was not emphasized that Edison
then, as later, tried hard to drop manufacturing. He would infinitely
rather be philosopher than producer; but somehow the necessity of
manufacturing is constantly thrust back upon him by a profound--perhaps
finical--sense of dissatisfaction with what other people make for him.
The world never saw a man more deeply and desperately convinced that
nothing in it approaches perfection. Edison is the doctrine of evolution
incarnate, applied to mechanics. As to the removal from Newark, he may
be allowed to tell his own story: "I had a shop at Newark in which I
manufactured stock tickers and such things. When I moved to Menlo Park
I took out only the machinery that would be necessary for experimental
purposes and left the manufacturing machinery in the place. It consisted
of many milling machines and other tools for duplicating. I rented this
to a man who had formerly been my bookkeeper, and who thought he could
make money out of manufacturing. There was about $10,000 worth of
machinery. He was to pay me $2000 a year for the rent of the machinery
and keep it in good order. After I moved to Menlo Park, I was very
busy with the telephone and phonograph, and I paid no attention to this
little arrangement. About three years afterward, it occurred to me that
I had not heard at all from the man who had rented this machinery, so I
thought I would go over to Newark and see how things were going. When I
got there, I found that instead of being a machine shop it was a hotel!
I have since been utterly unable to find out what became of the man
or the machinery." Such incidents tend to justify Edison in his rather
cynical remark that he has always been able to improve machinery much
quicker than men. All the way up he has had discouraging experiences.
"One day while I was carrying on my work in Newark, a Wall Street broker
came from the city and said he was tired of the 'Street,' and wanted to
go into something real. He said he had plenty of money. He wanted some
kind of a job to keep his mind off Wall Street. So we gave him a job
as a 'mucker' in chemical experiments. The second night he was there
he could not stand the long hours and fell asleep on a sofa. One of the
boys took a bottle of bromine and opened it under the sofa. It floated
up and produced a violent effect on the mucous membrane. The broker was
taken with such a fit of coughing he burst a blood-vessel, and the
man who let the bromine out got awa