The Western Union had lost its case, for several very simple reasons: It had tried to operate a telephone system on telegraphic lines, a plan that has invariably been unsuccessful, it had a low idea of the possibilities of the telephone business; and its already busy agents had little time or knowledge or enthusiasm to give to the new enterprise. With all its power, it found itself outfought by this compact body of picked men, who were young, zealous, well-handled, and protected by a most invulnerable patent. The Bell Telephone now took its place with the Telegraph, the Railroad, the Steamboat, the Harvester, and the other necessities of a civilized country. Its pioneer days were over. There was no more ridicule and incredulity. Every one knew that the Bell people had whipped the Western Union, and hastened to join in the grand Te Deum of applause. Within five months from the signing of the agreement, there had to be a reorganization; and the American Bell Telephone Company was created, with six million dollars capital. In the following year, 1881, twelve hundred new towns and cities were marked on the telephone map, and the first dividends were paid--$178,500. And in 1882 there came such a telephone boom that the Bell System was multiplied by two, with more than a million dollars of gross earnings. At this point all the earliest pioneers of the telephone, except Vail, pass out of its history. Thomas Sanders sold his stock for somewhat less than a million dollars, and presently lost most of it in a Colorado gold mine. His mother, who had been so good a friend to Bell, had her fortune doubled. Gardiner G. Hubbard withdrew from business life, and as it was impossible for a man of his ardent temperament to be idle, he plunged into the National Geographical Society. He was a Colonel Sellers whose dream of millions (for the telephone) had come true; and when he died, in 1897, he was rich both in money and in the affection of his friends. Charles Williams, in whose workshop the first telephones were made, sold his factory to the Bell Company in 1881 for more money than he had ever expected to possess. Thomas A. Watson resigned at the same time, finding himself no longer a wage-worker but a millionaire. Several years later he established a shipbuilding plant near Boston, which grew until it employed four thousand workmen and had built half a dozen warships for the United States Navy.