"If I recollect aright," he replied, with a merry twinkle, "the bottoms of my boxes were a good inch."
From Edison's Newspaper, the "Grand Trunk Herald."
Perhaps the twelve-year-old boy learned something from the books and papers he sold. At all events he says that the love of chemistry, even at that age, led him to make the corner of the baggage-car where he stored his wares a small laboratory, fitted up with such retorts and bottles as he could pick up in the railroad workshops. He had a copy of Fresenius's "Qualitative Analysis," into which he plunged with the ardor a small boy usually shows for nothing literary unless it has a yellow cover decorated with an Indian's head. He seems also to have had a habit of "hanging around" all interesting places, from a machine-shop to a printing-office, keeping his eyes very wide open. In one such expedition he received as a gift from W.F. Storey, of the Detroit Free Press, three hundred pounds of old type thrown out as useless. With an old hand-press he began printing a paper of his own, the Grand Trunk Herald, of which he sold several hundred copies a week, the employees of the road being his best customers. "My news," he says, talking of this time, "was purely local. But I was proud of my newspaper and looked upon myself as a full-fledged newspaper man. My items used to run about like this: 'John Robinson, baggage-master at James's Creek Station, fell off the platform yesterday and hurt his leg. The boys are sorry for John.' Or, 'No. 3 Burlington engine has gone into the shed for repairs.'"
This was Edison's only dip into a literary occupation. He has no predilection in that way. He realizes the value of newspapers and books, but chiefly as tools, and his splendid library at the Orange laboratory, kept with scrupulous system, is filled with scientific books and periodicals only. Telegraphy was to be the field in which he was to win his first laurels. Some years ago he told the story as follows:
"At the beginning of the civil war I was slaving late and early at selling papers; but, to tell the truth, I was not making a fortune. I worked on so small a margin that I had to be mighty careful not to overload myself with papers that I could not sell. On the other hand, I could not afford to carry so few that I should find myself sold out long before the end of the trip. To enable myself to hit the happy mean, I formed a plan which turned out admirably. I made a friend of one of the compositors of the Free Press office, and persuaded him to show me every day a 'galley-proof' of the most important news article. From a study of its head-lines I soon learned to gauge the value of the day's news and its selling capacity, so that I could form a tolerably correct estimate of the number of papers I should need. As a rule I could dispose of about two hundred; but if there was any special news from the seat of war, the sale ran up to three hundred or over. Well, one day my compositor brought me a proof-slip of which nearly the whole was taken up with a gigantic display head. It was the first report of the battle of Pittsburgh Landing—afterward called Shiloh, you know—and it gave the number of killed and wounded as sixty thousand men.
"I grasped the situation at once. Here was a chance for enormous sales, if only the people along the line could know what had happened! If only they could see the proof-slip I was then reading! Suddenly an idea occurred to me. I rushed off to the telegraph-operator and gravely made a proposition to him which he received just as gravely. He on his part was to wire to each of the principal stations on our route, asking the station-master to chalk up on the bulletin-board—used for announcing the time of arrival and departure of trains—the news of the great battle, with its accompanying slaughter. This he was to do at once, while I, in return, agreed to supply him with current literature 'free, gratis, for nothing' during the next six months from that date.
"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 upstairs into the office of Wilbur F. Storey himself and asked to see him. A few minutes later I was shown in to him. I told who I was, and that I wanted fifteen hundred copies of the paper on credit. The tall, thin, dark-eyed, ascetic-looking man stared at me for a moment and then scratched a few words on a slip of paper. 'Take that downstairs,' said he, 'and you will get what you 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 apiece. 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 discount 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 meeting. All of them, including the parson, were clustered around me, bidding against each other for copies of the precious paper.