EDISON AS A NEWSBOY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XXXXIII, Issue 25, 30 January 1901, Page 4

EDISON AS A NEWSBOY.

".',i ilw ixntfnmrv: o( the Civil War, 5 hie a-v! c».rly .r. selling papers; I, ! - , m i.-!l ti«-- iruth, 1 wa« ik* making a - '■ Mr l-.dison, the greatest of n'.'. i :'.v modern masiciar.s. v. ho has disclosed " -v> iif tilt- .v,!cres.t »t nature, and found ,:a! uses for so many inventions which, vr'iMiit His aid, have served only as lor curious experiments. •• I ywc.ru ii on so small a margin that I had to bo : i ;hty careful not to overload myself v'tii papers that I couldn't sell. On the . i:1, I could not afford to carry so ic that I should find myself sold out long \v< •• th': end of the trip. To enable niy.vji: to hit the happy mean, 1 formed a p! :r. vhich turned out admirably. 1 made t. i.■ t : of one of the compositors in The Ft.;. I'rest ofiice, and persuaded him to sho v me a' galley proof' of the most important news article. From a study of its headlines I soon learned to finale the value o[ i!>- day's news and its selling capacity, -:o that I could form a tolerably correct erti mate of the number of papers 1 slmuld need. Aj a rule I cculd dispo-« of about joo; but H there was any sjiecial news from the seat of war the sale ran up to 300 or over Well, one day my compositor brought me a proof '.lip of which m-arlv the whole was taken ap with a gigantic display head It was the first report of the Uattle of l'ittsburg f.ar.d'.ni> —afterwards called Shiloh, you know—and it save the number of killed and wounded as ixi.ooo men .

•• i grasped the situation at once. Here was the chance lor enormous sales, if only the people the lire could know what had happened ; n i.nly they 1 ould see the proof slip I w.i= :!;en reading '. Suddenly an idea occurred to tr.e. I rushed oif to the telegraph op-rator .-i-id gravely made a propocition 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 statUni-master to chalk up on the black bulletin board—used for announcing the times of arrival and departure of trains—the news of the great battle, with its accompanying slaugmac. This he was to do at once; while I agreed, in return, to supply him with ' free, gratis, for nothing,' a Harper's Weekly, a Harper's Monthly, and a daily evening paper during the next iix months from that date. '- This bargain struck, I began to think rne 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. 1 w«nt to the superintendent of the delivery department and proM'cred a modest request for :.000 copies of The Free Press on trust. Put I was not much surprised when my rxjucst was curtly and gruffly refused. In those days, though, I was a pretty cheeky boy, and I saw a small fortune in prospect if my telegraph operator had kept his word —a point on which I was still a trifle doubttal. Nerving myself for a preat stroke, I marched upstairs into the office of Wilbur E. Storey himself, and as';cd to see him A few minutes later I was shown in to him. I told him 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. *T:.ke that down-stairs.' said he, 'and j r ou will get what you want.' And so I did. Then I felt happier than I have ever felt since.

" I took my 1,500 papers, got three boys io help tne fold tbem, and mounted the train all agog to find out whether the teleoperator had kept his word. At the town where our first stop was made I usually sold wo papers. As the train swung into that station I looked aneaJ and thought there .unst be a riot gciagon. A big crowd tilled the platform, and as the train drew up I began "to realise tnat they wanted my papers. Before we left I had sold a hundred or two at five cents a-piece. At the next station the place was fairly black with people. I raised the price, and sold 300 papers at ten cents each. So it went on jjnti! Port Huron was reached. Then I transferred my remaining stock to the waggon which always waited for me there, hired a small boy to sit on the pile ot papers io the back of the waggon, so as to discount jiny pilfering, and sold cat every paper I had at a quarter of a dollar or more per copy. I remember I passed a church toll of worshippers, and stopped to yell out my sews. In ten seconds there was not a soul J?ft in meeting. All of them, incladin? the ,>orson, were clustered around me, bidding against each other for copies of the precious paper. •' You can understand why it struck me then that the telegraph must be about the best thing going for it was the telegraphic notices on the bulletin boards that bad done Ibe trick. I determined at i«ce to become si telegraph operator. But ;f it hadn't been for Wilbur V. Storey I should never have fully appreciated the wo idejs of electrical