He was no longer a promoter, but a general manager. Men were standing in line to ask for agencies.
"Watson," he said, "there's a young man in Washington who can handle this situation, and I want you to run down and see what you think of him." Watson went, reported favorably, and in a day or so the young man received a letter from Hubbard, offering him the position of General Manager, at a salary of thirty-five hundred dollars a year.
The new General Manager had, of course, no experience in the telephone business.
Vail found himself painting brain-pictures of the future of the telephone, and by the time that he was asked to become its General Manager, he had become so confident that, as he said afterwards, he "was willing to leave a Government job with a small salary for a telephone job with no salary."
How to compete with the Western Union, which had this superior transmitter, a host of agents, a network of wires, forty millions of capital, and a first claim upon all newspapers, hotels, railroads, and rights of way--that was the immediate problem that confronted the new General Manager. Every inch of progress had to be fought for.
splendidly!'--'you must,' he said in agitation, 'go and see the general manager at once.
Kurtz,' I continued severely,'is General Manager, you won't have the opportunity.'
I was elected by acclamation to the office of
general manager of the entertainments; and I did my best to deserve the confidence reposed in me; leaving literature and science, so far as I was concerned, perfectly at liberty to advance themselves or not , just as they liked.
Next came the paid actors; and lastly the shareholders, generally also actors, some or all of whom were the
general managers. The writers of plays were sometimes members of the companies, as in Shakspere's case; sometimes, however, they were independent.