was a newsboy jumped the track. Four old cars with rotten sills went
all to pieces, distributing figs, raisins, dates, and candies all over
the track. Hating to see so much waste, the boy tried to save all he
could by eating it on the spot, but, as a result, he says, "our family
doctor had the time of his life with me."
Another incident, which shows free and easy railroading and Southern
extravagance, is related by Edison, as follows:
"In 1860, just before the war broke out, there came to the train one
afternoon in Detroit two fine-looking young men, accompanied by a
colored servant. They bought tickets for Port Huron, the terminal point
for the train. After leaving the junction just outside of Detroit, I
brought in the evening papers. When I came opposite the two young men,
one of them said, 'Boy, what have you got?' I said, 'Papers.' 'All
right.' He took them and threw them out of the window, and, turning to
the colored man, said, 'Nicodemus, pay this boy.' I told Nicodemus the
amount, and he opened a satchel and paid me. The passengers didn't know
what to make of the transaction. I returned with the illustrated papers
and magazines. These were seized and thrown out of the window, and I
was told to get my money of Nicodemus. I then returned with all the old
magazines and novels I had not been able to sell, thinking perhaps this
would be too much for them. I was small and thin, and the layer reached
above my head, and was all I could possibly carry. I had prepared a
list, and knew the amount in case they bit again. When I opened the
door all the passengers roared with laughter. I walked right up to the
young men. One asked me what I had. I said, 'Magazines and novels.' He
promptly threw them out of the window, and Nicodemus settled. Then I
came in with cracked hickory nuts, then popcorn balls, and, finally,
molasses candy. All went out of the window. I felt like Alexander the
Great!--I had no more chances! I had sold all I had. Finally I put a
rope to my trunk, which was about the size of a carpenter's chest,
and started to pull this from the baggage-car to the passenger-car.
It was almost too much for my strength, but at last I got it in front
of those men. I pulled off my coat and hat and shoes and laid them on
the chest. Then the young man asked, 'What have you got, boy?' I said,
'Everything, sir, that I can spare that is for sale.' The passengers
fairly jumped with laughter. Nicodemus paid me $27 for this last sale,
and threw the whole out of the door in the rear of the car. These men
were from the South, and I have always retained a soft spot in my heart
for a Southern gentleman."
While Edison was a newsboy on the train a request came to him one day
to go to the office of E. B. Ward & Co., at that time the largest
owners of steamboats on the Great Lakes. The captain of their largest
boat had died suddenly, and they wanted a message taken to another
captain who lived about fourteen miles from Ridgeway station on the
railroad. This captain had retired, taken up some lumber land, and had
cleared part of it. Edison was offered fifteen dollars by Mr. Ward
to go and fetch him, but as it was a wild country and would be dark,
Edison stood out for twenty-five dollars, so that he could get the
companionship of another lad. The terms were agreed to. Edison arrived
at Ridgeway at 8.30 P.M., when it was raining and as dark as ink.
Getting with difficulty another boy to volunteer, he launched out on
his errand in the pitch-black night. The two boys carried lanterns,
but the road was a rough path through dense forest. The country was
wild, and it was quite usual to see deer, bear, and coon skins nailed
up on the sides of houses to dry. Edison had read about bears, but
couldn't remember whether they were day or night prowlers. The farther
they went, the more afraid they became, and every stump in the forest
looked like a bear. The other lad proposed seeking safety up a tree,
but Edison objected on the plea that bears could climb, and that the
message must be delivered that night to enable the captain to catch
the morning train. First one lantern went out, then the other. Edison
says: "We leaned up against a tree and cried. I thought if I ever got
out of that scrape alive I would know more about the habits of animals
and everything else, and be prepared for all kinds of mischance when I
again undertook an enterprise. However, the intense darkness dilated
the pupils of our eyes so as to make them very sensitive, and we could
just see at times the outline of the road. Finally, just as a faint
gleam of daylight arrived, we entered the captain's yard and delivered
the message. In my whole life I never spent such a night of horror as
that, but I got a good lesson."
