Suppose the Pilgrim fathers that landed at Plymouth Rock so many, many years ago should come back to earth, how many strange sights would greet them! No longer would they be permitted to ride in a slow, clumsy wagon, but, instead, would ride in an electric car. Furthermore, when night came, instead of the tallow candle, they would marvel at the brilliant electric lights. Wouldn’t it be fun to start the phonograph and watch them stare in astonishment as “the wooden box” talked to them? But the most fun would be to take them to the moving picture show and hear what they would say.

Odd as it seems at first, all these marvelous inventions, and many others, are the result of one man’s work; in fact, this man has thought out so many marvelous inventions that the whole world agrees that he is the greatest inventor that has ever lived. Should you like to hear the life story of one who is so truly great? I am sure you would, for in the best sense he is a self-made American.

But, you ask, what is a self-made American? He is one born in poverty who has had to struggle hard for everything he has ever had; one who has had to force his way to success through all sorts of obstacles.

This great inventor first saw the light of day in the humble home of a poor laboring man who lived in Milan, a small canal town in the state of Ohio. In 1854 when Thomas A. Edison, for that is his name, was seven years 18 of age, his parents moved to Port Huron, Michigan, where most of his boyhood days were spent.

As we should naturally expect, Thomas was sent to school, but his teachers did not understand him and his progress was very poor. Finally his mother took him out of school and taught him herself. This she was able to do, for, before she married, she was a successful school teacher in Canada.

Later in life, in speaking of his mother, he said: “I was always a careless boy, and with a mother of different mental caliber I should have probably turned out badly. But her firmness, her sweetness, her goodness, were potent powers to keep me in the right path. I remember I never used to be able to get along at school. I don’t know why it was, but I was always at the foot of the class. I used to feel that my teachers never sympathized with me, and that my father thought that I was stupid, and at last I almost decided that I must really be a dunce. My mother was always kind, always sympathetic, and she never misunderstood or misjudged me. My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me; and I felt I had someone to live for, some one I must not disappoint. The memory of her will always be a blessing to me.”

When young Edison was twelve years of age, he became a newsboy on the Grand Trunk Railroad. That he was a wide-awake, energetic lad is shown by the following experience as told by himself.

“At the beginning of the Civil War I was slaving late and early at selling papers; but to tell the truth I was not making a fortune. I worked on so small a margin that I had to be mighty careful not to overload myself with papers that I could not sell. On the other hand, I could not afford to carry so few that I found myself sold out long before the end of the trip. To enable myself to hit the happy mean, I found a plan which turned out admirably. I made a friend of one of the compositors of the Free Press office, and persuaded him to show me every day a galley-proof of the most important news articles. From a study of its head-lines, I soon learned to gauge the value of the day’s news and its selling capacity, so that I could form a tolerably correct estimate of the number of papers I should need. As a rule I could dispose of about two hundred; but if there was any special news from the seat of war, the sale ran up to three hundred or over.

“Well, one day my compositor brought me a proof-slip of which nearly the whole was taken up with a gigantic display head. It was the first report of the battle of Pittsburgh Landing––afterward called Shiloh, you know, and it gave the number of killed and wounded as sixty thousand men.

“I grasped the situation at once. Here was a chance for enormous sales, if only the people along the line could know what had happened! If only they could see the proof-slip I was then reading! Suddenly an idea occurred 20 to me. I rushed off to the telegraph operator and gravely made a proposition to him which he received just as gravely. He, on his part, was to wire to each of the principal stations on our route, asking the station-master to chalk up on the bulletin-board, used for announcing the time of arrival and departure of trains, the news of the great battle, with its accompanying slaughter. This he was to do at once, while I, in return, agreed to supply him with current literature for nothing during the next six months from that date.

