n 2003, it is by far the largest, most profitable company serving businesses' communications needs in the United States. According to the New York Times, at least one of AT&T's directors believed that "[Armstrong] did the best he could with the cards he was dealt."I In many ways he did, but I fear we all misunderstood the meaning of corporations in general and this one in particular. While we liked to say that AT&T traced its roots to Alexander Graham Bell's invention of the telephone, in reality the company was the creation of a man named Theodore Vail, and his view of a company's purpose was far more comprehensive than is currently fashionable. Theodore Vail Vail was a senior executive with the company that is now known as AT&T at two of the most critical moments in its history: from 1878 to 1887, when the telephone began its voyage from fledgling invention to ubiquitous home and office appliance, and from 1907 to 1919, when the company, beset by competitors and despised by its custom- ers, moved from the brink of financial ruin to a de facto monopoly affectionately known as "Ma Bell."2 Vail was hired away from the U.S. Post Office for his experience in managing complex operations when the Bell Telephone Company was less than one year old and controlled by a small group of Boston-based investors. He almost immediately began building the Bell System, with regional companies providing local service, a long-distance com- pany interconnecting them, and a captive supplier manufacturing all the necessary equipment. But within nine years, Bell's Boston investors, impatient to see a Tough Calls return on their capital, refused to fund more expansion. Vail resigned, writing in an unusual parting shot: "We have a duty to the public at large to make our service as good as possible and as universal as possi- ble, and [our] earnings should be used not only to reward investors for their investment but also to accomplish these objectives."3 In the following years, the new managers milked the business that Vail had built, rais