ell-known detective, who knew all the denizens of the
place: "We used to go out at night to a little, low place, an all-night
house--eight feet wide and twenty-two feet long--where we got a lunch
at two or three o'clock in the morning. It was the toughest kind of
restaurant ever seen. For the clam chowder they used the same four clams
during the whole season, and the average number of flies per pie was
seven. This was by actual count."

As to the shops and the locality: "The street was lined with rather old
buildings and poor tenements. We had not much frontage. As our business
increased enormously, our quarters became too small, so we saw the
district Tammany leader and asked him if we could not store castings
and other things on the sidewalk. He gave us permission--told us to go
ahead, and he would see it was all right. The only thing he required for
this was that when a man was sent with a note from him asking us to
give him a job, he was to be put on. We had a hand-laborer foreman--'Big
Jim'--a very powerful Irishman, who could lift above half a ton. When
one of the Tammany aspirants appeared, he was told to go right to work
at $1.50 per day. The next day he was told off to lift a certain piece,
and if the man could not lift it he was discharged. That made the
Tammany man all safe. Jim could pick the piece up easily. The other man
could not, and so we let him out. Finally the Tammany leader called a
halt, as we were running big engine lathes out on the sidewalk, and he
was afraid we were carrying it a little too far. The lathes were worked
right out in the street, and belted through the windows of the shop."

At last it became necessary to move from Goerck Street, and Mr. Edison
gives a very interesting account of the incidents in connection with
the transfer of the plant to Schenectady, New York: "After our works at
Goerck Street got too small, we had labor troubles also. It seems I had
rather a socialistic strain in me, and I raised the pay of the workmen
twenty-five cents an hour above the prevailing rate of wages, whereupon
Hoe & Company, our near neighbors, complained at our doing this. I said
I thought it was all right. But the men, having got a little more
wages, thought they would try coercion and get a little more, as we
were considered soft marks. Whereupon they struck at a time that
was critical. However, we were short of money for pay-rolls; and we
concluded it might not be so bad after all, as it would