“This bargain struck, I began to bethink me how I was to get enough papers to make the grand coup I intended. I had very little cash, and, I feared, still less credit. I went to the superintendent of the delivery department, and preferred a modest request for one thousand copies of the Free Press on trust. I was not much surprised when my request was curtly and gruffly refused. In those days, though, I was a pretty cheeky boy and I felt desperate, for I saw a small fortune in prospect if my telegraph operator had kept his word, a point on which I was still a trifle doubtful. Nerving myself for a great stroke, I marched up stairs into the office of Wilbur F. Story himself and asked to see him. I told him who I was and that I wanted fifteen hundred copies of the paper on credit. The tall, thin, dark-eyed man stared at me for a moment and then scratched a few words on a slip of paper. ‘Take that down stairs,’ said he, ‘and you will get what you 21 want.’ And so I did. Then I felt happier than I have ever felt since.

“I took my fifteen hundred papers, got three boys to help me fold them, and mounted the train all agog to find out whether the telegraph operator had kept his word. At the town where our first stop was made I usually sold two papers. As the train swung into that station I looked ahead and thought there must be a riot going on. A big crowd filled the platform and as the train drew up I began to realize that they wanted my papers. Before we left, I had sold a hundred or two at five cents each. At the next station the place was fairly black with people. I raised the ‘ante’ and sold three hundred papers at ten cents each. So it went on until Port Huron was reached. Then I transferred my remaining stock to the wagon, which always waited for me there, hired a small boy to sit on the pile of papers in the back, so as to prevent any pilfering, and sold out every paper I had at a quarter of a dollar or more per copy. I remember I passed a church full of worshippers, and stopped to yell out my news. In ten seconds there was not a soul left in the meeting, all of the audience, including the parson, were clustered around me, bidding against each other for copies of the precious paper.”

Though, as you will admit, Mr. Edison was a very successful newsboy, he was not satisfied merely to sell papers, so at the age of fifteen he began editing and publishing a paper of his own. To do this he purchased a 22 small hand printing press and fitted out, as best he could, a printing office in an old freight car.

The Grand Trunk Herald, as the paper was called, consisted of a single sheet printed on both sides, and sold for eight cents a month. When the paper was at the height of its popularity he sold five hundred copies each week, and realized a profit of forty-five dollars a month.

He might have continued in editorial work had not a sad mishap overtaken him. In addition to his editorial work he performed many experiments, for his was the soul of the inventor. These experiments were performed in the baggage car of the train. One day, as he was in the midst of one of these experiments, a sudden lurch of the train upset his bottle of phosphorous, setting the baggage car on fire. The conductor, a quick-tempered man, after putting out the fire, dumped young Edison’s precious printing press and apparatus out of the car and went on. This was a very sad experience for the lad, but the saddest part was the fact that, as the conductor threw Edison out he boxed his ears so severely that he was partially deaf ever after.

Now that young Edison had lost his job as newsboy, and could no longer print the Grand Trunk Herald, what was he to do? He decided, if possible, to get a position as telegraph operator. But, you ask, how did he learn to be a telegraph operator?

While yet a newsboy, he had saved the life of a child by snatching it from before a moving train. The father, 23 a telegraph operator, was so grateful to young Edison for saving his child that he offered to teach him telegraphy. This offer the lad eagerly accepted, and devoted every spare minute to his new task. From the first his progress was rapid, and when he lost his job as newsboy he applied for a position as telegraph operator and was given a job as night operator at Stratford Junction, Canada, at a salary of twenty-five dollars a month. He was now sixteen years of age.

Within a very few years Edison became a swift and competent operator, as the following incident will show. “Edison had been promised employment in the Boston office. The weather was quite cold, and his peculiar dress, topped with a slouchy broad-brimmed hat, made something of a sensation. But Edison then cared as little for dress as he does today. So one raw, wet day a tall man with a limp, wet duster clinging to his legs, stalked into the superintendent’s room and said:

“‘Here I am’.

“The superintendent eyed him from head to foot, and said:

“‘Who are you?’

“‘Tom Edison.’

“‘And who on earth might Tom Edison be?’

“The young man explained that he had been ordered to report at the Boston office, and was finally told to sit down in the operating room, where his advent created much merriment. The operators made fun of him loudly 24 enough for him to hear. He didn’t care. A few minutes later a New York operator, noted for his swiftness, called up the Boston office. There was no one at liberty.

“‘Well,’ said the office chief, ‘let the new man try him.’

