Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 July 1891 — EDISON AFTER DOLLARS. [ARTICLE]

EDISON AFTER DOLLARS.

Why thev'Great Isrator JDealres to Aocumalate a Fortn*. « ■ *T saw Edison one day,” says an acquaintance, “on the eveof perhaps his most important—certainly his most remunerative —discovery, ridiug in the cars to visit a great foundry in Connecticut. He wore a long linen duster of antique design, a straw hat which was partly frayed at the edges, aud he sat squeezed by the generous bulk of Prof. George A. Barker, of the University of Pennsylvania, intd a corner of one of the amen seats of the railroad car. He was then not only the most famous man on that train, but one of the most famous Americans the world over, and he had all the simplicity of greatness. And on the following day, when he stood in front of a great dynamo, the wind carrying his linen duster at an angle of nearly 45 degrees from his legs, and a convenient morsel of his favorite fineeut revealing itself by frequent expctoratiocs, he was really in the presence of immensity and solving one of the riddles of the ages. Fox- it was there that he got his first hint of the divisibility of the electric lighting current, and it was at that mordent that the Edison electric light was created in his brain.

Even then Edison had no money sense. He bad not learned, as he 1 afterward did learn, that next to his | own intellect the most powerful inj fluence which he could have in the Solution of the problems he undertook to solve was the possession-of wealth generous to a fault, ’ not Sfily'tyith the money which he earned but with his Ideas. It was not until he became associated with I Certain capitalists who regarded his intellect with awe and ms lack of | money sense with something like amazement tinged with contempt, that Edison learned the lesson of the value of money. When he got this lesson he had it thoroughly. He abondoned all of the countless notions which floated to his brain unless he saw in them a money value; he measured his contemplated inventions not by the satisfaction which they would give him or the fame which he would attain, but by their value as business commodities. He employed, just as a bank would competent talent to handle his accounts and his cash, and in course of two or three years he found himself not embarrassed for ready cash, as he had freqently been before not obliged to scurry about here and there to raise money, which was an abhorrent occupation to him, but a capitalists, a man esteemed in financial circles not only as a wizard with wonders at his beck, but a man with a bank account, capable of undertaking great financial operations. He learned, too, to curb his exuberant and enthusiastic nature, and he i put on a mask of severity and coldness difficult at all times for him to maintain, but which he found absolutely essential for liis protection. With his intimates he was a boy again, and he tells them frequently that when he gets through feeling ! like a boy he wants to go. j Edison’s wealth is almost impossi- ! ble to estimate. It is very large, and : he is accumulating now rapidly. The | snowball has got a prodigious size, j and is constantly rolling. As he is [ only 44 years of age he will become one of the enormously wealthy men 1 of the country.