Golden Jubilee

(See front cover)

The father, brethren and children of Electric Light will shortly begin celebrating handsomely its 50th anniversary.

The father, Thomas Alva Edison, will remain at his rubber experiments in Fort Myers, Fla., for the actual anniversary does not come until Oct. 21 and there are many things which Mr. Edison, aged 82, wants to crowd into his remaining years.

The brethren, members of the National Electric Light Association, were beginning last week to assemble in Atlantic City, N. J., for their annual convention and, incidentally, an electrical 75th birthday party for the city.

The children of Light--all U. S. citizens within reach of the beams of an incandescent bulb--will be included in the festivities by electrical galaxies on White Ways from Squeedunk to Broadway.

W. D'Arcy Ryan, who is to General Electric Co.'s light research what the late great Charles Proteus Steinmetz was to its studies in power, is charged with arranging electrical displays all over the U. S. for a summer-long continuation of the festivities.

Broadway was lately threatened with a momentary darkening of all its blazing electrical signs, as a gesture by the sign-owners to compel attention to the difference such signs make in a city's trade, night-life and general atmosphere. On Oct. 21, all the Broadways of the U. S. will be darkened at a concerted moment, and then brightened slowly to a crescendo of light such as they have seen never before. That will be the high moment of the Golden Jubilee. The dimming of the lights will have been signaled by a push-buttom from Inventor Edison seated once more in his old time laboratory, every stone and splinter of which has been moved from Menlo Park, N. J., to Dearborn, Mich.

Beginning next week and lasting all summer and autumn will be an open season for the publication and republication of Edison biography, anecdotes, photographs. Again and again will be told the U. S. folk-legend of the newsboy, born in Milan, Ohio, who built a great fame out of such invisibilities as electrical impulses, sound waves, ether vibrations.

Pending the full blaze of the Golden Jubilee, retrospective minds returned to years between the first spark of Edisonian genius and the visible glow of its social application. Between laboratory and layman stand innumerable middlemen, not the least important of whom are usually a few bankers. Inventor Edison at 35 was by no means financially ignorant. He understood that money, though social rather than "natural," is a force not unlike electricity, with sources and laws of its own. A respecter of such forces, he turned to financial experts in 1882, when it was time to incorporate the first Edison Electric Light Co.

Such men as J. P. Morgan the Elder, Henry Villard (capitalistic father of Editor Oswald Garrison Villard of the present Nation, pink weekly), Edward Dean Adams, Grosvenor P. Lowrey (patent attorney for Mr. Edison), Robert L. Cutting (Manhattan banker), Ernesto Fabbri (Italian-born Morgan partner) and his brother, Egisto Fabbri (shipping), S. B. Eaton (Manhattan lawyer), William H. Meadowcroft (Thomas Edison's confidential secretary), Jose D' Navarro (builder of Manhattan's first elevated railway), J. Hood Wright (Morgan partner) and Norvin Green (President of Western Union Telegraph) became actively interested in Inventor Edison's new project. Many of them were trustees of the first Edison Electric Light Co.

Some of these men are still living, most are dead. Some were "greater" financiers than others in their day. Some took more active parts than others in Edisonizing the U. S. For a broad view, however, of the background against which electric light was developed in the U. S., none of them is more typical or important than the alert little old-school gentleman who, on his 82nd birthday last month, was not the least perturbed about receiving congratulations at one moment, entertaining grandchildren the next and sitting for the portrait (see front cover) in between.

This Edison trustee, Edward Dean Adams, then as now of Manhattan, was something of a scientist himself, as his later activities were to show. He had earned his B. S. degree at Norwich University, Northfield, Vt, and studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, during that school's first year, when it had no buildings of its own but only rented rooms in the midst of Boston. In 1882 he was a recently acquired young partner of the old New York banking firm of Winslow, Lanier & Co. Boston born and bred, he had already established among the more flamboyant New Yorkers a quiet reputation as a thorough investigator and sound organizer of the projects into which men put money.

