“This bargain struck, I began to bethink me how I was to get enough papers to make the grand coup I intended. I had very little cash, and, I feared, still less credit. I went to the superintendent of the delivery department, and preferred a modest request for one thousand copies of the Free Press on trust. I was not much surprised when my request was curtly and gruffly refused. In those days, though, I was a pretty cheeky boy and I felt desperate, for I saw a small fortune in prospect if my telegraph operator had kept his word, a point on which I was still a trifle doubtful. Nerving myself for a great stroke, I marched up stairs into the office of Wilbur F. Story himself and asked to see him. I told him who I was and that I wanted fifteen hundred copies of the paper on credit. The tall, thin, dark-eyed man stared at me for a moment and then scratched a few words on a slip of paper. ‘Take that down stairs,’ said he, ‘and you will get what you 21 want.’ And so I did. Then I felt happier than I have ever felt since.
“I took my fifteen hundred papers, got three boys to help me fold them, and mounted the train all agog to find out whether the telegraph operator had kept his word. At the town where our first stop was made I usually sold two papers. As the train swung into that station I looked ahead and thought there must be a riot going on. A big crowd filled the platform and as the train drew up I began to realize that they wanted my papers. Before we left, I had sold a hundred or two at five cents each. At the next station the place was fairly black with people. I raised the ‘ante’ and sold three hundred papers at ten cents each. So it went on until Port Huron was reached. Then I transferred my remaining stock to the wagon, which always waited for me there, hired a small boy to sit on the pile of papers in the back, so as to prevent any pilfering, and sold out every paper I had at a quarter of a dollar or more per copy. I remember I passed a church full of worshippers, and stopped to yell out my news. In ten seconds there was not a soul left in the meeting, all of the audience, including the parson, were clustered around me, bidding against each other for copies of the precious paper.”
Though, as you will admit, Mr. Edison was a very successful newsboy, he was not satisfied merely to sell papers, so at the age of fifteen he began editing and publishing a paper of his own. To do this he purchased a 22 small hand printing press and fitted out, as best he could, a printing office in an old freight car.
The Grand Trunk Herald, as the paper was called, consisted of a single sheet printed on both sides, and sold for eight cents a month. When the paper was at the height of its popularity he sold five hundred copies each week, and realized a profit of forty-five dollars a month.
He might have continued in editorial work had not a sad mishap overtaken him. In addition to his editorial work he performed many experiments, for his was the soul of the inventor. These experiments were performed in the baggage car of the train. One day, as he was in the midst of one of these experiments, a sudden lurch of the train upset his bottle of phosphorous, setting the baggage car on fire. The conductor, a quick-tempered man, after putting out the fire, dumped young Edison’s precious printing press and apparatus out of the car and went on. This was a very sad experience for the lad, but the saddest part was the fact that, as the conductor threw Edison out he boxed his ears so severely that he was partially deaf ever after.
Now that young Edison had lost his job as newsboy, and could no longer print the Grand Trunk Herald, what was he to do? He decided, if possible, to get a position as telegraph operator. But, you ask, how did he learn to be a telegraph operator?
While yet a newsboy, he had saved the life of a child by snatching it from before a moving train. The father, 23 a telegraph operator, was so grateful to young Edison for saving his child that he offered to teach him telegraphy. This offer the lad eagerly accepted, and devoted every spare minute to his new task. From the first his progress was rapid, and when he lost his job as newsboy he applied for a position as telegraph operator and was given a job as night operator at Stratford Junction, Canada, at a salary of twenty-five dollars a month. He was now sixteen years of age.
Within a very few years Edison became a swift and competent operator, as the following incident will show. “Edison had been promised employment in the Boston office. The weather was quite cold, and his peculiar dress, topped with a slouchy broad-brimmed hat, made something of a sensation. But Edison then cared as little for dress as he does today. So one raw, wet day a tall man with a limp, wet duster clinging to his legs, stalked into the superintendent’s room and said:
“‘Here I am’.
“The superintendent eyed him from head to foot, and said: