turing Company. The importance of these industries will be
apparent when it is stated that at this plant the maximum pay-roll shows
the employment of over 4200 persons, with annual earnings in salaries
and wages of more than $2,750,000.

In considering the phonograph in its commercial aspect, and endeavoring
to arrive at some idea of the world's estimate of the value of this
invention, we feel the ground more firm under our feet, for Edison
has in later years controlled its manufacture and sale. It will be
remembered that the phonograph lay dormant, commercially speaking,
for about ten years after it came into being, and then later invention
reduced it to a device capable of more popular utility. A few years
of rather unsatisfactory commercial experience brought about a
reorganization, through which Edison resumed possession of the business.
It has since been continued under his general direction and ownership,
and he has made a great many additional inventions tending to improve
the machine in all its parts.

The uses made of the phonograph up to this time have been of four kinds,
generally speaking--first, and principally, for amusement; second,
for instruction in languages; third, for business, in the dictation of
correspondence; and fourth, for sentimental reasons in preserving the
voices of friends. No separate figures are available to show the extent
of its employment in the second and fourth classes, as they are probably
included in machines coming under the first subdivision. Under this head
we find that there have been upward of 1,310,000 phonographs sold during
the last twenty years, with and for which there have been made and
sold no fewer than 97,845,000 records of a musical or other character.
Phonographic records are now being manufactured at Orange at the rate
of 75,000 a day, the annual sale of phonographs and records being
approximately $7,000,000, including business phonographs. This does not
include blank records, of which large numbers have also been supplied to
the public.

The adoption of the business phonograph has not been characterized
by the unanimity that obtained in the case of the one used merely for
amusement, as its use involves some changes in methods that business
men are slow to adopt until they realize the resulting convenience and
economy. Although it is only a few years since the business phonograph
has begun to make some headway, it is not difficult to appreciate that
Edison's pr