He has never been a "high financier" to juggle profits out of other men's losses.

He is merely applying to the telephone business the same hard sense that any farmer uses in the management of his farm.

He is building a Big Barn, metaphorically, for the telephone and telegraph.
Plainly, the telephone system of the future will be national, so that any two people in the same country will be able to talk to one another.
It will not be competitive, for the reason that no farmer would think for a moment of running his farm on competitive lines.

It will have a staff-and-line organization, to use a military phrase.

Each local company will continue to handle its own local affairs, and exercise to the full the basic virtue of self-help.