“Edison sat down and for four hours and a half wrote out messages in his clear round hand, stuck a date and number on them, and threw them on the floor for the office boy to pick up. The time he took in numbering and dating the sheets were the only seconds he was not writing out transmitted words. Faster and faster ticked the instrument, and faster and faster went Edison’s fingers, until the rapidity with which the messages came tumbling on the floor attracted the attention of the other operators, who, when their work was done, gathered around to witness the spectacle. At the close of the four and a half hours’ work there flashed from New York the salutation:

“‘Hello!’

“‘Hello yourself!’ ticked Edison.

“‘Who are you?’ rattled into the Boston office.

“‘Tom Edison.’

“‘You are the first man in the country’, ticked in the instrument, ‘that could ever take me at my fastest, and the only one who could ever sit at the other end of my wire for more than two hours and a half. I’m proud to know you.’”

While employed as telegraph operator Edison’s inventive mind was hard at work. Accordingly, when but 25 seventeen years of age he invented the Duplex telegraph which made it possible “to send two messages in opposite directions on the same wire at the same time, without causing any confusion.”

Though a brilliant operator, young Edison found it difficult to hold a job, as he was always neglecting his regular work to “fool with experiments,” as his employers put it.

Accordingly, when twenty-one years of age, he found himself in New York City seeking work. Suppose we invite Mr. Edison to tell us of this dramatic period of his life.

“On the third day after my arrival, while sitting in the office of the Laws Gold Repeating Telegraph Company, the complicated general instrument for sending messages on all the lines suddenly came to a stop with a crash. Within two minutes over three hundred boys,––a boy from every broker in the street, rushed upstairs and crowded the long aisle and office that hardly had room for one hundred, all yelling that such and such a broker’s wire was out of order and to fix it at once. It was pandemonium, and the man in charge became so excited that he lost control of all the knowledge he ever had. I went to the indicator and, having studied it thoroughly, knew where the trouble ought to be, and found it.”

“One of the innumerable contact springs had broken off and had fallen down between the two gear wheels and stopped the instrument; but it was not very noticeable. As I went out to tell the man in charge what the matter 26 was, George Laws, the inventor of the system, appeared on the scene, the most excited person I had seen. He demanded of the man the cause of the trouble, but the man was speechless. I ventured to say that I knew what the trouble was, and he said, ‘Fix it! Fix it! Be quick!’ I removed the spring and set the contact wheels at zero; and the line, battery, and inspecting men scattered through the financial district to set the instruments. In about two hours, things were working again. Mr. Laws came to ask my name and what I was doing. I told him and he asked me to come to his private office the following day. He asked me a great many questions about the instruments and his system, and I showed him how he could simplify things generally. He then requested that I should come next day. On arrival, he stated at once that he had decided to put me in charge of the whole plant, and that my salary would be three hundred dollars a month.”

“This was such a violent jump from anything I had ever seen before, that it rather paralyzed me for a while. I thought it was too much to be lasting; but I determined to try and live up to that salary if twenty hours a day of hard work would do it.”

It is needless to say that he made good in the biggest and best sense of the word.

It was at this time that Mr. Edison, now twenty-one years of age, invented an electric stock ticker for which he received forty thousand dollars.

Always desiring to devote his entire time to inventive work, he now saw that with the aid of his forty thousand dollars it was possible to do so. Accordingly, a little later we see him constructing a laboratory one hundred feet long at Menlo Park, a little station twenty-five miles from Newark, New Jersey. Here for years, in company with his assistants, he has made inventions that have revolutionized the world.

Finally, in 1886, his business had so seriously outgrown his quarters that he built his present laboratories at Orange, New Jersey. These laboratories are now housed in two beautiful, four story brick buildings each sixty feet wide by one hundred feet long. In addition to these laboratories there are Edison factories located in various sections of the country.

Though now seventy years of age, he is devoting all his time and the time of his laboratory force in solving the great problems connected with the present war.

“A tool is but the extension of a man’s hand, and a machine is but a complete tool. And he that invents a machine augments the power of a man and the well being of mankind.” ––Henry Ward Beecher.