'
Grateful to Miss Ellsworth for bringing the good news, he declared
that when the Washington to Baltimore line was complete hers should be
the first despatch.
The Government now paid him a salary of 2,500 dollars a month to
superintend the laying of the underground line which he had decided
upon. Professors Gale and Fisher became his assistants. Vail was put in
charge, and Mr. Ezra Cornell, who founded the Cornell University on the
site of the cotton mill where he had worked as a mechanic, and who had
invented a machine for laying pipes, was chosen to supervise the running
of the line. The conductor was a five-wire cable laid in pipes; but
after several miles had been run from Baltimore to the house intended
for the relay, the insulation broke down. Cornell, it is stated,
injured his machine to furnish an excuse for the stoppage of the work.
The leaders consulted in secret, for failure was staring them in the
face. Some 23,000 dollars of the Government grant were spent, and Mr.
Smith, who had lost his faith in the undertaking, claimed 4000 of the
remaining 7000 dollars under his contract for laying the line. A bitter
quarrel arose between him and Morse, which only ended in the grave. He
opposed an additional grant from Government, and Morse, in his
dejection, proposed to let the patent expire, and if the Government
would use his apparatus and remunerate him, he would reward Alfred Vail,
while Smith would be deprived of his portion.
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