When Edison Electric Illuminating Co. was formed in 1884 to introduce electric lighting in New York City, young Banker Adams went on its board of directors as a matter of course. Equally as a matter of course he left it in 1889--when he entered a sphere of activity more significant even than the early Edison companies, a sphere of historic significance in any year celebrative of Electric Light. He resigned from his Edison connection because it was necessary for him to make a fundamental decision about this new electrical industry which was growing up. The decision lay between Direct and Indirect Current.

What precipitated the question was no less a precipitation than Niagara Falls.

In 1889, a group of natives from Niagara Falls, N. Y., approached Mr. Adams about organizing a power company. Three such projects had already failed; $800,000 had been thrown away. Mr. Adams said that if he could have a six-month option, he would see what could be done. He consulted mechanical engineers, notably Dr. Coleman Sellers of Philadelphia. He cabled to Inventor Edison, who was having a triumph in Paris: "Has power transmission reached such development that in your judgment scheme practicable?"

Mr. Edisonreplied: "No difficulty transferring unlimited power. Will assist."

Mr. Edison had surveyed Niagara Falls on his own initiative in 1886. His first assistance to the new-formed Cataract Construction Co. consisted simply in repeating that electric power could be transmitted from the Falls, as Direct Current.

In this opinion he was joined by the late great George Westinghouse. Both counselled against attempting to make and transmit Alternating Current, despite its comparative cheapness. Mr. Westinghouse had an alternative idea--Compressed Air, upon which he had been experimenting (e.g. his air-brake). The original plans of Cataract Construction Co. actually called for a plant at the Falls whence Mr. Westinghouse felt confident he could transmit compressed air to take the place of steam behind industrial pistons in Buffalo, 20 mi. away.

In the face of these expert opinions, Scientist-Financier Adams remained a dissenter. He had read in foreign scientific publications about the success some Swiss engineers were having with Alternating Current, which requires, as schoolboys know, much less initial impulse and much less bulky lines for transmission over long distances, than is required for Direct Current. Proponents of Direct were saying that high voltages of Alternating would "jump right off the wire"; that it was dangerous, fit only for use in lethal chairs at penitentiaries. Mr. Adams quietly ordered some experiments in insulation, which eventuated in the familiar porcelain cup device now used on high tension lines.

Then, actuated as much by scientific curiosity as by financial prudence, he set off for Europe to see for himself the status of Alternating Current. Before going he ended all his Edison connections, to remain unprejudiced in the controversy.

In France, England, Switzerland he consulted the foremost electrical engineers.

He observed experiments and progress in Switzerland. He formed an International Niagara Commission, with Sir William Thompson (later Lord Kelvin) of Glasgow for chairman, to act as judges in a prize competition for the design of the Niagara generators. From the first, the Commission advised against Alternating Current, but the man who designed the prize-winning generator, a Scottish professor named George Forbes, joined Mr. Adams in the belief that Alternating would prove feasible in the end.

Mr. Adams returned to the U. S. with his mind made up. He was followed by a stream of letters and cablegrams from Lord Kelvin vigorously counselling against the "awful mistake," the "gigantic mistake" of adopting Alternating Current.

Inventor Westinghouse, meanwhile, had been following Mr. Adams' movements and investigating Alternating Current for himself. He was prepared, when the bids were let, to construct AC generators on the Forbes design, and was quick to acknow ledge Mr. Adams' victory when the installations proved successful. The compressed-air plan was scrapped. Alternating Current began flashing from Niagara in volume sufficient to turn every wheel and light every bulb in Buffalo. When Lord Kelvin visited the Falls and signed the visitors' book, he cheerfully saluted the wisdom Mr. Adams had shown in proceeding contrary to the foremost electrical advice of the time.

Inventor Edison was the last to come around, but he did so when the commercial advantages of AC over DC became increasingly apparent. Factories, finding they must be in cities to get DC, found also that they could make AC for themselves. Then the Edison companies switched to AC. Last week in Manhattan, where the opposition to "dangerous" AC was once the hottest, an Edison company recited in court the manifold superiorities of AC, in a suit brought by householders who were fighting a transition to DC because of the expense of changing installations.