An amusing incident of this period is told by Edison. "When I was a
boy," he says, "the Prince of Wales, the late King Edward, came to
Canada (1860). Great preparations were made at Sarnia, the Canadian
town opposite Port Huron. About every boy, including myself, went
over to see the affair. The town was draped in flags most profusely,
and carpets were laid on the cross-walks for the Prince to walk on.
There were arches, etc. A stand was built, raised above the general
level, where the Prince was to be received by the Mayor. Seeing all
these preparations, my idea of a prince was very high; but when he
did arrive I mistook the Duke of Newcastle for him, the Duke being a
fine-looking man. I soon saw that I was mistaken, that the Prince was a
young stripling, and did not meet expectations. Several of us expressed
our belief that a prince wasn't much after all, and said that we were
thoroughly disappointed. For this one boy was whipped. Soon the Canuck
boys attacked the Yankee boys, and we were all badly licked. I, myself,
got a black eye. That has always prejudiced me against that kind of
ceremonial and folly."
Many years afterward, when Edison had won fame by many inventions,
including his electric-light system, and had been awarded the Albert
Gold Medal by the Royal Society of Arts, it was this same prince who
wrote a graceful letter which accompanied the medal.
Here is another of Mr. Edison's stories:
"After selling papers in Port Huron, which was often not reached
until about nine-thirty at night, I seldom got home before eleven or
eleven-thirty. About half-way home from the station and the town,
within twenty-five feet of the road, in a dense wood, was a soldiers'
graveyard, where three hundred soldiers were buried, due to a cholera
epidemic which took place at Fort Gratiot, near by, many years
previously. At first we used to shut our eyes and run the horse past
this graveyard, and if the horse stepped on a twig my heart would give
a violent movement, and it is a wonder that I haven't some valvular
disease of that organ. But soon this running of the horse became
monotonous, and after a while all fears of graveyards absolutely
disappeared from my system. I was in the condition of Sam Houston, the
pioneer and founder of Texas, who, it was said, knew no fear. Houston
lived some distance from the town, and generally went home late at
night, having to pass through a dark cypress swamp over a corduroy
road. One night, to test his alleged fearlessness, a man stationed
himself behind a tree, and enveloped himself in a sheet. He confronted
Houston suddenly, and Sam stopped and said: 'If you are a man, you
can't hurt me. If you are a ghost, you don't want to hurt me. And if
you are the devil, come home with me; I married your sister!'"
We have already seen that Edison was of an exceedingly studious nature
and full of ambition to work, experiment, and hustle. The serious
side of his nature did not, however, wholly prevail. He had a keen
enjoyment of a joke, even as he has now, and in his boyhood days had
no particular objection if it took a practical form. The following, as
related by him, is one of many:
"After the breaking out of the War there was a regiment of volunteer
soldiers quartered at Fort Gratiot, the reservation extending to the
boundary line of our house. Nearly every night we would hear a call
such as 'Corporal of the Guard No. 1.' This would be repeated from
sentry to sentry, until it reached the barracks, when Corporal of the
Guard No. 1 would come and see what was wanted. I and the little Dutch
boy, upon returning from the town after selling our papers, thought we
would take a hand at military affairs. So one night, when it was very
dark, I shouted for Corporal of the Guard No. 1. The second sentry,
thinking it was the terminal sentry who shouted, repeated it to the
third, and so on. This brought the corporal along the half mile, only
to find that he was fooled. We tried him three nights; but the third
night they were watching, and caught the little Dutch boy, took him
to the lock-up at the fort, and shut him up. They chased me to the
house. I rushed for the cellar. In one small compartment, where there
were two barrels of potatoes and a third one nearly empty, I poured
these remnants into the other barrels, sat down, and pulled the empty
barrel over my head, bottom up. The soldiers had awakened my father,
and they were searching for me with candles and lanterns. The corporal
was absolutely certain I came into the cellar, and couldn't see how I
could have gotten out, and wanted to know from my father if there was
no secret hiding-place. On assurance of my father, who said that there
was not, he said it was most extraordinary. I was glad when they left,
as I was cramped, and the potatoes that had been in the barrel were
rotten and violently offensive. The next morning I was found in bed,
and received a good switching on the legs from my father, the first and
only one I ever received from him, although my mother kept behind the
old Seth Thomas clock a switch that had the bark worn off. My mother's
ideas and mine differed at times, especially when I got experimenting
and mussed up things. The Dutch boy was released next morning."
