they have
not always been. In fact, it was not so very long ago that it was
almost impossible to purchase either books on electricity or electrical
stuff of any sort. People's knowledge of such matters was so scanty
that little was written about them; and as for shops of this type--why,
they were practically unknown."

"Where did persons get what they wanted?" asked Ted with surprise.

"Nobody wanted electrical materials," laughed Mr. Hazen. "There was no
call for them. Even had the shops supplied them, nobody would have
known what to do with them."

"But there must have been some who would," the boy persisted. "Where,
for example, did Mr. Bell get his things?"

"Practically all Mr. Bell's work was done at a little shop on Court
Street, Boston," answered Mr. Hazen. "This shop, however, was nothing
like the electrical supply shops we have now. Had Alexander Graham Bell
entered its doors and asked, for instance, for a telephone transmitter,
he would have found no such thing in stock. On the contrary, the shop
consisted of a number of benches where men or boys experimented or made
crude electrical contrivances that had previously been ordered by
customers. The shop was owned by Charles Williams, a clever mechanical
man, who was deeply interested in electrical problems of all sorts. In
a tiny showcase in the front part of the store were displayed what few
textbooks on electricity he had been able to gather together and these
he allowed the men in his employ to read at lunch time and to use
freely in connection with their work. He was a person greatly beloved
by those associated with him and he had the rare wisdom to leave every
man he employed unhampered, thereby making individual initiative the
law of his business."

The tutor paused, then noticing that both the boys were listening
intently, he continued:

"If a man had an idea that had been carefully thought out, he was given
free rein to execute it. Tom Watson, one of the boys at the shop,
constructed a miniature electric engine, and although the feat took
both time and material, there was no quarrel because of that. The place
was literally a workshop, and so long as there were no drones in it and
the men toiled intelligently, Mr. Williams had no fault to find. You
can imagine what valuable training such a practical environment
furnished. Nobody nagged at the men, nobody drove them on. Each of the
thirty or forty employees pegged away at his particular task, eith