But in 1878, when the Western Union made its short-lived attempt to compete with the Bell Company, the Western Electric agreed to make its telephones.

Three years later, when the brief spasm of competition was ended, the Western Electric was taken in hand by the Bell people and has since then remained the great workshop of the telephone.
The main plant in Chicago is not especially remarkable from a manufacturing point of view.

Here are the inevitable lumber-yards and foundries and machine-shops.

Here is the mad waltz of the spindles that whirl silk and cotton threads around the copper wires, very similar to what may be seen in any braid factory.

Here electric lamps are made, five thousand of them in a day, in the same manner as elsewhere, except that here they are so small and dainty as to seem designed for fairy palaces.
The things that are done with wire in the Western Electric factories are too many for any mere outsider to remember.