It may have seemed strange to you, on reading this and the previous
chapter, that a lad so young as Edison was during the newsboy
period--from about twelve to fifteen years of age--should have been
allowed such wide liberty. An extensive traveler for those days, going
early and returning late, an experimenter in chemistry, a publisher,
printer, newsdealer, amateur locomotive engineer, and what not, covered
a large range of experience and action for one so youthful.
To others of the family than his mother he was accounted a strange boy,
some believing him to be mentally unbalanced. His mother, however,
understood that his was no ordinary mind, for she had studied him
thoroughly. While she watched him closely, she allowed him the widest
possible sphere of action and encouraged his ever increasing studies.
A member of the family, in talking recently with the writer, said
that when any one expressed nervousness about young Edison during his
absences she would say: "Al is all right. Nothing will happen to him.
God is taking care of him."
VI
THE YOUNG TELEGRAPH OPERATOR
After Edison's expulsion from the train with his laboratory and
belongings, his career as a newsboy came to a sudden close. But, while
he felt some disappointment, he was not discouraged and was none the
less busy. As we have seen, he published his local paper for a while
and also continued his chemical experiments at home. In addition, he
plunged deeply into the study of telegraphy under Mr. Mackenzie's
tuition.
Edison took to telegraphy enthusiastically, giving to it no less than
eighteen hours a day. After some months he had made such progress that
he put up a telegraph line from the station to the village, about a
mile distant, and opened an office in a drug store; but the business
there was very light and the office was not continued long.
A little later he became the regular operator at Port Huron. The
office was in the store of a Mr. M. Walker, who sold jewelry and also
newspapers and periodicals. Edison was to be found at the office both
day and night, and slept there.
He says: "I became quite valuable to Mr. Walker. After working all
day I worked at the office nights as well, for the reason that 'press
reports' came over one of the wires until 3 A.M., and I would cut in
and copy it as well as I could, to become proficient more rapidly. The
goal of the rural telegraph operator was to be able to take press. Mr.
Walker tried to get my father to apprentice me at twenty dollars per
month, but they could not agree. I then applied for a job on the Grand
Trunk Railroad as a railway operator, and was given a place, nights, at
Stratford Junction, Canada."
Many years afterward Mr. Walker described the boy of sixteen as
engrossed intensely in his experiments and scientific reading. The
telegraph office was not a busy one, but sometimes messages taken
in would remain unsent while Edison was in the cellar busy on some
chemical problem.
He would be seen at times reading a scientific paper and then
disappearing to buy a few sundries for experiments. Returning from
the drug store with his chemicals, he would not be seen again until
required by his duties, or until he had found out for himself, if
possible, the truth of the statement he had been reading. If wanted
for his experiment, he did not hesitate to make free use of the
watchmaker's tools that lay on the table in the front window. His one
idea was to do quickly when he wanted to do; and this tendency is still
one of his marked characteristics.
The telegrapher's position at Stratford Junction, Canada, was taken by
Edison in 1863, when he was sixteen years old, and paid him twenty-five
dollars per month. In speaking of it he has since remarked that there
was little difference between the telegraph of that time and that of
to-day. He says: "The telegraph men couldn't explain how it worked,
and I was always trying to get them to do so. I think they couldn't.
I remember the best explanation I got was from an old Scotch line
repairer employed by the Montreal Telegraph Company, which operated the
railroad wires. He said that if you had a dog like a dachshund, long
enough to reach from Edinburgh to London, if you pulled his tail in
Edinburgh he would bark in London. I could understand that, but I never
could get it through me what went through the dog or over the wire."
