-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- An excerpt from: Forbes: Telephone Pioneer Arthur S. Pier�1953 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Dodd, Mead & Company New York LCCN 53-9607 232 pps. � First Edition � ----- Will Forbes, son of John Murray Forbes, patner in Rusell & Company. Related to Perkins and bunch. Opium/China trade money first went to RR and steel rails and then telephone and copper wire. Notice secret society activity at Harvard. Om K ----- 10 A RICH MAN at the age of thirty-eight and junior partner in a house that controlled an expanding empire of western lands and railroads, Forbes was dissatisfied. To float comfortably through life on a wave of prosperity that had not been set in motion by his own efforts was hardly an alluring prospect for one of his temperament. His impulse to create and ability to lead demanded expression; they were curbed by his father's wise, benevolent, but autocratic rule. Familiar with the progress that Bell and Hubbard and Sanders had made in promoting the commercial possibilities of the telephone and with the difficulties besetting them, he joined the group of Boston capitalists who in January, 1879, organized the National Bell Telephone Company, and was elected a director. In return for the financial support which the new directors contributed, the inventor and his two valiant sponsors who could no longer carry on the fight against hostile interests alone willingly surrendered control of the enterprise to them. A letter written by Bell to his wife from Milton Hill on January 24, 1879, gives his impressions of the man on whose judicious conduct of the business his prosperity and success were soon to hang: "My darling May: I have come here tonight as the guest of Mr. Forbes, one of the new Directors, a wealthy man of great influence and who has a reputation of thorough integrity. I have come here to make his acquaintance and study him as well as I can, for I have been much struck with his appearance and manner. You know how much struck I was with the appearance of Mr. Morgan of London, your grandfather's friend.[*] He seemed to have stamped upon his features the words 'Integrity, Firmness, Good Sense and Experience.' Well, I have never met a man who reminded me so strongly of Mr. Morgan's cast of head and inspired in me so much confidence as this Mr. Forbes. To be sure, there is not the remotest likeness to Mr. Morgan, but the same character seems to be expressed in his countenance. I judge a great deal from appearances. I like and dislike, I trust and distrust people without the remotest reason very often. I have a sort of instinctive feeling that sways me unconsciously, and I was conscious of a sort of sigh of relief when I found Mr. Forbes's head among those on the Board of Directors. . . . Taking my impressions of all the men gathered together to consider the condition of the Company, I think we have reason to be thankful that we have such a good set. . . . But the only man who impresses me as possessing marked ability is this Mr. Forbes." [* Junius S. Morgan, father of J. Pierpont Morgan and founder of the Morgan bank. Mrs. Bell's maternal grandfather was Robert McCurdy, one of the founders of the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York.] About a month later, as shown in a letter written to Mrs. Bell from Boston on February 21, the inventor was assailed by misgivings. "I did not like some hints let fall by Mr. Forbes as to the advisability of compromising with Western Union. I intend to make a point of this on Monday-that Mr. Hubbard's retention as President is my guarantee that no arrangement will be made with Western Union until my reputation has been cleared. I intend to say a good word for Sanders on Monday and to propose Mr. Hubbard as President and Sanders and Forbes as VicePresidents." Bell's bitterness against the Western Union Company, which was controlled by the Vanderbilts, was natural. Three years earlier he and Hubbard and Sanders, less confident of the future of the telephone than they subsequently became, had offered their property and patents to the Western Union Company for $100,000. To their great good fortune their offer was declined. The Western Union, through its subsidiaries, the Gold and Stock Company and the American Speaking Telephone Company, acquired the telephonic patents of Thomas A. Edison, Elisha Gray, and Amos E. Dolbear, and not only entered into active competition with the Bell Company, but also tried to discredit the inventor's claims. Hubbard engaged two distinguished Boston lawyers, Chauncey Smith and James J. Storrow, to defend Bell's claims. Facing prolonged and costly litigation and needing funds beyond their resources to expand their business, the three original owners had enlisted the support of the local capitalists. Nevertheless as far as financial strength was concerned, it was still David pitting himself against Goliath. At the meeting of the National Bell Telephone directors on March 11, 1879, not Hubbard but Forbes was elected president of the Company. Even then his father, who had kept aloof from William's new venture, put no money into it. If