosts [Vail, 1876,pp. 8-24; Hubbard, 1877]. Hubbard was duly impressedwith Vail's energy,imag- THEODORE N. VAIL AND THE CIVIC ORIGINS OF UNIVERSALSERVICE / 77 ination, and capacityfor abstractthought, and in 1878 persuadedhim to bolt the governmentto becomethe first generalmanager at Bell. The Railway Mail Servicehad been establishedin 1869 and, under the capableleadership of a seriesof gifted administrators-includingVail-quickly becamea key element of the information infrastructureof the industrial age. The purposeof the institutionwas to speedthe movementof the mail by shift- ing its routingfrom stationarydistribution centers (where it had beenlocated since1800), to movingrailroad cars (where it would remainfor much of the next century). In its day,the continuous,train-based sorting scheme that the railwaymail clerksoversaw was widely hailed as one of the wondersof the age. Writing in 1925, Bell historianArthur Pound drew attention to the signif- icance of Vail's yearsat railwaymail [Pound, 1926, pp. 17-18]. So, too, did Robert Sobel in a perceptivebiographical sketch [Sobel, 1974]. The connec- tion wasalso noted by John Brooksin what remainsthe singlebest volume on the history of the telephoneindustry [Brooks,1976]. Yet most recentstudies of telephonehistory-including all of the works discussedabove-say nothing about it at all. How, then, might Vail'syears in the RailwayMail Servicehave influenced his businessstrategy at Bell? Severalparallels are suggestive.At the Bell Company,as at railwaymail, Vail wasfirmly committedto retainingcomplete control over the communications circuit. Like most postal officers, Vail believedthat it was incumbent to guaranteethat the mail remain under the control of individualswho could be assumedto display a proper degreeof "fealty"to the PostOffice Department. For this reason,he opposedthe practice (which dated back to the stagecoachera) of requiringmail contractorsto convey the mail betweenthe train and the post office. This custom,Vail warned,exposed the mail to "all kind of irregularities,"since it virtually guar- anteedthat it would be handled in a haphazardmanner by men whoseminds were on somethingelse [Annual Report, 1877,p. 151]. Later,as a Bell execu- tive, Vail would display an analogouscommitment to systemsintegration. Following the Bell breakup, it has come to seem odd to treat this "network mystique"as a functionalresponse to a technologicalimperative. Vail's expe- rience at railwaymail suggestsan alternativeexplanation. To bettercoordinate the routing of the mail onceit wasunder government control, Vail deviseda number of novel administrativeprocedures and spon- soredseveral conferences with his eight divisionalsuperintendents. One such meeting,in September1877, lasted a full week.The purposeof this conference, Vail explained,was to improverelations between the governmentand the rail- roads, standardizethe work of the various divisions,minimize routing errors, and deviseuniform procedures[History, 1885, pp. 114, 184]. Later, at AT&T, Vail would make similar organizationalsummits a prominent feature of the firm's corporateculture. Interestingly,there is little evidencethat, at this time, similarmeetings were held at WesternUnion. No featureof the RailwayMail Servicewas more distinctivethan its esprit decorps. Here, too, wasa culturalnorm that anticipated,and that may well have 78 / RICHARD R. JOHN helped to shape,the meritocraticethos that was such a distinctivefeature of the Bell System under Vail. Unlike much of the rest of the Post Office Department-which remained tied to the patronage-basedmass parties-the RailwayMail Servicewas administered on civil serviceprinciples. Promotions were basedon performance,and all clerkswere required to take periodic tests to demonstratetheir skills. "Upon the carefulperformance of their duties," Vail declaredin 1876,"are dependentinterests of a magnitudethat cannotbe estimated."After all, a "singleerror" on the clerks'part, resultingin the "delay or missendingof a singleletter, no matter how unimportantit may look, may result disastrouslyto some individual or corporation" [,4nnualRqort, 1876, p. 167]. On the fidelity of the railwaymail clerks,Vail addedtwo yearslater, were dependentinterests "beyond estimate"that they had "fully met." If, then, the United Stateswas to boasta postalservice of which therewas "none superior" then to "theseemployes is due their shareof the credit" •4nnual Rqort, 1878, p. 242]. Few featuresof railwaymail intriguedVail more than the FastMail, a high- speedmail link betweenNew York and Chicagothat cut the transittime to a mere twenty-fivehours-a remarkableachievement that was,in its day, as well known as the Pony Express. Though Vail himself did not establishthe Fast Mail, he oversawits expansionand took great interest in its administration. The project was, Vail declared in one of his annual reports, of comparable import to the initial establishmentof the railwaymail. Every day, he proudly reported,fast mail clerkssorted no fewer than 529,000 piecesof mail [•tnnual Rqort, 1876, pp. 163, 165]. Vail recognizedthat the Fast Mail project was experimental,yet he was confident that it would prove its worth by-among other things-speedingup mail deliverythroughout the rest of the country, and ratchetingup adminis- trativestandards in the remainingdistribution centers and feederlines. Later, as the first presidentof AT&T-the Bell Company'slong-distance subsidiary- Vail would championlong-distance telephony for similarreasons-seeing in it a competitiveadvantage that would enableBell to establisha levelof servicethat no competitor could match. Vail's involvementwith the Fast Mail brought him into contact with William Vanderbilt, the president of the New York and Hudson Railroad. Frustratedby a suddenreduction in mail pay, Vanderbilt briefly tossedthe mailbagsoff his railroad cars-a gesturethat Vail regardedas deeply offensive to the citizenswho lived in the immediatevicinity, and entirelyout-of-keeping with the public-serviceethos that had shapedpostal policy for eighty years. The government, Vail declared at one point, should be invested with an "absolutepower" to determinewhich trainsshould carry the mail, and how much room shouldbe providedto facilitateits sorting[•tnnual Rqort, 1877,p. 151]. Vail alwaysopposed government ownership of the telephoneindustry. Yet he favoredits regulation-and,indeed, was convincedthat intelligentgov- ernment oversightwas not only inevitable,but desirable.Here, too, wasa habit of mind that may well havebeen shapedby his yearsat railwaymail. THEODORE N. VAIL AND THE CMC ORIGINS OF UNIVERSALSERVICE / 79