Edison was ever keenly anxious to add to his stock of experimental
apparatus, as an incident of this period shows: "While working at
Stratford Junction," he says, "I was told by one of the freight
conductors that in the freight-house at Goodrich there were several
boxes of old broken-up batteries. I went there and found over eighty
cells of the well-known Grove nitric-acid battery. The operator there,
who was also agent, when asked by me if I could have the electrodes
of each cell, which were made of sheet platinum, gave his permission
readily, thinking they were of tin. I removed them all, and they
amounted to several ounces in weight. Platinum even in those days was
very expensive, costing several dollars an ounce, and I owned only
three small strips. I was overjoyed at this acquisition, and those very
strips and the reworked scrap are used to this day in my laboratory,
over forty years later."
It was while he was employed as a night operator at Stratford Junction
that Edison's inventiveness was first displayed. In order to make
sure that the operators were not asleep they were required to send
the signal "6" to the train despatcher's office every hour during the
night. Now, Edison spent all day in study and experiment, but he needed
sleep, just as any healthy youth does, and so he made a small wheel
with notches on the rim and attached it to the clock and line. At night
he connected it with the circuit, and at each hour the wheel revolved
and automatically sent in the dots required for "sixing."
The invention was a success, but the train despatcher soon noticed that
frequently, in spite of the regularity of the report, Edison's office
could not be raised even if a message were sent immediately after. An
investigation followed, which revealed this ingenious device, and he
received a reprimand.
A serious occurrence that might have resulted in accident drove him
soon after from Canada, although the youth could hardly be held to
blame for it. Edison says: "This night job just suited me, as I could
have the whole day to myself. I had the faculty of sleeping in a chair
any time for a few minutes at a time. I taught the night yardman my
call, so I could get half an hour's sleep now and then between trains,
and in case the station was called the watchman would awaken me. One
night I got an order to hold a freight train, and I replied that I
would. I rushed out to find the signalman, but before I could find
him and get the signal set the train ran past. I ran to the telegraph
office, and reported that I could not hold her. The train despatcher,
on the strength of my message that I would hold the train, had
permitted another to leave the last station in the opposite direction.
There was a lower station near the junction, where the day operator
slept. I started for it on foot. The night was dark, and I fell into a
culvert and was knocked senseless."
Fortunately, the two engineers saw each other approaching and stopped
in time to prevent an accident. Edison, however, was summoned to the
general manager's office to be tried for neglect of duty. During the
trial two Englishmen called, and while they were talking with the
manager the youthful operator slipped out, jumped on a freight train
going to Sarnia, and was not happy until the ferry-boat from Sarnia had
landed him safe on the Michigan shore.
The same winter, of 1863-64, while at Port Huron, Edison had a further
opportunity of showing his ingenuity. An ice-jam had broken the
telegraph cable laid in the bed of the river across to Sarnia, and
communication was interrupted. The river is three-quarters of a mile
wide, and could not be crossed on foot, nor could the cable be repaired.
Edison suggested using the steam whistle of a locomotive to give the
long and short signals of the Morse code. An operator on the Sarnia
shore was quick enough to understand the meaning of the strange
whistling, and thus messages were sent in wireless fashion across the
ice-floes in the river.
Young Edison had no inclination to return to Canada after his late
experience there. He decided, however, that he would stick to
telegraphy as a business, and, after a short stay at home in Port
Huron, set out to find work as an operator in another city. And thus he
commenced the roaming and drifting life which in the next five years
took him all over the Middle States.
At this time the Civil War was in progress, and many hundreds of
skilled operators were at the front with the army, engaged exclusively
in government service. Consequently there was a great scarcity of
telegraphers throughout all the cities and towns of the country. For
this reason it was not difficult for an operator to get work wherever
he might go. Thus one might gratify a desire to travel and get
experience without running much risk of privation.
There were a great many others besides Edison who wandered about from
city to city, working awhile in one place and drifting to another. As
a rule, they were bright, happy-go-lucky fellows, full of the spirit
of good comradeship, and willing to share bed, board, and pocket-money
with those who might temporarily be less fortunate than themselves.
