als, Edison found
lodging in the battery room of the Gold Indicator Company.

"It was four years after the Civil War and, besides there being much
unemployment, the fluctuations in the value of gold, as compared with
the paper currency of that day, made it necessary to have gold
'indicators' something like the tickers from the Stock Exchange to-day.
Dr. Laws, presiding officer of the Gold Exchange, had recently invented
a system of gold indicators, which were placed in brokers' offices and
operated from the Gold Exchange.

"When Edison got permission to spend the night in the battery room of
this company, there were about three hundred of these instruments
operating in offices in all directions in lower New York City.

"On the third day after his arrival, while sitting in this office, the
complicated instrument sending quotations out on all the lines made a
very loud noise, and came to a sudden stop with a crash. Within two
minutes over three hundred boys---one from every broker's office in the
street--rushed upstairs and crowded the long aisle and office where
there was hardly room for one-third that number, each yelling that a
certain broker's wire was out of order, and that it must be fixed at
once.

"It was pandemonium, and the manager got so wild that he lost all
control of himself. Edison went to the indicator, and as he had already
studied it thoroughly, he knew right where the trouble was. He went
right out to see the man in charge, and found Dr. Laws there also--the
most excited man of all!

"The Doctor demanded to know what caused all the trouble, but his man
stood there, staring and dumb. As soon as Edison could get Laws'
attention he told him he knew what the matter was.

"'Fix it! Fix it! and be quick about it!' Dr. Laws shouted.

"Edison went right to work and in two hours had everything in running
order. Dr. Laws came in to ask the inventor's name and what he was
doing. When told, he asked the young man to call on him in his office
the next day. Edison did so and Laws said he had decided to place Edison
in charge of the entire plant at a salary of three hundred dollars a
month!

"This was such a big jump from any wages he had ever received that it
quite paralyzed the youthful inventor. He felt that it was too much to
last long, but he made up his mind he would do his best to earn that
salary if he had to work twenty hours a day. He kept that job, making
improvements and devising other stock tick