The Edison phonograph monthly (Mar 1906-Feb 1907)

EDISON PHONOGRAPH MONTHLY. THE CRY FOR "BRAINS." | BY JAMES CREELMAN, IN PEARSON'S MAGAZINE FOR AUGUST. Turning from the sweep and glitter of American prosperity to the men who have made it possible, one thinks of Thomas Alva Edison. His is "the honest life, the useful life, the friendly life" that deserves earnest attention in this astonishing year of moral incendiarism. No American name is more widely known. No living man has contributed more to the advancement of the human race. Millions of men and billions of dollars are employed in enterprises made possible by his genius and industry; and his works have extended themselves to the ends of the earth. So great is Mr. Edison's renown, and so secure his place among the few immortals who have modified civilization without bloodshed that we are apt to forget that he is not an illustrious abstraction, but a vigorous American citizen, still working night and day at the central problems of applied science, and pausing occasionally to wonder what in the world has happened to his countrymen that they should listen to croakings of despair in the midst of success. It is something to sit beside this really great man, whose name is a glory as well as a romance in the history of the continent, and to hear him speak words of soberness and truth about the outlook of the country; for Mr. Edison is not only a scientific investigator and inventor, but a business man, a millionaire, a manufacturer employing a great force of men and a merchant. And he is a man of rare candor. "I can't for the life of me understand why anyone in the United States should think that the poor man's chance for success is less than it used to be," he said as we sat in the great library of his laboratory at Llewellyn Park. "It's just the other way; no doubt of it." The strong arms were folded across the deep chest and the big gray eyes looked steadily through the window at a brawny workman hammering away on the new electric storagebattery factory. A whistling boy danced under a white-blossomed fruit tree. "I would rather begin now as a poor boy," he continued, "than to start again in the conditions which surrounded my early life. The opportunities for a poor boy or a poor man are greater to-day than they were then; make no mistake about that. "Great organizing minds have massed capital, systematized business, eliminated waste of materials and labor, and concentrated the forces of production along lines that grow more intelligent and humane year by year. "The world is crying for men of intelligence. It is searching for them everywhere. The door of opportunity is open, as it has never been open before, for men who have minds even a fraction above what is necessary for a routine muscular task. It doesn't matter whether a man be poor or rich, or what his color or creed or origin, he has a better chance now than if he lived a*generation ago; that is, if he can bring intelligence to his work. "This is the golden age of men of brains, .even a little brains, and I'd. rather, much rather, take my chances now, without a friend or a dollar in my pocket, than to go back even twenty years. "The world is growing better and stronger all the time, and the invitation to think is becoming almost irresistible in every branch of human effort. That is raising the race higher and higher. "As science is applied to industry more and more the rewards of intelligence grow greater, and to-day there are in thousands of factories 'suggestion boxes' into which workmen are urged to drop any ideas that may occur to them — so hungry are those who direct business to advance men capable of advancement." Mr. Edison had just come from the gray vapors of his chemical laboratory, where, among mysterious glass tubes, bulbs and jars, gleaming ovens, small pans, sizzling and sputtering above little devil-dancing flames of pink and voilet, he had been studying the results of endurance tests of his new electric storage battery, which is presently to revolutionize the wheeled traffic of cities. But the rosy, unwrinkled face and the smooth, splendid brow gave no hint of the mental struggle through which he had passed in the effort to better his latest gift to mankind. Mr. Edison is probably the hardest worker alive. But for his ability to toil for five days and nights at a stretch without sleep, the incandescent electric light might still be a laboratory toy. The Phonograph, the kinetoscope, the quadruplex telegraph, the electric railroad, the telephone transmitter, the megaphone and all the marvelous contributions which his brain has given to civilization, are the result of almost incredible working powers and an equally wonderful indifference to food. Living in the threshold of the future he has visions of things to come which make him jealous of everything that takes his time. He appreciates the shortness of life and the almost unspeakable wonders that science is about to reveal to man. And, at the age of fifty-nine, he works night and day with a quiet joy that sometimes breaks into fierce enthusiasm — moving forward, forward, forward, into the darkness that is slowly changing to light. "We are groping on the verge of another great epoch in the world's history," he said to me not long ago. "It would not surprise me any morning to wake up and learn that some one, or some group, of the three hundred thousand scientific men who are investigating all over the earth has seized the secret of electricity by direct process, and begun another practical revolution of human affairs. It can be done. It will be done. I expect to see it before I die. "A man will discover one fact in one part of the world, and that will set some fellow at work on another fact in some other part of the world, and presently a lot of men will be working on the true path ; and one day it will be announced to the world that electric power can be produced directly from coal. When