Many of them used telegraphy as a stepping-stone to better themselves
in life, while others, unfortunately, became dissipated, and, becoming
unreliable through drink, could not hold a position for long. Had
Edison been by nature less persistent and industrious than he was, this
miscellaneous companionship might have tended to wreck his career, but
all through his life, from boyhood, he has been particularly abstemious
and has had a contempt for the wastefulness of time, money, and health
entailed by the drink habit.
Throughout this period of his life Edison, although wandering from
place to place, never ceased to study, explore, and experiment.
Referring to this beginning of his career, he mentions a curious fact
that throws light on his ceaseless application. "After I became a
telegraph operator," he says, "I practised for a long time to become
a rapid reader of print, and got so expert I could sense the meaning
of a whole line at once. This faculty, I believe, should be taught in
schools, as it appears to be easily acquired. Then one can read two or
three books in a day, whereas if each word at a time only is sensed
reading is laborious."
During this wandering period of his life Edison made many friends, one
of the earliest of whom was Milton F. Adams, who had a strange career.
Of him Edison says: "Adams was one of a class of operators never
satisfied to work at any place for any great length of time. He had the
'wanderlust.' After enjoying hospitality in Boston in 1868-69, on the
floor of my hall bedroom, which was a paradise for the entomologist,
while the boarding-house itself was run on the Banting system of flesh
reduction, he came to me one day and said: 'Good-by, Edison, I have
got sixty cents, and I am going to San Francisco.' And he did go. How,
I never knew personally. I learned afterward that he got a job there,
and then within a week they had a telegraphers' strike. He got a big
torch and sold patent medicine on the streets at night to support the
strikers. Then he went to Peru as partner of a man who had a grizzly
bear which they proposed entering against a bull in the bull-ring in
that city. The grizzly was killed in five minutes, and so the scheme
died. Then Adams crossed the Andes, and started a market report bureau
in Buenos Ayres. This didn't pay, so he started a restaurant in
Pernambuco, Brazil. There he did very well, but something went wrong
(as it always does to a nomad), so he went to the Transvaal, and ran
a panorama called 'Paradise Lost' in the Kaffir kraals. This didn't
pay, and he became the editor of a newspaper; then he went to England
to raise money for a railroad in Cape Colony. Next I heard of him in
New York, having just arrived from Bogota, United States of Columbia,
with a power of attorney and two thousand dollars from a native of that
republic, who applied for a patent for tightening a belt to prevent it
from slipping on a pulley--a device which he thought a new and great
invention, but which was in use ever since machinery was invented. I
gave Adams then a position as salesman for electrical apparatus. This
he soon got tired of, and I lost sight of him."
VII
ADVENTURES OF A TELEGRAPH OPERATOR
The first position that Edison took after leaving Canada so hurriedly
was at Adrian, Michigan, and of what happened there he tells a story
typical of his wanderings for several years to come.
"After leaving my first job at Stratford Junction I got a position as
operator on the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern at Adrian, Michigan,
in the division superintendent's office. As usual, I took the 'night
trick,' which most operators disliked, but which I preferred, as it
gave me more leisure to experiment. I had obtained from the station
agent a small room, and had established a little shop of my own. One
day the day operator wanted to get off, and I was on duty. About nine
o'clock the superintendent handed me a despatch which he said was very
important, and which I must get off at once. The wire at the time was
very busy, and I asked if I should break in. I got orders to do so,
and, acting under those orders of the superintendent, I broke in and
tried to send the despatch; but the other operator would not permit it,
and the struggle continued for ten minutes. Finally I got possession
of the wire and sent the message. The superintendent of telegraph,
who then lived in Adrian and went to his office in Toledo every day,
happened that day to be in the Western Union office up-town--and it
was the superintendent I was really struggling with! In about twenty
minutes he arrived, livid with rage, and I was discharged on the spot.
I informed him that the general superintendent had told me to break in
and send the despatch, but the general superintendent then and there
repudiated the whole thing. Their families were socially close, so I
was sacrificed. My faith in human nature got a slight jar."