forgetful of the fact that the annual sum
so received was nothing more than legal interest, which could have been
earned indefinitely if the capital had been only insisted upon. In later
life Edison has been more circumspect, but throughout his early career
he was constantly getting into some kind of scrape. Of one experience he
says:

[Footnote 18: Edison received some stock from the parent
lighting company, but as the capital stock of that company
was increased from time to time, his proportion grew
smaller, and he ultimately used it to obtain ready money
with which to create and finance the various "shops" in
which were manufactured the various items of electric-
lighting apparatus necessary to exploit his system. Besides,
he was obliged to raise additional large sums of money from
other sources for this purpose. He thus became a
manufacturer with capital raised by himself, and the stock
that he received later, on the formation of the General
Electric Company, was not for his electric-light patents,
but was in payment for his manufacturing establishments,
which had then grown to be of great commercial importance.]

"In the early days I was experimenting with metallic filaments for the
incandescent light, and sent a certain man out to California in search
of platinum. He found a considerable quantity in the sluice-boxes of
the Cherokee Valley Mining Company; but just then he found also that
fruit-gardening was the thing, and dropped the subject. He then came to
me and said that if he could raise $4000 he could go into some kind of
orchard arrangement out there, and would give me half the profits. I
was unwilling to do it, not having very much money just then, but his
persistence was such that I raised the money and gave it to him. He went
back to California, and got into mining claims and into fruit-growing,
and became one of the politicians of the Coast, and, I believe, was on
the staff of the Governor of the State. A couple of years ago he wounded
his daughter and shot himself because he had become ruined financially.
I never heard from him after he got the money."

Edison tells of another similar episode. "I had two men working for
me--one a German, the other a Jew. They wanted me to put up a little
money and start them in a shop in New York to make repairs, etc. I
put up $800, and was to get half of the profits, and each of them
one-quarter