His father was a poor man, and as Alva was not in school he wanted to do his part toward making a living for the family. He began by selling papers around home. Then he had a chance to be train boy on the old Grand Trunk railroad between Port Huron and Detroit. His mother was afraid to have him run on trains and be away from home, but he showed that he could take care of himself. It was during this time that he began taking books from the Detroit Public Library.
He was such a wide-awake, good-natured lad that the trainmen liked him. He found that he had a good deal of time to spare; so he got some old type from a printer and, in a corner of the baggage car, began to print a four-page newspaper about the size of a small handkerchief, which he named The Grand Trunk Herald. The trainmen and their families and friends liked this young Edison’s news. Soon he had about five hundred subscribers, so he made about ten dollars a week from his little paper.
Meanwhile he attended strictly to business. During the Civil War he would find out when there had been a battle and have the telegraph operator send word of the event ahead of the train to the towns where the trains would stop. This brought hundreds of people down to the stations at
train-time to learn the news of the battle. Young Edison would sell hundreds—once he sold a thousand—newspapers at ten to twenty-five cents apiece.