ew years ago a consumption of 3.1
watts per candle-power might safely be assumed as an excellent average,
and many stations fixed their rates and business on such a basis. The
results on income when the consumption, as in the new metallic-filament
lamps, drops to 1.25 watts per candle can readily be imagined. Edison
has insisted that central stations are selling light and not current;
and he points to the predicament now confronting them as truth of his
assertion that when selling light they share in all the benefits of
improvement, but that when they sell current the consumer gets all
those benefits without division. The dilemma is encountered by central
stations in a bewildered way, as a novel and unexpected experience; but
Edison foresaw the situation and warned against it long ago. It is one
of the greatest gifts of statesmanship to see new social problems years
before they arise and solve them in advance. It is one of the greatest
attributes of invention to foresee and meet its own problems in exactly
the same way.

CHAPTER XXV

THE LABORATORY AT ORANGE AND THE STAFF

A LIVING interrogation-point and a born investigator from childhood,
Edison has never been without a laboratory of some kind for upward of
half a century.

In youthful years, as already described in this book, he became ardently
interested in chemistry, and even at the early age of twelve felt the
necessity for a special nook of his own, where he could satisfy his
unconvinced mind of the correctness or inaccuracy of statements and
experiments contained in the few technical books then at his command.

Ordinarily he was like other normal lads of his age--full of boyish,
hearty enjoyments--but withal possessed of an unquenchable spirit of
inquiry and an insatiable desire for knowledge. Being blessed with a
wise and discerning mother, his aspirations were encouraged; and he was
allowed a corner in her cellar. It is fair to offer tribute here to her
bravery as well as to her wisdom, for at times she was in mortal terror
lest the precocious experimenter below should, in his inexperience, make
some awful combination that would explode and bring down the house in
ruins on himself and the rest of the family.

Fortunately no such catastrophe happened, but young Edison worked
away in his embryonic laboratory, satisfying his soul and incidentally
depleting his limited pocket-money to the vanishing-point. It was,
indeed, owing to this latter circumstanc