treked with the United Empire Loyalists in Revolutionary times. A
generation later they left Nova Scotia and settled in that part of the
Province of Ontario now registered as the County of Norfolk. Near the
little town of Vienna, close to Lake Erie’s shore, where I believe
relatives still reside, Thomas Edison’s elder brothers were born, but
not until after 1837, when Robert Edison transferred his family to
Milan, Ohio, twelve miles from Lake Erie, did the lad Thomas and his
sister first behold the sunshine, the birth of the former occurring
February, 1847.
Evidently his elementary education began in that state, but the fact
that his brother Pitt Edison, managed a street railway at Port Huron,
Michigan, probably accounts for the lad’s presence thereabouts and
furnished an incentive to his precocious, nomadic predilections. Joseph
Draper from the County of Tipperary, ninety-year-old veteran, living
in Toronto, recently deceased, who was in 1855 a giant conductor with
the Ontario, Simcoe & Huron Railroad, (Northern Railway), told me
he remembered well how young Thomas Edison later on sold newspapers
between Detroit and Port Huron, on his trains running through to Sarnia
and London. He declared that the embryo merchant was an active, well
behaved and likeable stripling who, even during the chrysalis stage,
nourished a specific bent by carrying with him a portable telegraph
key. During the weary months of the Civil War, 1862–3, he obtained
in Detroit a printing press, old type, with accessories and learning
the contents of war bulletins, etc., from station to station, set up
and printed the news and jokes which he sold along the line under the
caption “Grand Trunk Herald.”
Conductor Draper said he was often compelled to reprimand the boy for
tinkering with chemicals and for his untidiness with bottles in that
corner of the baggage car where he kept his stock of magazines and
candy. He intimated also that about this time the young experimentor
risked his life in saving the child of the Grand Trunk Railway Agent
at Mount Clemens, Michigan, from an onrushing train and the grateful
father taught him telegraphing.
Living in an atmosphere of daily contact with keys and sounders, he
took to “jerking lightning” like a sailor to the sea, soon becoming
proficient.
“This is the song of the wire--
The electric wire:
The slender thread with a soul of fire,
With the wings of light that shall never tire,
With a power and grandeur awful and dire;
The electric wire.”
In 1867 he worked on the wire, covering the “night trick” at Stratford,
Ont., and was also at Park Hill, where the late George B. Reeve, of
Grand Trunk--Southern Pacific prominence, picked up operating. In the
autumn of 1913 when the Stratford, Ont., yard limits were extended and
reorganized to conform to the requirements of the new “Grand Trunk”
station, opened in December of that year, the old eastend ducat,
(dovecote-do’ecot), in which young Edison is said to have served a part
of his apprenticeship as an operator, was torn down to make way for a
modern signal tower.
Every railroad telegrapher is said to experience once, sooner or later
during his career, being temporarily petrified with alarm on finding he
has ordered two trains to pass “head on” or from the rear on a single
track. Railroad rumor only is my authority for repeating a report that
young Edison figured in such a collision on paper. The publication
“Railways and Other Ways” quotes an interview given by Mr. Edison at
London, Canada, many years ago in which the great inventor referred to
his oversight when a youth at Stratford in overlooking the delivery to
conductor of a train order the result of which permitted two trains to
approach on a single track. Fortunately the line between Stratford and
St. Marys Junction was straight and an accident may have been averted
by quick thinking and rapid action.
In many guises I have heard repeated the story of his original device
for answering his dispatcher’s call though wrapped in the arms of
Morpheus for forty pilfered winks. He was working in Western Ontario
and the rule declared that each operator should keep in touch with
the dispatcher every hour while on duty, write “6” and sign their
telegraphic signature of a letter or two. This meant the next thing
to eternal vigilance during the quiet, lonesome hours of the night.
