The talking machine world (Jan-Dec 1910)

THE TALKING MACHINE WORLD. 23 From a little shop 17 feet square to an establishment covering 15 acres of floor space; from an income of $10 a week — when there happened to be $10 in the firm — to the control of a company that does a business of $30,000,00 a year: that is something of a record for twelve years' work. The man who made it is Eldridge Reeves Johnson, inventor and largely owner of the Victor talking machine. Twelve or fifteen years ago the talking machine was a joke — interesting but ludicrous. To-day the greatest singers of the world draw a large part of their income from these same machines. This year Caruso will get royalties amounting to about $70,000 from the Victor Co. All languages and dialects are recorded, every country's music is represented, and at the great works in Camden they can send out a machine a minute. The Victor's growth is the story of an idea believed in persistently in the face of ridicule, of unceasing work that for years spelled failure; then success, financial, artistic, beyond even the dreamer's wildest dreams. Eldridge Johnson is a Delaware man. Like most Delaware men born forty-three years ago, he found the times hard. His father could do nothing for him in the way of a college education, and the young man, having a gift for mechanics, went to Camden, N. J., put on overalls and went to work at a bench. Fate took him to a phonograph shop. The invention was new then, and it was the joy of tourists at Coney Island and similar resorts to listen to the thing speaking out the "Star-Spangled Banner" or "A Hot Time in the Old Town To-night." It was wonderful to find the music even imperfectly reproduced, and it was funny to hear the wheezing and scratching that accompanied it. Everybody said it was an amusing and astonishing toy. To young Johnson, however, it was not a toy. He made motors for his employer in the phonograph shop, and he improved on them. The firm said casually that his invention was good, and they would have taken it up had they not come to an untimely end just then. There was no more experimenting with talking machines for Johnson, but the idea stayed in his head. Perhaps it was more than an idea — one might call it a dream — for the young mechanic saw a good deal more than financial success in it. Johnson went West— to Seattle or some such place — and had many adventures. Luck was against him and he decided that he would rather starve among his own folks than off in a new country, so he sent his tools back by freight and bought his own ticket. He reached Philadelphia with 50 cents in his pocket and the bill for freight unpaid. Penniless and tool-less he called on a friend, the kind of friend to whom a man can safely turn on such occasions. Said the friend, struck with a bright idea as he gazed upon the financial wreck before him : "What do you say to going into partnership, Johnson? Neither of us has any money, so it seems just the thing." It was just the thing, too. They got the tools out of the freight depot and took seventeen square feet of shop in Camden, being too poor to aspire to the proud city across the Delaware. Then they began to do business — any sort of business connected with machines. Johnson was the acknowledged expert, his friend the financier. The expert got $10 a week — if possible — and the financier took what was left— if anything. From a material point of view the firm was not a strong one, as captious critics may point out, but in one respect it couldn't be beaten. The partners believed in each other with a mighty belief, and it was sink or swim together in the seventeen-foot shop. Sometimes they swam very well, and again frequently it would look as if they were sinking for the last time. Johnson invented a wheat-cleaning machine, and his partner sold them. That did fairly well, and if they had had any idea how very good the machine was (they found out later, F.LURU.'GE R. JOHNSON. when they did not need money) they might have stuck exclusively to that. But they wandered from wheat-cleaning machines to oil burners, and came very near making a fortune. The burners sold like wildfire. Everybody said it was the greatest invention ever made for convenience and economy. Troubles seemed over for three happy months, and then buyers began to complain that the burners got out of repair. So they did, as the promoters sadly discovered. It worked well for a short time, but it was no good as a permanency. Finally, one customer singed off his eyebrows with the thing, and the language he used to the firm discouraged them from continuing the sales. All this while the talking-machine idea was simmering back in Johnson's head. He told his partner about it and his partner, as usual, believed. That is, he believed Johnson's machine would be a better machine than any on the market, but when the inventor began to point out its great artistic possibilities, to enlarge on his conviction, that every great voice might in future be made immortal, that singers of to-day might thrill audiences a hundred years hence — then even the faithful partnei shook his head. "No, Johnson," he said. "You'll make a good machine and people will buy it because it's so curious. You'll never in this world get out the squeak — never. But if we can make and sell 500 or so, just as curious toys, why let's go ahead and do it." The inventor worked day and night. He had a pretty good thing, but not what was singing in his brain. Then one day he seized his partner as he came in from selling the firm's wares. "I've got it this time," he said. When Johnson says he has a thing, he usually has, so the senior member shared the inventor's excitement. Together they turned to the machine, so often changed, so persistently and bafflingly inaccurate. Johnson put on a record and lo, from the thing came clear and' almost speakless. "I guess I'll go arid telegraph my baby — " Can you imagine the solemnity, the awe, with which the two men listened to those foolish words ? It meant the realization of a dream, it meant wealth, everything. J Johnson had "arrived." It happened that the firm was prosperous at that time. They had a thousand dollars from a job of doing something to ballot boxes — a thousand dollars less what Johnson had spent to buy a gun for his partner. Partner loved to shoot and his gun had a fashion of sending the bullet more or less at right angles, so when this their first great success, came to them, Johnson had insisted on a new gun. Perhaps he felt that $10 a week had been too large a percentage of the net receipts for him to draw, and suspected his partner of too great selfabnegation. That was the kind of partnership it was, you see. But there was still money in the treasury and away to London went partner, while Johnson stayed and worked day and night to get further perfection. The gramophone people in London listened to the ditty that he played, and then they said, briefly : "We'll pay Mr. Johnson what he likes for the European rights of his invention." And partner "guessed he'd go and cable" Johnson without delay. Since then the Victor people and the Gramophone Co. have controlled Mr Johnson's inventions — two separate companies, allied for business purposes, so that even the j'-eat Victor success does not show all that Mr. Johnson has done in the talking-machine world. That, briefly, is the story of how a man created an industry that sends its products all over the globe, that has recorded all the great voices of the day, and the songs and folk tales of fifty-nine different languages and dialects. There are many incidental details that should be given to make a better picture of those early struggles. For instance, to-day the leading grand opera singers draw royalties from the Victor people of from $5,000 to $25,000 a year. Caruso draws more. For the last six years he has avenged $50,000 annually from the talking-machine company, and this year it looks as if he would get in the neighborhood of $70,000. But twelve years ago things were otherwise. Net a singer of any reputation would touch the talking machine business. You were scratched off the list of the elect if you looked at one. Besides, the firm had little to offer in the way of remuneration. "I remember," said one who worked with the inventor in the early days, "that we had no place for the singers to record in except a loft that you got to with a ladder. I would scurry around and get some poor devil to come and sing for a dollar in real money and then I'd push him up the ladder and try to get a record. Sometimes the voice would record and sometimes we would have nothing but failure. "I sometimes think, as I watch Melba and Tetrazzini and Farrar singing in our laboratory, of a woman I got to sing for us once in the beginning. I can see her now, a stout, good-natured creature who had come in the rain without an umbrella to sing for a dollar or so. She had a long feather in her hat and it hung over one ear and dripped water on the floor of the loft. "What a time I had getting her up the ladder, too. She was a kindly soul, for she enjoyed singing into the machine so much that she wanted to