1879 Gould’s new telegraph company sprouted with extraordinary swiftness, connecting all of the major cities from New York to Omaha, with some twelve thousand miles of wire, in just a few short months. Gould established the Central Construction Company to build network by seeking connections to existing lines, such as John Garrett’s B&O Telegraph. Gould was keen to form relationships with telegraph companies and railroads willing Construction Company built lines, and then took possession of them at a “fair value.” Telegraph line construction took place at a rate never before seen in the industry. Gould and his partners provided abundant capital, and A.U.’s network of telegraph lines went up as if “by magic.” Furthermore, American Union formed a cooperative agreement with the Dominion Telegraph Company, extending its reach into Canada. Ultimately, American Union consolidated with Western Union’s vast system in 1881. It seems reasonable to speculate that the re-working of molds to remove “A.U.” from insulator embossing would have occurred after consolidation with Western Union.
The story of American Union is inextricably tied to that of Western Union. The Western Union Telegraph Company began life as the New York & Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company in 1851, formed by an association led by Hiram Sibley. As the name suggests, the New York & Mississippi Valley largely utilized the House Printing Telegraph as opposed to Morse patent technology. Under Sibley, the New York and Mississippi Valley endeavored to become a formidable telegraph enterprise. During the 1850s railroads began to adopt the telegraph for scheduling and control of their trains, and telegraph companies were keen to establish exclusive agreements with the railroads, which generally lacked companies, on the other hand, realized that contracts highly favorable to them could be used to expand their telegraph reach through cooperation with the railroads. These contracts involved railroads and telegraph companies performing services for each other of exclusive use of a railroad’s right-of-way for their telegraph lines. This arrangement using the same rights-of-way. Implementation of this strategy was evident with the Erie and Michigan Telegraph Company, a line controlled by Jeptha Wade, John J. Speed and Ezra Cornell. The Erie and Michigan controlled the Morse patent in the region north and west of the New York & Mississippi Valley Telegraph’s lines, and had locked up exclusive railroad connections, creating a formidable obstacle to Sibley’s ambitions to monopolize Northwestern telegraphy. Hiram Sibley negotiated the purchase of the Erie & Michigan in 1855 as a means to expand his company’s hold on national telegraph operations, and to eliminate the competition. His company now held undisputed exclusive rights to the Morse patent in most of the territory north and west of the Ohio River. The name New York & Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company was no longer adequate. With rights to the over long distances, and slower than the new Morse technique of receiving messages by sound. The name Western Union was recommended by Ezra Cornell, and on April 4, 1856, the state legislature of New York approved the new name - the Western Union Telegraph Company was born. Western Union’s growth in this era enabled the company to essentially monopolize telegraphy in the years to come. It has been estimated that by the 1880s, ninety percent of Western Union’s telegraph lines ran along the routes of some eight hundred railroads.
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