It would appear Edison attached an extra wheel to the mechanism of
the office clock, governing it by an independent spring. Around the
rim of this wheel he cut dots and dashes spelling the stereotyped
message and his code “Sig.”, arranging the wheel’s position so that it
made one revolution each hour at the time agents usually flashed “All
well.” From the clock pinions a series of wire coils connected with
a weak solution jar battery, were rigged and thence passing over the
telegraph key joined the charged main wires leading therefrom. When
the clock struck each hour the supplementary wheel sent the necessary
intermittent ticks along the temporary mediums and were in turn
transmitted via the trunk wires to headquarters. The version given me
by another “oldest inhabitant” would indicate that he had the night
watchman trained to turn the wheel hourly by hand. With such ingenuity
did the budding inventor abbreviate his nocturnal vigils and conductors
Mammoth Johnston and silk hat Dick Thorpe never knew the difference as
they whizzed past into the encircling gloom. This anecdote bears the
hall mark of a measure of probability and has been vouched for by some
of Edison’s contemporaries, but the yarn that he once affixed to the
telegraphic office door a contrivance that made it collide with the
nasal organ of a spying superintendent is likely spurious. When working
at Fort Gratiot he introduced without fuss or feathers, an improvement
in relaying messages across the River at Sarnia which reduced the
labor involved by half, evincing in this test an early aversion to
ponderous method and high costs, which has characterized his subsequent
experiments and helpful discoveries.
In his commercial wire practice at Detroit his colleagues of other
days remember him as a good press reporter whose handwriting resembled
printing more than a string of Spencerian script. They tell how he
tied the Gotham wiseacres and would be jokers into knots with his
deliberateness and speed, the key and its characters being a part of
him, like a Centaur and his horse. His demeanor was at times friendly
and discursive, followed by spells of dreamy reflection and profound
reticence and he would frequently immerse himself in tinkerings with
the sounder and key, adding to and endeavoring to make them different
and more amenable to his advanced ideas. The reel with a paper ribbon
on which a message from the other end was registered by means of dots
and dashes indented thereon, had not then been entirely replaced by the
sound system.
On February 24th, 1868, Mr. Edison arrived in Toronto en route
Boston, and after a brief visit with his former friend John Murray, a
well known dispatcher, afterwards some years at Belleville, started
eastward. On this date a traffic paralyzing three day storm set in and
the “G.T.R.” train was snow stalled, compelling Mr. Edison and several
others to return. Expecting improved weather and resumption of train
service, he spent considerable time about the old depot and men who met
him then state that he was a desultory talker, an inveterate thinker
and a chain smoker quite oblivious to the fleeting hours of the night.
The late James Stephenson was superintendent at Toronto that winter,
Henry Bourlier so long and honorably connected with the Allans, was
station agent, W. A. Wilson, erect and active to-day, just recently
retired from the “New York Central,” was the Morse Code operator,
W. C. Nunn--inventor of a railway signal device in 1856--was agent
at Belville and “the admiral,” Mr. Frederick J. Glackmeyer, Ontario
Parliamentary Sergeant-at-Arms, December 27th, 1867 (50 years) 1917,
had only two months before bid adieu to ticket work in the old station
where Thomas Edison purchased his ticket.
On February 27th, he again essayed the sixteen hour journey to
Montreal, and at Boston in 1870 the Duplex System appeared, enabling
two operators to send independent messages over a single wire. Then
came his perfection of the Quadruplex, permitting two people at each
end to forward and receive telegrams simultaneously.
His astounding creative mentality seemed to give birth to successive
world wonders as regularly as the birds nest in springtime and more
or less familiar brain children include the telegraphic button
repeater, stock-tickers, an electric pencil with motor for duplicating,
the phonograph and waxen records, dictaphone and revolutionizing
incandescent light, then the mechanism for taking moving pictures.
To-day the speaking cinematographic pictures or kinetophone, steps
confidently out of the laboratories at Orange, N.J., to mystify yet
convince the incredulous and expectant populace.
Some years ago his friend John Murray paid his respects at New York and
was well received by his former acquaintance. Requesting permission
to inspect the interior economy of the “Western Union” telegraph
office, Mr. Edison introduced him by letter to the proper person asking
that every attention be shown him and adding “When Mr. Murray was an
operator on the ‘G.T.R.,’ I was a news vendor.”
Thus does this unusual man round out a useful career, his balance an
object lesson to conceited prigs and his wizard-like achievements an
incentive to rising generations.