it should succeed, William should have the prestige and the profit; if it should fail, William's should be the burden and the loss. The new president at once waged war against the Western Union with a vigor and efficiency that Bell must have found reassuring. In New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and other cities where the Western Union had established telephone exchanges and obtained subscribers to its service, he strengthened the management of the Bell exchanges and procured for them a greater measure of local support. On April 26 he wrote to Richard S. Fay, one of the Bell Telephone directors: "We need a man at once to take the Chicago agency. He should be a suitable person to carry on a brisk fight, as matters are in such a position on account of bad service by the enemy and superiority of our instruments that a man of energy and judgment can probably put our affairs there in very satisfactory condition by prompt action. We should supply the demand as fast as it comes-now about at the rate of 100 subscribers�$4000�per month. . . . This Chicago agent should act as general agent for states corivenient to Chicago and should have a general western supply depot to which orders for apparatus could be sent direct . . . It looks now as if the big gun in reserve which the enemy is supposed to have is the testimony of their experts that instruments made after Bell's patents of them will not work. As made by our people exactly by specification they talk perfectly well." Besides decrying the efficiency of the Bell telephone, the Western Union threatened to set its own telephone rates so low that the Bell system could not profitably compete. On April 30, Forbes reassured a worried investor: "In regard to the proposal of the Western Union to begin an action all over the country putting down rates to control the business, while that course is always open to them it strikes me as so pointedly against their own interests to adopt it in a field where two parties can reap handsome profits while litigation is in progress that I should expect to see any such programme rejected if the management of the company is what I suppose it to be. We find quite as much local feeling against the Western Union as I should think they would care to encounter, and as all but two or three of our district companies are owned by local interests, an attempt to break them down will meet with strong opposition in this country, and the temporary character of any low tariff that may be offered will be too clearly understood to tempt any strong support." Forbes read the mind of "the enemy" shrewdly. The action that had been proposed was not carried out. In fact, as he wrote a few days later, the Western Union had begun to realize that it was engaged in a losing battle. "The opposition," wrote Forbes, 11 acknowledge that we have got far ahead of them in the telephone business. We have on rental over 30,000 instruments costing us an average of $2,50, which give satisfaction to the public. They have about one third of this number out, costing ten and eleven dollars each, which do not give satisfaction." Some of the local interests that acquired control of the district exchanges were acting as agents for Jay Gould, who had organized the American Union Telegraph Company to compete against Vanderbilt's Western Union. The struggle between these two financial giants had advantageous results for the Bell Company. Vanderbilt feared that Gould might get control of it and use it effectively to break down the Western Union's telegraph monopoly. "The enemy," as Forbes had been in the habit of characterizing the Western Union, showed an increasingly conciliatory spirit. Fear that the Bell Company, if not checked, would invade the field of the telegraph which the Western Union had staked out as its own, rather than recognition of the profits to be made in the field of the telephone, had been the primary motive which had impelled the Western Union to contest Bell's patents and set up rival claims. In November, 1879, the negotiations with the Western Union which Forbes directed and which the two Boston lawyers, Smith and Storrow, conducted on behalf of the Bell Company resulted in an agreement greatly to the Bell Company's advantage. The Western Union sold all its telephone properties and patents to the National Bell Company and recognized the priority of the Bell patents. In return it was to receive 20 per cent of National Bell Company's license fees-the fees from district exchanges. The Bell Company agreed to keep out of the telegraph business and to deliver to Western Union any telegraph messages that it might receive for transmission. Thus Western Union settled for a one-fifth interest in a business which it might have bought outright for a paltry sum three years earlier. The policy of trying to shut out competition did not prevail permanently. Forbes realized that the public interest is best served by the unification of telephone facilities and foresaw the importance of this in connecting exchanges so as to give countrywide service. Independent telephone companies which sprang up here and there were later granted the right