The Social Side Of Edison -15

The Social Side Of Edison -15

Another and second characteristic of Edison's personality contributing so strongly to his

achievements is an intense, not to say courageous, optimism in which no thought of

failure can enter, an optimism born of self-confidence, and becoming--after forty or fifty

years of experience more and more a sense of certainty in the accomplishment of success.

In the overcoming of difficulties he has the same intellectual pleasure as the chess-master

when confronted with a problem requiring all the efforts of his skill and experience to

solve. To advance along smooth and pleasant paths, to encounter no obstacles, to wrestle

with no difficulties and hardships--such has absolutely no fascination to him. He meets

obstruction with the keen delight of a strong man battling with the waves and opposing

them in sheer enjoyment, and the greater and more apparently overwhelming the forces

that may tend to sweep him back, the more vigorous his own efforts to forge through

them. At the conclusion of the ore-milling experiments, when practically his entire

fortune was sunk in an enterprise that had to be considered an impossibility, when at the

age of fifty he looked back upon five or six years of intense activity expended apparently

for naught, when everything seemed most black and the financial clouds were quickly

gathering on the horizon, not the slightest idea of repining entered his mind. The main

experiment had succeeded--he had accomplished what he sought for. Nature at another

point had outstripped him, yet he had broadened his own sum of knowledge to a

prodigious extent. It was only during the past summer (1910) that one of the writers spent

a Sunday with him riding over the beautiful New Jersey roads in an automobile, Edison

in the highest spirits and pointing out with the keenest enjoyment the many beautiful

views of valley and wood. The wanderings led to the old ore-milling plant at Edison, now

practically a mass of deserted buildings all going to decay. It was a depressing sight,

marking such titanic but futile struggles with nature. To Edison, however, no trace of

sentiment or regret occurred, and the whole ruins were apparently as much a matter of

unconcern as if he were viewing the remains of Pompeii. Sitting on the porch of the

White House, where he lived during that period, in the light of the setting sun, his fine

face in repose, he looked as placidly over the scene as a happy farmer over a field of

ripening corn. All that he said was: "I never felt better in my life than during the five

years I worked here. Hard work, nothing to divert my thought, clear air and simple food

made my life very pleasant. We learned a great deal. It will be of benefit to some one

some time." Similarly, in connection with the storage battery, after having experimented

continuously for three years, it was found to fall below his expectations, and its

manufacture had to be stopped. Hundreds of thousands of dollars had been spent on the

experiments, and, largely without Edison's consent, the battery had been very generally

exploited in the press. To stop meant not only to pocket a great loss already incurred,

facing a dark and uncertain future, but to most men animated by ordinary human feelings,

it meant more than anything else, an injury to personal pride. Pride? Pooh! that had

nothing to do with the really serious practical problem, and the writers can testify that at

the moment when his decision was reached, work stopped and the long vista ahead was

peered into, Edison was as little concerned as if he had concluded that, after all, perhaps

peach-pie might be better for present diet than apple-pie. He has often said that time

meant very little to him, that he had but a small realization of its passage, and that ten or

twenty years were as nothing when considering the development of a vital invention.