[Illustration: STARS IN THE CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILWAY FIRMAMENT
SIR GEORGE BURY, Vice-President; E. W. BEATTY, K.C., Vice-President
and General Counsel; R. MARPOLE, General Exec. Assistant, British
Columbia; C. E. E. USSHER, Passenger Traffic Manager; W. R. MACINNES,
Vice-President; W. MAUGHAN, Assistant General Passenger Agent,
Montreal; M. H. BROWN, Division Freight Agent, O. D., Toronto; C.
B. FOSTER, Assistant Passenger Traffic Manager, Montreal; GEO. MCL.
BROWN, European Manager; J. T. ARUNDEL, General Superintendent, O. D.,
Toronto.]
A GIGANTIC HUMAN HIVE
Is the Canadian Pacific Railway Headquarters
To have one’s activities in office or household likened to the
alertness and foresight of the bee is equivalent to a pronounced
compliment. From time immemorial the beehive has ever been regarded by
the peoples of Occident and Orient as the storehouse and base of the
busiest little folks in the animal kingdom--as the distinctive emblem
of concentrated industry, where laggards do not abound.
In Windsor Street, opposite the fine cathedral of St. Peter, Montreal,
Quebec, stands a spacious stone castle, the handsome, towering Canadian
Pacific Railway hive, and verily, it is alive with endeavor and swarms
with the spirit of enterprise. Inhabited chiefly by king bees--and a
few queens--this host of 2000 flaunt no iron crosses for inefficiency
and here drones have no place.
From the pinnacle position in the steeple, ably filled by a shrewd,
democratic nobleman, down the scale through a labyrinth of departments
to the youngster affixing postage and dreaming of the Vice-Presidency,
every official and employee in that busy headquarters of the greatest
transportation corporation within the world’s ken, plays his part in
the drama “making hay while the sun shines.” Feeling that they are an
integral part of a gigantic organization, they play tick, tack, toe
with $153,000,000 in rolling stock and participate with sincerity in
the annual round-up of 30,000,000 tons of freight that require 95,000
cars of divers shapes to transport, in addition to moving 16,000,000
passengers for $30,000,000 necessitating a string of equipment that
would reach forty miles from Toronto to Hamilton. 2255 locomotives
pull this traffic. When all hands and the cooks on the dining cars
are intensely occupied in harvesting the golden honey, then is the
management in clover.
Concealed in the brains of this directorate of specialists, or tableted
in the company’s archives and records, repose secrets pertaining
to matters, methods and men, of crowned heads, governments and
undercurrents of commerce, finance and future intention which, if given
publicity, would make the listener gasp in wonderment and likewise aid
him to roll in riches.
Apart from an extensive, intermediate network, (totaling 15,000
miles) her unbroken chains of trains span an additional 3,600 miles
of continent from the cod banks of the Atlantic to the salmon
spawning beds along the Pacific Ocean, dovetailing there with some
of the splendid units of a fleet of a hundred vessels valued to-day
at $65,000,000, which circumvent the seven seas carrying “Canadian
Pacific” prestige, influence, secret service and international
communications between all races and temperatures. There are no fields
of production in any clime on the planet known to civilized man that
this dynamo of energy, trade and travel has not investigated and if,
through development or encouragement, a modicum of reciprocal traffic
is extracted or the sweets of industrial success can be promised, rest
assured that exploring bees will return to the hive with documentary
proof or Marconigrams, cable and mails will herald most recent results.
It is a marvelous modern reality, smacking of the magic of Bagdad
caliph eras, that the Windsor Street cabinet of individually expert
cosmopolitans, with their teeming clusters of resourceful understudies,
command a metaphorical view of the surface of all hemispheres, like a
submersible’s captain seated beside the disk of camera obscura scanning
the ocean’s bosom. It is, however, only with the searchlights of peace,
of barter and trade and commercial expansion, which spell security
and comfort for mankind, that the “C.P.R.” sweeps the horizons, feels
the universe’s pulse and keeps in touch through the medium of the
electric spark, with the aspirations of the world’s brown, yellow and
Caucasian children. She underestimates no detail and quietly assumes
any legitimate task of magnitude, transferring one unaccompanied child
or 100,000 Orientals by sea and land from non-essential avocations in
this place or that to other environment and back again without mishap,
fuss or feathers.
