Boyhood At Port Huron, Michigan - 4

Boyhood At Port Huron, Michigan - 4

Edison had, as a fact, already had some commercial experience from the age of eleven.

The ten acres of the reservation offered an excellent opportunity for truck-farming, and

the versatile head of the family could not avoid trying his luck in this branch of work. A

large "market garden" was laid out, in which Edison worked pretty steadily with the help

of the Dutch boy, Michael Oates--he of the flying experiment. These boys had a horse

and small wagon intrusted to them, and every morning in the season they would load up

with onions, lettuce, peas, etc., and go through the town.

As much as $600 was turned over to Mrs. Edison in one year from this source. The boy

was indefatigable but not altogether charmed with agriculture. "After a while I tired of

this work, as hoeing corn in a hot sun is unattractive, and I did not wonder that it had

built up cities. Soon the Grand Trunk Railroad was extended from Toronto to Port Huron,

at the foot of Lake Huron, and thence to Detroit, at about the same time the War of the

Rebellion broke out. By a great amount of persistence I got permission from my mother

to go on the local train as a newsboy. The local train from Port Huron to Detroit, a

distance of sixty-three miles, left at 7 A.M. and arrived again at 9.30 P.M. After being on

the train for several months, I started two stores in Port Huron--one for periodicals, and

the other for vegetables, butter, and berries in the season. These were attended by two

boys who shared in the profits. The periodical store I soon closed, as the boy in charge

could not be trusted. The vegetable store I kept up for nearly a year. After the railroad

had been opened a short time, they put on an express which left Detroit in the morning

and returned in the evening. I received permission to put a newsboy on this train.

Connected with this train was a car, one part for baggage and the other part for U. S.

mail, but for a long time it was not used. Every morning I had two large baskets of

vegetables from the Detroit market loaded in the mail-car and sent to Port Huron, where

the boy would take them to the store. They were much better than those grown locally,

and sold readily. I never was asked to pay freight, and to this day cannot explain why,

except that I was so small and industrious, and the nerve to appropriate a U. S. mail-car to

do a free freight business was so monumental. However, I kept this up for a long time,

and in addition bought butter from the farmers along the line, and an immense amount of

blackberries in the season. I bought wholesale and at a low price, and permitted the wives

of the engineers and trainmen to have the benefit of the discount. After a while there was

a daily immigrant train put on. This train generally had from seven to ten coaches filled

always with Norwegians, all bound for Iowa and Minnesota. On these trains I employed a

boy who sold bread, tobacco, and stick candy. As the war progressed the daily newspaper

sales became very profitable, and I gave up the vegetable store."

The hours of this occupation were long, but the work was not particularly heavy, and

Edison soon found opportunity for his favorite avocation--chemical experimentation. His

train left Port Huron at 7 A.M., and made its southward trip to Detroit in about three

hours. This gave a stay in that city from 10 A.M. until the late afternoon, when the train

left, arriving at Port Huron about 9.30 P.M. The train was made up of three coaches--

baggage, smoking, and ordinary passenger or "ladies." The baggage-car was divided into

three compartments--one for trunks and packages, one for the mail, and one for smoking.

In those days no use was made of the smoking-compartment, as there was no ventilation,

and it was turned over to young Edison, who not only kept papers there and his stock of

goods as a "candy butcher," but soon had it equipped with an extraordinary variety of

apparatus. There was plenty of leisure on the two daily runs, even for an industrious boy,

and thus he found time to transfer his laboratory from the cellar and re-establish it on the

train.