Boyhood At Port Huron, Michigan - 6
In describing his enterprising action that day, Edison says that when he reached Detroit
the bulletin- boards of the newspaper offices were surrounded with dense crowds, which
read awestricken the news that there were 60,000 killed and wounded, and that the result
was uncertain. "I knew that if the same excitement was attained at the various small
towns along the road, and especially at Port Huron, the sale of papers would be great. I
then conceived the idea of telegraphing the news ahead, went to the operator in the depot,
and by giving him Harper's Weekly and some other papers for three months, he agreed to
telegraph to all the stations the matter on the bulletin-board. I hurriedly copied it, and he
sent it, requesting the agents to display it on the blackboards used for stating the arrival
and departure of trains. I decided that instead of the usual one hundred papers I could sell
one thousand; but not having sufficient money to purchase that number, I determined in
my desperation to see the editor himself and get credit. The great paper at that time was
the Detroit Free Press. I walked into the office marked "Editorial" and told a young man
that I wanted to see the editor on important business--important to me, anyway, I was
taken into an office where there were two men, and I stated what I had done about
telegraphing, and that I wanted a thousand papers, but only had money for three hundred,
and I wanted credit. One of the men refused it, but the other told the first spokesman to
let me have them. This man, I afterward learned, was Wilbur F. Storey, who subsequently
founded the Chicago Times, and became celebrated in the newspaper world. By the aid of
another boy I lugged the papers to the train and started folding them. The first station,
called Utica, was a small one where I generally sold two papers. I saw a crowd ahead on
the platform, and thought it some excursion, but the moment I landed there was a rush for
me; then I realized that the telegraph was a great invention. I sold thirty-five papers there.
The next station was Mount Clemens, now a watering-place, but then a town of about one
thousand. I usually sold six to eight papers there. I decided that if I found a corresponding
crowd there, the only thing to do to correct my lack of judgment in not getting more
papers was to raise the price from five cents to ten. The crowd was there, and I raised the
price. At the various towns there were corresponding crowds. It had been my practice at
Port Huron to jump from the train at a point about one-fourth of a mile from the station,
where the train generally slackened speed. I had drawn several loads of sand to this point
to jump on, and had become quite expert. The little Dutch boy with the horse met me at
this point. When the wagon approached the outskirts of the town I was met by a large
crowd. I then yelled: `Twenty-five cents apiece, gentlemen! I haven't enough to go
around!' I sold all out, and made what to me then was an immense sum of money."
Such episodes as this added materially to his income, but did not necessarily increase his
savings, for he was then, as now, an utter spendthrift so long as some new apparatus or
supplies for experiment could be had. In fact, the laboratory on wheels soon became
crowded with such equipment, most costly chemicals were bought on the instalment plan,
and Fresenius' Qualitative Analysis served as a basis for ceaseless testing and study.
George Pullman, who then had a small shop at Detroit and was working on his sleepingcar,
made Edison a lot of wooden apparatus for his chemicals, to the boy's delight.
Unfortunately a sudden change came, fraught with disaster. The train, running one day at
thirty miles an hour over a piece of poorly laid track, was thrown suddenly out of the
perpendicular with a violent lurch, and, before Edison could catch it, a stick of
phosphorus was jarred from its shelf, fell to the floor, and burst into flame. The car took
fire, and the boy, in dismay, was still trying to quench the blaze when the conductor, a
quick-tempered Scotchman, who acted also as baggage-master, hastened to the scene
with water and saved his car. On the arrival at Mount Clemens station, its next stop,
Edison and his entire outfit, laboratory, printing-plant, and all, were promptly ejected by
the enraged conductor, and the train then moved off, leaving him on the platform, tearful
and indignant in the midst of his beloved but ruined possessions. It was lynch law of a
kind; but in view of the responsibility, this action of the conductor lay well within his
rights and duties.
It was through this incident that Edison acquired the deafness that has persisted all
through his life, a severe box on the ears from the scorched and angry conductor being
the direct cause of the infirmity. Although this deafness would be regarded as a great
affliction by most people, and has brought in its train other serious baubles, Mr. Edison
has always regarded it philosophically, and said about it recently: "This deafness has
been of great advantage to me in various ways. When in a telegraph office, I could only
hear the instrument directly on the table at which I sat, and unlike the other operators, I
was not bothered by the other instruments. Again, in experimenting on the telephone, I
had to improve the transmitter so I could hear it. This made the telephone commercial, as
the magneto telephone receiver of Bell was too weak to be used as a transmitter
commercially. It was the same with the phonograph. The great defect of that instrument
was the rendering of the overtones in music, and the hissing consonants in speech. I
worked over one year, twenty hours a day' Sundays and all, to get the word `specie '
perfectly recorded and reproduced on the phonograph. When this was done I knew that
everything else could be done which was a fact. Again, my nerves have been preserved
intact. Broadway is as quiet to me as a country village is to a person with normal
hearing."