From the utilization of Niagara Falls, Edward Dean Adams passed on to many another financial exploit. In 1883-86 he had conducted the reorganization of the New York, West Shore & Buffalo R. R. in a manner described by a financial observer of that time as follows :

". . . The success of the scheme is assured, for Mr. Adams is one of the shrewdest and most close-mouthed young financiers in New York. He has the great advantage of not being known at all to the outside public, but people who are on the inside track of the recent consolidation schemes aver that Adams was the real power behind the throne and that Wm. H. Vanderbilt Jr., J. Pierpont Morgan, Chauncey M. Depew and the rest of that clique were but practically carrying out the quiet undertone suggested by Adams. Whether these reports be correct or not, they are worth recording and Mr. Adams may as well have here a free advertisement, even if he does not like it."

Reorganizing the Central Railroad Co. of New Jersey was Adams' work, and in 1893-96 Mr. Adams was the man who took Northern Pacific out of receivership. His rehabilitation of the American Cotton Oil trust extended over the period 1889-99.

One day in 1896 he walked into the sanctum of J. P. Morgan. The U. S. was on the point of discontinuing specie payment. President Cleveland was embarrassed by Congress. Gold withdrawals were mounting daily. The Treasury's margin of safety, 100 millions, were badly overdrawn. Panic threatened the country.

Mr. Adams himself lately described the scene, to an astonished assemblage of potent Manhattan bankers, as follows:

"Mr. Morgan's general attitude was one of depression. His face was very serious and expressive of deep thought. He held the Morgan after-lunch cigar between his teeth, but it also was depressed, for it hung down at an angle of about 45 degrees, and its fire, if any, did not smoke. I greeted him cheerfully. Looking up, he said, 'Hello, Adams, come in.' I ... inquired as to the report from the Treasury that day, and he replied . . . 'It's still going out,' referring to the drain of gold coin and bullion. . . .

"I then took my precious document from my pocket, and passing it to him, said, 'Here is a paper that will interest you.' He saw at a glance its official character, and his form and face became alert as he read it twice, examining the various seals and signatures attached thereto, and looking at me with a piercing glance, said, 'Well, what are you going to do with it?' I replied that whatever was to be done should in my opinion be done promptly, and I suggested that he call James Stillman for a conference. . . ."

Mr. Adams' "precious document" was a power-of-attorney from the Deutsche Bank, whose agent he had been in the Northern Pacific reorganization, for gold bullion enough to buy 200 million dollars' worth of U. S. Government bonds.

The Morgan cigar quickly resumed its normal angle. Banker Stillman and others came in and, at Banker Adams' suggestion, formed a syndicate. Banker Morgan, of course, took the lead while Banker Adams, ever "the quiet undertone," retired once more to the background. The Government issued bonds which the public, led by the syndicate, oversubscribed. Panic was thus averted, the country stabilized.

Until 1921, when he resigned the last of them, Mr. Adams' directorships in 21 companies, and his active positions in 19 scientific, artistic, educational, religious and charitable organizations, ranging from the National Research Council and the Metropolitan Museum of Art to the Rumson (N. J.) Borough Improvement Association, not to mention his memberships in 45 other societies, academies and institutes, were keeping him so sufficiently occupied in 1918 that he was not among the group which that year founded the Edison Pioneers, a society of Inventor Edison's oldest friends and associates organized to perpetuate his name and works. But the Pioneers sought him out. In 1926 he was their vice president and last February he completed a term as president. Completed is more accurate than finished, for he is still at the forefront of the Pioneers' efforts to help Henry Ford collect all original Edison tools, models, memoranda and memorabilia for preservation in the Edison Museum at Dearborn.

Among the memorabilia will be an Edison hat which Mr. Adams one day acquired in exchange for one of his own during an investigation conducted by Mr. Edison. The object of this investigation was to discover which head was the larger, the Edison or the Adams. To the soft-chuckling satisfaction of Mr. Adams the result showed that, differ though the contents might in their special aptitudes, the heads are precisely the same size.