them--I
explain things to them just to straighten the matter out in my own mind."

But of the men who have used Edison's money and ideas, who have made it a
life business to study his patents and then use them, evading the law,
not a word!

From Eighteen Hundred Seventy to Eighteen Hundred Ninety, Edison secured
over nine hundred patents, or at the rate of one patent every ten days.
Very few indeed of these patents ever brought him any direct return, and
now his plan is to invent and keep the matter a secret in his "family."

"The value of an idea lies in the using of it," he said to me. "You
patent a thing and the other fellow starts even with you. Keep it to
yourself and you have the machinery going before the other fellow is
awake. Patents may protect some things, and still others they only
advertise. Up in Buffalo you have a great lawyer who says he can drive a
coach and four through any will that was ever made--and I guess he can.
All good lawyers know how to break wills and contracts, and there are now
specialists who secure goodly fees for busting patents. If you have an
idea, go ahead and invent a way to use it and keep your process secret."

* * * * *

The Edison factories at West Orange cover a space of about
thirty acres, all fenced in with high pickets and barb-wire. Over two
thousand people are employed inside that fence. There are guards at the
gates, and the would-be visitor is challenged as if he were an enemy. If
you want to see any particular person, you do not go in and see him--he
comes to you and you sit in a place like the visitors' dock at Sing-Sing.

With me it was different: I had a note that made the gates swing wide.
However, one gatekeeper scrutinized the note and scrutinized me, and then
went back into a maze of buildings for advice. When he came back, the
General Manager was with him and was reproving him. In a voice full of
defense the County Down watchman said: "Ah, now, and how did I know but
that it was a forgery? And anyhow, I'd never let in a man what looks like
that, even if he had an order from Bill Taft."

The Edison factories, all enclosed in the high fence and under guard,
include four separate and distinct corporations, each with its own set of
offices. Edison himself owns a controlling interest in each corporation,
and the rest of the stock is owned by the managers or "family." With his
few trusted helpers he is most liberal. Not only do the