One of the central tenets of the "organizationalsynthesis" that Louis Galamboshas done so much to popularizeis the assertionthat, at somepoint after 1880, American societyassumed a new and different form [Galambos, 1970, 1983]. Prior to 1880, Galamboscontended, institutional development had been primarily extensivein the sensethat it involvedthe settlementof the vastNorth Americaninterior. This processinvolved a multitudeof Arnericans, virtuallyall of whomwere engaged in venturesno largerth0aa the artisanalshop or the family farm. With the exceptionof the railroad,large-scale organiza- tions-in businessor government-wereunknown. Only after 1880, with the riseof the moderncorporation, would this trajectorychange in a fundamental way. Henceforth,institutional development would becomeintensive. Rapidly, and in waysthat no one could possiblyhave foreseen,the country was trans- formed with the elaboration of administrative hierarchies, first in business and then in government. America'srendevous with destinyhad come-and it was a rendevousnot with liberalism,but with bureaucracy. The Galambosianbifurcation of the Americanpast into pre-bureaucratic and post-bureaucraticphases has a certainintuitive appeal. Indeed,in various ways,it builds fruitfully upon-and, indeed,supplies a ParsonJangloss to-the frontier thesis of FrederickJackson Turner -one of the most venerableand seeminglyindispensable of historiographicalconstructs. Yet, whateverits strengths,it rendersinvisible large-scale undertakings such as the RailwayMail Service-and, in this way, obscuresthe origins of conceptssuch as universal service.The RailwayMail Serviceis anomalouson two counts. Not only is it an "intensive"enterprise that antedatedthe greatdivide of 1880,but it is also a governmentalinstitution rather than a businessfirm. Vail's tenure at the RailwayMail Service-and,more broadly,the civic rationalefor universalservice to which he had been exposedduring his years in the government-suggeststhat, long before 1880, the government-and,in particular,the federalgovernment-had been a majorseedbed of administrative innovation. This conclusionmay perplexlate-twentieth century Americans- accustomed,as we are, to accordingcausal primacy to economicand techno- logical phenomena. Yet it would have startled neither Vail nor his more thoughtful contemporaries.Only after 1880, asJames L. Hutson has recently suggested,would Americans began to regard economic phenomena as more fundamentalthan political processesas agentsof change[Hutson, 1993;John, 1997b]. The influenceof Vail's tenurein the RailwayMail Serviceupon his subsequentcareer in telephonysuggests that it may well be time to reconsider the meritsof this older view. Only then, perhaps,will it be possibleto under- standthe civicorigins of universalservice-and, more broadly,the culturaland politicalcontext out of which the moderncorporation emerged.

References

Annual Reportof thePostmaster General (Washington, 1876, 1877, 1878). 80 / RICHARD K JOHN