to connect with the Bell poles and wires. pps.117-122 ===== After several months of training at Readville the Second Massachusetts Cavalry was sent to join forces assigned to the defence of Washington. The anxiety felt for the safety of the capital was out of all proportion to the strength of the enemy forces in the vicinity, yet it was warranted by the daring and skill with which they were employed. The commander of these mounted troops�Rangers as they were called�was Colonel John S. Mosby. On the raids which created so much uneasiness in Washington and which cost the lives of many Union soldiers he seldom had more than 250 men. Lee commended him in dispatches more often than he did any other Confederate officer, though some Confederate generals were contemptuous of one whom they regarded as a guerrilla, and whose troops were not, in the beginning, a. recognized unit of the Confederate army. After a successful raid Mosby's men ordinarily returned to their farms or usual occupations and awaited the next call from their leader. Because of the celerity with which they melted away and with which when the moment was favorable and the summons came, they reorganized, they were never rounded up and destroyed. The Northern armies struggling to reach Richmond were never secure with Mosby in their rear. He repeatedly cut their lines of communication, destroyed supplies on which they depended, and hampered their movements. With his small and scattered forces he kept thousands of Union troops virtually inactive, guarding the perimeter of the capital. To capture Mosby and break up his band had been found by three Union generals, Pleasanton, Stoughton, and Stahel, a baffling task. The Second Massachusetts Cavalry under Colonel Lowell was eager to succeed where all others had failed. Captain Forbes and his company were stationed on high ground about four miles north of Washington. General Heintzleman, commanding the forces guarding the city, frequently had false alarms sounded in order that the green troops might be kept on the alert for the surprise attacks which were Mosby's specialty. A passage in one of Captain Forbes's letters home suggests that these false alarms had results similar to those produced by the boy who cried "Wolf! Wolf!" too often. "The long roll was beat last night and all the forts and troops in the vicinity, including ourselves, were turned out under arms, we saddling up and leading out. Then shortly we were ordered to lead back, being informed it was a false alarm. Fortunately as the commandant of the fort had sent word to us the night before, all the officers were aware of the coming disturbance and so displayed a commendable coolness before the men. This dose is to be repeated, they say, to-night and to-morrow night at midnight, by which time, I imagine, it will be somewhat played out." pps. 36-37 ===== Owing to John Forbes's influence, President Hayes in 1878 appointed Mosby Consul General at Hong Kong, a post that he held until 1885, Some time after his return to America, hearing that Mrs. William Forbes and her daughter were in San Francisco, where he was temporarily living, he called on them. As he was leaving he said, with the vanity and gallantry of the Southern cavalier, "Miss Forbes, you have done something your father was never able to do. You have captured Mosby." In 1904, the old gentleman, then living in Washington, called on Cameron Forbes, who was about to start for the Philippines as a member of the Philippine Commission. Mosby informed him that among the Rangers his father was always known as "the fighting major." Nine years later, on visiting Washington after returning from the Philippines, Cameron Forbes found Mosby, then over eighty years of age, impoverished and badly in need of an operation. He was able to assist him through the ordeal. After Mosby had recovered, he arranged to have the surviving Rangers of his command meet the son of "the fighting major" at Aldie. Cameron sent for three of his brothers, Ralph, Waldo, and Edward, to come to the gathering. They all spent the night at the old house of the Fairfax family, at one time the home of President Monroe, near the scene of the engagement. Only Mosby himself was absent; he had been called away by the death of his son. Fifteen Rangers took the four Forbeses over the battlefield and gave their recollections of the fight. One of them had escorted Major Forbes from the field after he had surrendered. He said, "We were willing he should ride, but he wouldn't, since we made all the other prisoners walk. He was the proudest man I ever saw. p. 49 ===== Popular and well disposed towards all the world, William Forbes in his junior year was taken into the Med. Fac., a secret society which engaged in bizarre exploits, usually of a sort that would annoy the college authorities. One of its less mischievous and more entertaining enterprises was the sending of a parchment scroll, appropriately engrossed, to the Czar of Russia, notifying him that the Med. Fac. of Harvard University had conferred the honorary degree of M.D. on him. The Czar, pleased at receiving this recognition from a learned society, acknowledged the