Composed of forty-five acquired, leased or controlled railways, this
immense, corporate body, holding the keys of access to almost any
domain and caucus of the sons of Babel, this syndicate that has the
_entree_ to exclusive circles and “inside information,” that is rich in
agricultural lands and demonstration farms, in timber and tie reserves,
rich in gas rights and petroleum areas, that controls coal collieries,
smelters and hotels and banks much specie of the realm, has a soul.
In her scattered, flourishing family many are called but few are chosen
to attain the exalted places, which are easily memorized. If her sway
is uncongenial or her pay seems not enough, you may withdraw and the
ranks close up, but for those who remain--and they are 80,000--she
offers standards of remuneration far from the foot of the column. Her
pensions department, with a fund of $900,000 and a yearly contribution
of $500,000 to the reserve, even now protecting 850 former employees,
is generous, and I could cite you instances where employees resuming
duty partly convalescent, have been relieved indefinitely for recovery,
under salary. Several others, permanently incapacitated, have reason to
be grateful to the Canadian Pacific Railway for gratuitous aid and acts
of thoughtfulness seldom attributed to big interests.
Official Ottawa, Washington and the Court of St. James do not think it
judicious to lay bare for public perusal at present, what the Canadian
Pacific Railway Company may or may not have accomplished in the realm
of finance and loans, apropos the great international struggle of
humanity and democracy.
The fruitfulness of the mission of a transportation company
with $1,038,074,983.26 of assets, with a property investment of
$538,510,563.24 and annual gross earnings of $152,389,334.95 must be
well-nigh incalculable, especially to a democratic country--to the last
great west, with so vast an area and promising though veiled future.
The Canadian Pacific Railway is heavy with import and deeply interlaced
with the potentialities of our own Canada.
W. B. LANIGAN
Freight Traffic Manager, Canadian Pacific Railway
A Biographical Reminisence
[Illustration: W. B. LANIGAN,
Freight Traffic Manager, Canadian Pacific Railway, Montreal, Que.]
An Irishman taking home a large goose after a raffle, stopped at a
hillside inn in Wicklow to procure refreshment. Laying down the prize
he proceeded to satisfy his thirst when a suspicious looking individual
seized the fowl and made off with it. Pat at once gave chase and
grasping the runaway by the neck exclaimed, “What did you take the bird
fore” “Sure!” said the thief, “an’ I took it for a lark”. “Did ye”,
said Pat, “begorra then, you’d make a poor judge at a bird show”.
And by the same token, the man or maid who would take W. B. Lanigan for
an uncivil, disgruntled misanthrope, who could not enjoy a lark, would
be a decidedly poor judge of human nature. He has rubbed shoulders with
good and ill fortune, has contended for thirty-three years with almost
every variety of railroading obstacle, hewing his way to comparatively
smooth sailing under the “C.P.R.” flag and the ordeal has not impaired
his optimistic outlook, but finds him to-day a sociable, approachable
and happy dispositioned man of affairs.
Do not infer from this tribute, however, that the gentleman cannot look
after himself, does not jealously protect his Company’s best interests
and is incapable of administering a merited rebuke, or even a scorching
blast, because he can. An old admirer and personal friend described
him to me as a hot-headed Irishman of fine parts with whom he had had
many a good natured wrangle in his attempts to circumvent the railway’s
rates and regulations.
In Three Rivers, Quebec, October 12th, 1861, William B. Lanigan was
born and in due time was educated at St. Josephs College of that city
and at Stanstead University in Old Quebec. Sharbot Lake Junction is a
quiet place and no doubt, was a lonesome spot that night in September,
1884, when he first put his hand to a man’s task as night operator in
the Canadian Pacific Railway station. Undaunted, he obeyed orders and
began the foundation for a future that led him through practically
every phase of freight traffic work from helping in construction and
running a ballast train to shed porter, billing clerk, telegraph
operator and undertaking the “trick” of train dispatcher.
