St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1910-12-14
CIowry and Vail.

The election of Theodore N. Vail
as president of the Western Union
Telegraph company, coming within
a month of the reelection of Colonel
R. G. Clowry to that Office, has oc-
casioned considerable surprise, but
it was probably timed to occur just
one year after the announcement of
the practical amalgamation of the
Western Union and the Telephone
company. With the retirement of
Colonel CloWry goes out of the
Western Union management the last
of the old guard of Civil War tele-
graphers, men who were interested
in the company before and during
the war and have been kept in the
management ever since. Colonel
Clowry entered the telegraph employ
as messenger at the age of Ia and
has been with the company ever
since. His immediate predecessor as
president was Major T. T. Eckert,
who died only a few weeks ago. In
the changes in the Western Union
and its recent improvements too
much credit cannot be given to Col
onel Clowry, for it was his ener-
getic management and control dur
ing the ten years of presidency which
infused new blood into the concern,
made the service more efficient in
al the cities of the United States
and saved it from being absorbed
by its rival. That he is retired now
is merely evidence that what was
the smaller concern has become the
greater, and the Telephone company
is the master of the two great con-
Germs.
In the assumption of this Office
by President Vail of the Telephone
company, we see the striking
triumph of a man who had until
three years ago really been out of
wire business for a great many
years. 1t was not Mr.. Vail himself
who was first interested in the tele-
graph business with Morse, but it
was cousin of his, Alfred Vail of
New Jersey, who worked together
with Morse and DR.. Gale in 1898 to
perfect the invention; and it was
Alfred Vail who received in the
Montc1air station in Baltimore the
famous first message which Morse
sent over the wire from Washington:
.'What hath God wrought" The
Vail family was very much chagrined
by the failure of Professor Morse to
recognize him as a real assistant.
Young Vail was early in his life
acquainted with the telegraph bust
ness, having served as an operator in
a little town in Iowa. 1t was his pro-
motion into the railway mail service
that really showed the public what
a big man he was, as he routed the
entire state of Iowa, showing how
the mail could be carried by rail-
way connections to the various post
omces-a process that is perfectly
familiar now but which really revo-
lutionized the postal railway bust
ness. Not long afterward he return
ed east and came into the CONNER
cial side Of the telephone business,
in which he made great success
and acquired a fortune. But he was
out of this business for 20 years, en-
gagged in commercial and financial
enterprises in South America and
England, and living in a sort of re-
tirement in his Vermont home. His
return to the active telephone bust
ness after 20 years absence and his
grasp Of it's affairs, his absolute con-
troll of all details, is perhaps one ofthe
most astonishing examples of a
mans coming back" known to his
tory. That at the age of nearly
70 he should take up the titanic
double burden and be a judge
competent to administer it is a re-
futation of one current idea that
there is dead line in business and
the other that our industrial prob
lens are becoming too big for US
[Boston Transcript.