honor by sending a fine set of surgical instruments to the Med. Fac. of Harvard University. The circumstances leading up to William Forbes's initiation into the Med. Fac. and to the catastrophe that followed are described in a memorandum by his father: "Some time in November (1859) a party of students broke into the New Chapel, took the Bible (from the pulpit) for the purpose of sending it to Yale, and perhaps in the hope of avoiding their morning Muster Roll�miscalled Meeting for Prayers -scattered asafoetida or other such substance about the Chapel and in the furnace. How does the Faculty meet this outrage, as they call it,�perpetrated as it was by young men sent from their homes to be put under their parental guardianship? Do they call the students together and by the voice of the eloquent President represent the folly, and if you please, the wickedness of this frolic, appeal to their manliness and good sense to let it go no farther, and say that they must resort to the Civil authorities for protection if the appeal to the better feelings and intelligence of the young men proves useless? "Not at all! The offense is too deep; the offenders must be rooted out. The Faculty have not forgotten that from time immemorial the Chapel, from being the muster ground of the students each day, has always been the scene of their mischievous pranks. But here is a case aggravated by imposing architecture and fresh upholstery! This is the new Chapel, shining in its silken tassels and varnish and fresh cushions! Had it been the old Chapel, sanctified by the mixed associations of the past, its funerals, its shivering morning meetings and its sober partings, there might have been room to mingle mercy and justice. But here is a spick and span new building, which recalls to all minds not so much Paul the Apostle as another Paul the fashionable upholsterer! So our paternal government, with vengeance in their hearts for the sacrilege committed, determine to wash out the stain and re-sanctify the edifice by slyly putting a man in ambush in the pulpit armed with club and revolver to arrest, dead or alive, such youths entrusted to their fatherly care! For over fifty nights their agent watches for their victims, then hears them approach, waits till the foremost is fairly entrapped, and then rushes upon him to prevent his escape." This narrative requires a word of correction. The Faculty were not wholly to blame. It is true that they preserved silence, instead of warning the students that an armed guard had been placed in the Chapel. The decision to hire him and keep him on secret night duty even after the first of January when his commission as a policeman of the city of Cambridge had expired was President Walker's alone. To William Forbes for his initiation on the night of January I was assigned the task of placing on the preacher's desk in the pulpit the Bible that had finally been purloined from the Yale Chapel and thus completing the nefarious transaction which had been begun in November. Between two and three o'clock on that cold and snowy January night, with the Yale Bible in his hand and accompanied by several senior members of the Med. Fac., the nervous neophyte entered the Harvard Yard and approached the Chapel steps. The door, which he tested cautiously, was locked. Unfortunately, the resourcefulness of his companions rose to the emergency. In a short time one of them procured a ladder, and then another produced, surprisingly enough, a policeman's "billy," a short club with a whalebone handle and a heavily weighted end. Forbes ascended the ladder with the Bible under his arm; with the "billy" he smashed two windows, then climbed through and dropped to the Chapel floor. Hilton, the hired watchman, had pulled off his boots and was resting comfortably in the pulpit. He was aroused by the sound of breaking glass and excited voices from outside. The testimony of both Hilton and Forbes as to what happened then was confused and conflicting; neither of them had a clear memory of the sequence of events. Hilton came down from the pulpit, and whether he grappled with Forbes or Forbes grappled with him is not clear. Hilton clubbed Forbes across the forehead, and Forbes retaliated by striking Hilton a blow with his "billy," which sent him reeling back and opened up a gash in his head. Then Hilton shifted his pistol to his right hand; whether he first snapped it without result and on the second try fired, or whether he first fired and missed and on the second try snapped it without result neither he nor Forbes was certain. At any rate there was no doubt that he fired to kill; the bullet sang past Forbes's ear. He cocked the pistol again, and Forbes said he would surrender if he was an officer of the law. Hilton stated that he was, lighted a candle, and took out a pair of handcuffs, which he fastened on Forbes's wrists. The sight of his bloody wound by candle light affected the young man so deeply that he was entirely submissive. The part played by the senior members of the Med. Fac. outside who had heard the shot and then, on the ladder, listened in suspense to what followed was an ignoble one. Satisfied that neither