Dundalk knew him as agent for a year and liked him, but the canny
Galtonians got better acquainted during a longer stay. In Galt they
were not averse to sandwiching a little Irish with their Scotch and
the ingredients were mixed with success. Mr. Lanigan was accepted
at par as a sterling neighbor, a good churchman and a valuable
municipal asset. He did much to band the business men together by
encouraging and arranging the most pleasant rail outings for merchants
and manufacturers which the city ever participated in. He took part
with several leading citizens in weekly talkfests on various topics,
extending his general knowledge and debating powers and was founder
of the Toadstool Club in the days when Bob Scott, Robert Ferrah,
Martin Todd, the malster, and others gathered with him to receive John
Strachan and Malcolm MacGregor of the “Erie,” John Hunter of Allan
Line, Joe Hickson of N.Y.C. & H.R.R., with Jimmie Duthie and Miles
Overend of Dominion Line.
When he was agent at Galt the Canadian Pacific Railway opened
their depot at London, Ont., with a banquet in the new building
to commemorate the event. Officials who had arranged the function
requested W. B. Lanigan to respond to one of the principal toasts. He
acquitted himself so well in his presentation of the subject then and
on another occasion at the Imperial Hotel in Galt, when his name was
coupled with the district agricultural interests, that General Manager
David McNicol felt convinced that the young man could be better used in
more important work and he was soon assigned to the duties of Traveling
Freight Agent ensuring gradual advancement and prominence.
On one occasion during the period that Mr. Lanigan was City Freight
Agent at Toronto, when cautious agents had to figure four different
combinations to obtain the best quotation to British Columbia, the
writer, in competition with “C.P.R.”, submitted a shipper an accurate
rate but not the current minimum weight, which also fluctuated. Mr.
Lanigan soon accidentally stumbled on this error in the course of his
day’s rounds and came without delay, only to myself, about the matter,
discussing the inadvertent oversight in a quiet, most friendly and
gentlemanly way and the incident, which could have been magnified, was
heard of no more. This is a sample of one of his traits of character
and training that prompts men to say “He pours oil on the troubled
waters” and smooths the ripples that inevitably arise between his
employers and their host of patrons.
It was George T. Lanigan, a New York Journalist, who some years ago
wrote “The Akoond of Swat is dead--that’s what’s the matter”, which
made him over night one of America’s high salaried, most talked of
newspaper men, and his brother “Billy” has oratorical gifts and is
lucid with tongue and pen. He is an effective and witty after dinner
speaker who can be depended on to drive home facts in a pleasing
manner, and in 1900 when the late Phil. Slatter, City Passenger Agent,
Grand Trunk Railway, Toronto, was president of the Canadian Ticket
Agents’ Association, Mr. Lanigan delivered to that organization at
their annual banquet in the Walker House, Toronto, a humorous and
finished address proving that Moses was the first genuine passenger
emigration agent and that the very widely known and popular “C.P.R.”
official, W. T. Dockrill, was the second because of his marked success
in directing large parties of settlers beyond the Red River.
W. B. Lanigan has not been unmindful of former assistants and several
from Old Ontario, having merited his imprimatur, followed him westward
and are justifying his confidence.
The United States railway world has produced from time to time, and
held up to democratic public approval, scores of men of indomitable
will and working capacity who have wrested recognition and advancement
“from the ground up” to the highest executive honors capital could
bestow; for instance, C. W. Brown, president of the New York Central
Lines, who once piled ties along the C.M. & St. P.R., for a living, or
rodmen who now control the great United States Government affinity,
the Pennsylvania System, as well as a few naturalized “Americans”
with Canadian lines, but I do not recall a “native son”, laboring
always with one company, whose record surpasses the many sided
experiences--hard at the time--of the official who has been for ten
years Assistant Freight Traffic Manager at Winnipeg. This golden west
gateway is a strategical point to the wide-a-wake corporation employing
W. B. Lanigan, he measures up to requirements.
As this article goes to press his appointment as Freight Traffic
Manager, Canadian Pacific Railway, Montreal, is announced.
❦ ❦ ❦
JAMES CHARLTON
The Nestor and Grand Old Man among passenger agents
[Illustration: The Late JAMES CHARLTON.]