Bell, AlexanderGraham, "To the Capitalistsof the ElectricTelephone Company," 25 March 1878, in J. E. Kingsbury,The 7•lephone and 7•lephoneExchanges: Their Invention and Development(London, 1915),89-92. Brooks,John, 7klephone:The First Hundred l½ars (New York, 1976). Carlson,W. Bernard,"Entrepreneurship in the Early Developmentof the Telephone: How Did William Orton and Cardiner Hubbard Conceptualize the New Technology?"Business and EconomicHistory, 23 (1994), 161-192. Fischer,Claude S., •lmerica Calling:•1 Sodal Historyof the 7•lephoneto 1940 (Berkeley, 1992). Galambos, Louis, "Theodore N. Vail and the Role of Innovation in the Modern Bell System,"Business History Revie•v, 66 (1992), 95-126. Galambos,Louis, "Technology,Political Economy, and Professionalization:Central Themes of the OrganizationalSynthesis," Business History Review, 57 (1983), 471- 493. Galambos, Louis, "The Emerging Organizational Synthesisin American History," BusinessHistory Reviezo, 44 (1970), 279-290. Garnet, Robert W., The l•lephoneEnterprise: The Evolution of theBell System5Horizontal Structure,1876-1909 (Baltimore, 1985). Historyof theRailway Mail Service:•1 Chapterin theHistory of Postal•lJ•irs in theUnited States (Washington,1885). Hubbard,Gardiner G., "GovernmentControl of the Telegraph,"North•lmen'can Review, 325 (1883), 521-535. Hubbard. Gardiner G., "Report of the Special Commission on Railway Mail Transportation,"Senate Miscellaneous Document 14, 45th Cong., 2d. sess.,1877, serial 1785. Hubbard, Gardiner G., Memorialof GardinerG. Hubbardin Relationto thePostal l•legraph, n. p., 1873. Hubbard,Gardiner G., TheProposed Changes in thel•legraphic System (Boston, 1873). Hubbard, Gardiner G., ThePostal l•legraph: The Only Means by Whichthe l•legraph Can be Made theOrdinary Method of Communication...(Boston, 1869). Hubbard, Gardiner G., Union of thePost-Office and l•legraph.Letter to thePostmaster General onthe European and •lmerican Systems of l•legraph,with Remedy Jbr the Present High Rates (Boston,1868). Hutson, James L., "The American Revolutionaries, the Political Economy of Aristocracy,and the AmericanConcept of the Distribution of Wealth, 1765-1900," •lmericanHistorical Review, 98 (1993), 1079-1105. John, RichardtL, "Recastingthe InformationInfrastructure for the InformationAge," in Alfred D. Chandler,Jr., and JamesW. Cortada, eds.,•/Nation l?ans•rmedby InJbrmation:How InJbrmationShaped the United States from ColonialIS'mes to thePresent (New York, forthcoming 2000). John, RichardtL, "The Politicsof Innovation,"Daedalus, 127 (1998), 187-214. John, RichardtL, "Elaborations,Revisions, Dissents: Alfred D. Chandler'sThe Visible Hand after TwentyYears," Business History Review, 71 (1997), 151-200. John, Richard tL, "GovernmentalInstitutions as Agents of Change: Rethinking American Political Development in the Early Republic, 1787-1835,"Studies in •lmericanPoliticalDevelopment, 11 (1997), 347-380. John, Richard tL, Spreadingthe News: The •lmen'can Postal System from Franklin to Morse (Cambridge,1995; paperback, 1998). THEODORE N. VAIL AND THE CMC ORIGINS OF UNIVERSALSERVICE / 81

Lipartito, Kenneth, "Culture and the Practice of BusinessHistory," Businessand EconomicHistory, 24, 2 (1995), 1-41. Lipartito, Kenneth, "When Women Were Switches:Technology, Work, and Gender in the TelephoneIndustry, 1890-1920,"/tmericanHistorical Review, 99 (1994), 1075- 1111. Lipartito, Kenneth, TheBell Systemand RegionalBusiness.. The l•lephone in theSouth, 1877- 1920 (Baltimore, 1989). Lipartito, Kenneth, "SystemBuilding at the Margin: The Problem of Public Choice in the TelephoneIndustry," Journal of EconomicHistory, 49 (1989), 323-336. Marchand, Roland, Creatingthe Corporate Soul.. The Rise of PublicRelations and Corporate Imageryin/tmerican Business (Berkeley, 1998). Mueller, Milton L., Jr., UniversalService: Competition, Interconnection, and Monopo.ly in the Making of the/tmerican l•lephone System (Cambridge, 1997). Pool, Ithiel de Sola,ed., TheSocial Impact of thel•lephone (Cambridge, 1977). Pound,Arthur, The1Nephone Idea: Fifty 13ars/tfier(New York, 1926). Sicilia, David, "Cochran's Legacy:A Cultural Path Not Taken," Businessand Economic History,24, 1 (1995), 2%39 Smith, George David, The/tnatomyof a BusinessStrategy.' Bell, V&sternElectric, and the Originsof the/tmerican l•lephone Industry (Baltimore, 1985). Sobel,Robert, TheEnterpreneurs: Explorations Within the/tmerican Business l?adition (New York, 1974). Vail, Theodore N., "Statement..."13 January 1877, in "Additional PapersRelating to Railway Mail Transportation,"Senate Miscellaneous Document 20, 44th Cong., 2d sess.,serial 1766. Vail, TheodoreN., Viewson Public Questions:/t Collection of Papersand/tddresses of Theodore Newton Vail 1907-1917,n. p., 1917.