Forbes nor the policeman had been killed and that the two were engaged in amicable conversation, they slunk silently away to their beds. Hilton kept his manacled prisoner in the Chapel with him until daybreak. He felt groggy himself and was unwilling to venture forth lest the confederates that he supposed to be lurking outside should make an attempt at rescue. In the dim light of dawn he escorted Forbes to the police station and then went home and put himself in a doctor's care. Since the physician after examining him reported that the injury was serious and the outcome uncertain, the magistrate committed Forbes to the jail, "filled with thieves and smallpox patients," his father wrote with justifiable wrath. On the following day the physician pronounced Hilton out of danger. The defendant was allowed to go free on bail. He said sorrowfully to his mother, "I can never have any hope of Edith Emerson now." Forbes's undergraduate friends proposed to make a demonstration in the hope of influencing the Faculty to take a lenient view of his offence. William's father, learning of their intention, drove to Cambridge and appeared at the meeting where plans for the demonstration were being laid. He told the youths decisively that there must be nothing of the kind, that William deserved to suffer some penalty for his folly and that such action as they had in mind would not be likely to mitigate it. He himself hoped that President Walker would not be unduly severe. That hope was disappointed. A week after the Chapel affair he received a letter from Doctor Walker, profuse in expressions of sympathy and also of regret that the closing weeks of his presidency at Harvard should have been marred by such an unhappy incident. He announced the vote of the Faculty, to wit: "It appearing to this Board that, on the night of January 11, Forbes, Junior, effected a forcible entrance into the College Chapel, and when arrested by a Police officer stationed there by order of the Corporation in consequence of previous outrages upon the building, refused to submit to his authority, made violent resistance, and inflicted a blow with a deadly weapon which endangered the officer's life: Therefore, Voted that Forbes, Junior, be expelled from the College." Mrs. Forbes shared her husband's distress at what seemed to them the injustice of this extreme penalty. She was indignant that the College had put an officer in the Chapel who had fired at her son; that the boy had narrowly escaped death from a bullet, had been clubbed and handcuffed and cast into prison was punishment enough. Hoping at least to avert prosecution of his son in the criminal court, John Forbes through his lawyers entered into negotiations with Hilton, whose demands were extortionate. The amount that the distracted father settled on him enabled him to acquire the property on Massachusetts Avenue facing the Harvard Yard and subsequently known as Hilton's Block.[*] From the rental of shops on the street floor to tradesmen and of suites of rooms on the floors above to students Hilton became affluent. Gazing out of an upper window of his building he could see through the elms a short distance away the Chapel-the scene of the encounter to which he owed his opulence.[ * Now called Fairfax] John Forbes's generosity failed to produce the immunity for his son that he had expected. Hilton was satisfied and had no desire to have the case brought to trial, but the trial took place, nevertheless. Ezra Ripley of Concord, a cousin of the Emersons, was the clerk of the court. Never having met the defendant and sharing in the general condemnation of his action, he had supposed him to be a lawless brawler and dissipated young reprobate. He was amazed at the gentle and respectful demeanor of the youth. Nevertheless, as he reported, he could not help feeling that the numerous character witnesses, old and young, who crowded into the courtroom to testify for him, extolled his virtues extravagantly; he thought that the old men must have been deceived and that the young men had lied. The trial was finished in one day. William Forbes was fined fifty dollars and costs; he did not have to serve a jail sentence. John Forbes found a desk for the dejected young man in the Boston office of the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad, which he controlled. The clerk labored diligently to regain the esteem that he felt he had forfeited. Every day he left the house on Milton Hill before sunrise to drive in to the office; he never got home until after dark. In this unhappy period of his life, the death of his sister, Ellen, at the age of twenty-one, brought fresh sorrow to him and his family. Domestic grief and the war cloud that overhung the nation laid their heavy discipline on one who had erred from exuberance of spirit. William Forbes would have graduated from Harvard in 1861. He ceased to be a clerk in that year. pps. 11-17 ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, All My Relations. Omnia Bona Bonis, Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soap-boxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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