The following year, 1846, another line was run from Philadelphia to
Baltimore by Mr. Henry O'Reilly, of Rochester, N.Y., an acute pioneer of
the telegraph. In the course of ten years the Atlantic States were
covered by a straggling web of lines under the control of thirty or
forty rival companies working different apparatus, such as that of
Morse, Bain, House, and Hughes, but owing to various causes only one or
two were paying a dividend. It was a fit moment for amalgamation, and
this was accomplished in 1856 by Mr. Hiram Sibley. 'This Western
Union,' says one in speaking of the united corporation, 'seems to me
very like collecting all the paupers in the State and arranging them
into a union so as to make rich men of them.' But 'Sibley's crazy
scheme' proved the salvation of the competing companies. In 1857, after
the first stage coach had crossed the plains to California, Mr. Henry
O'Reilly proposed to build a line of telegraph, and Mr. Sibley urged the
Western Union to undertake it. He encountered a strong opposition. The
explorations of Fremont were still fresh in the public mind, and the
country was regarded as a howling wilderness. It was objected that no
poles could be obtained on the prairies, that the Indians or the
buffaloes would destroy the line, and that the traffic would not pay.
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