tive officer. Just what the trouble
was as to the internal management of the corporation it is hard to
determine a quarter of a century later; but it was equipped with all
essential elements to dominate an art in which after its first efforts
it remained practically supine and useless, while other interests
forged ahead and reaped both the profit and the glory. Dissensions arose
between the representatives of the Field and Edison interests, and
in April, 1890, the Railway Company assigned its rights to the Edison
patents to the Edison General Electric Company, recently formed by
the consolidation of all the branches of the Edison light, power, and
manufacturing industry under one management. The only patent rights
remaining to the Railway Company were those under three Field patents,
one of which, with controlling claims, was put in suit June, 1890,
against the Jamaica & Brooklyn Road Company, a customer of the Edison
General Electric Company. This was, to say the least, a curious and
anomalous situation. Voluminous records were made by both parties to
the suit, and in the spring of 1894 the case was argued before the
late Judge Townsend, who wrote a long opinion dismissing the bill of
complaint. [15] The student will find therein a very complete and
careful study of the early electric-railway art. After this decision was
rendered, the Electric Railway Company remained for several years in a
moribund condition, and on the last day of 1896 its property was placed
in the hands of a receiver. In February of 1897 the receiver sold the
three Field patents to their original owner, and he in turn sold them to
the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company. The Railway Company
then went into voluntary dissolution, a sad example of failure to seize
the opportunity at the psychological moment, and on the part of the
inventor to secure any adequate return for years of effort and struggle
in founding one of the great arts. Neither of these men was squelched by
such a calamitous result, but if there were not something of bitterness
in their feelings as they survey what has come of their work, they would
not be human.

As a matter of fact, Edison retained a very lively interest in
electric-railway progress long after the pregnant days at Menlo Park,
one of the best evidences of which is an article in the New York
Electrical Engineer of November 18, 1891, which describes some important
and original experiments in the direction of