Arduous Years In The Central West - 10

Arduous Years In The Central West - 10

Work was soon resumed at Louisville, where the dilapidated old office occupied at the

close of the war had been exchanged for one much more comfortable and luxurious in its

equipment. As before, Edison was allotted to press report, and remembers very distinctly

taking the Presidential message and veto of the District of Columbia bill by President

Johnson. As the matter was received over the wire he paragraphed it so that each printer

had exactly three lines, thus enabling the matter to be set up very expeditiously in the

newspaper offices. This earned him the gratitude of the editors, a dinner, and all the

newspaper "exchanges" he wanted. Edison's accounts of the sprees and debauches of

other night operators in the loosely managed offices enable one to understand how even a

little steady application to the work in hand would be appreciated. On one occasion

Edison acted as treasurer for his bibulous companions, holding the stakes, so to speak, in

order that the supply of liquor might last longer. One of the mildest mannered of the party

took umbrage at the parsimony of the treasurer and knocked him down, whereupon the

others in the party set upon the assailant and mauled him so badly that he had to spend

three weeks in hospital. At another time two of his companions sharing the temporary

hospitality of his room smashed most of the furniture, and went to bed with their boots

on. Then his kindly good-nature rebelled. "I felt that this was running hospitality into the

ground, so I pulled them out and left them on the floor to cool off from their alcoholic

trance."

Edison seems on the whole to have been fairly comfortable and happy in Louisville,

surrounding himself with books and experimental apparatus, and even inditing a treatise

on electricity. But his very thirst for knowledge and new facts again proved his undoing.

The instruments in the handsome new offices were fastened in their proper places, and

operators were strictly forbidden to remove them, or to use the batteries except on regular

work. This prohibition meant little to Edison, who had access to no other instruments

except those of the company. "I went one night," he says, "into the battery-room to obtain

some sulphuric acid for experimenting. The carboy tipped over, the acid ran out, went

through to the manager's room below, and ate up his desk and all the carpet. The next

morning I was summoned before him, and told that what the company wanted was

operators, not experimenters. I was at liberty to take my pay and get out."

The fact that Edison is a very studious man, an insatiate lover and reader of books, is well

known to his associates; but surprise is often expressed at his fund of miscellaneous

information. This, it will be seen, is partly explained by his work for years as a "press"

reporter. He says of this: "The second time I was in Louisville, they had moved into a

new office, and the discipline was now good. I took the press job. In fact, I was a very

poor sender, and therefore made the taking of press report a specialty. The newspaper

men allowed me to come over after going to press at 3 A.M. and get all the exchanges I

wanted. These I would take home and lay at the foot of my bed. I never slept more than

four or five hours' so that I would awake at nine or ten and read these papers until dinnertime.

I thus kept posted, and knew from their activity every member of Congress, and

what committees they were on; and all about the topical doings, as well as the prices of

breadstuffs in all the primary markets. I was in a much better position than most operators

to call on my imagination to supply missing words or sentences, which were frequent in

those days of old, rotten wires, badly insulated, especially on stormy nights. Upon such

occasions I had to supply in some cases one-fifth of the whole matter--pure guessing--but

I got caught only once. There had been some kind of convention in Virginia, in which

John Minor Botts was the leading figure. There was great excitement about it, and two

votes had been taken in the convention on the two days. There was no doubt that the vote

the next day would go a certain way. A very bad storm came up about 10 o'clock, and my

wire worked very badly. Then there was a cessation of all signals; then I made out the

words `Minor Botts.' The next was a New York item. I filled in a paragraph about the

convention and how the vote had gone, as I was sure it would. But next day I learned that

instead of there being a vote the convention had adjourned without action until the day

after." In like manner, it was at Louisville that Mr. Edison got an insight into the manner

in which great political speeches are more frequently reported than the public suspects.

"The Associated Press had a shorthand man travelling with President Johnson when he

made his celebrated swing around the circle in a private train delivering hot speeches in

defence of his conduct. The man engaged me to write out the notes from his reading. He

came in loaded and on the verge of incoherence. We started in, but about every two

minutes I would have to scratch out whole paragraphs and insert the same things said in

another and better way. He would frequently change words, always to the betterment of

the speech. I couldn't understand this, and when he got through, and I had copied about

three columns, I asked him why those changes, if he read from notes. `Sonny,' he said, `if

these politicians had their speeches published as they deliver them, a great many

shorthand writers would be out of a job. The best shorthanders and the holders of good

positions are those who can take a lot of rambling, incoherent stuff and make a rattling

good speech out of it.' "

Going back to Cincinnati and beginning his second term there as an operator, Edison

found the office in new quarters and with greatly improved management. He was again

put on night duty, much to his satisfaction. He rented a room in the top floor of an office

building, bought a cot and an oil-stove, a foot lathe, and some tools. He cultivated the

acquaintance of Mr. Sommers, superintendent of telegraph of the Cincinnati &

Indianapolis Railroad, who gave him permission to take such scrap apparatus as he might

desire, that was of no use to the company. With Sommers on one occasion he had an

opportunity to indulge his always strong sense of humor. "Sommers was a very witty

man," he says, "and fond of experimenting. We worked on a self-adjusting telegraph

relay, which would have been very valuable if we could have got it. I soon became the

possessor of a second-hand Ruhmkorff induction coil, which, although it would only give

a small spark, would twist the arms and clutch the hands of a man so that he could not let

go of the apparatus. One day we went down to the round-house of the Cincinnati &

Indianapolis Railroad and connected up the long wash- tank in the room with the coil,

one electrode being connected to earth. Above this wash-room was a flat roof. We bored

a hole through the roof, and could see the men as they came in. The first man as he

entered dipped his hands in the water. The floor being wet he formed a circuit, and up

went his hands. He tried it the second time, with the same result. He then stood against

the wall with a puzzled expression. We surmised that he was waiting for somebody else

to come in, which occurred shortly after--with the same result. Then they went out, and

the place was soon crowded, and there was considerable excitement. Various theories

were broached to explain the curious phenomenon. We enjoyed the sport immensely." It

must be remembered that this was over forty years ago, when there was no popular

instruction in electricity, and when its possibilities for practical joking were known to

very few. To-day such a crowd of working-men would be sure to include at least one

student of a night school or correspondence course who would explain the mystery

offhand.