e
was watched. Gould started in at once and asked me how much I wanted.
I said: 'Make me an offer.' Then he said: 'I will give you $30,000.' I
said: 'I will sell any interest I may have for that money,' which was
something more than I thought I could get. The next morning I went with
Gould to the office of his lawyers, Sherman & Sterling, and received a
check for $30,000, with a remark by Gould that I had got the steamboat
Plymouth Rock, as he had sold her for $30,000 and had just received the
check. There was a big fight on between Gould's company and the Western
Union, and this caused more litigation. The electrician, on account
of the testimony involved, lost his glory. The judge never decided
the case, but went crazy a few months afterward." It was obviously a
characteristically shrewd move on the part of Mr. Gould to secure an
interest in the quadruplex, as a factor in his campaign against the
Western Union, and as a decisive step toward his control of that system,
by the subsequent merger that included not only the Atlantic & Pacific
Telegraph Company, but the American Union Telegraph Company.

Nor was Mr. Gould less appreciative of the value of Edison's automatic
system. Referring to matters that will be taken up later in the
narrative, Edison says: "After this Gould wanted me to help install the
automatic system in the Atlantic & Pacific company, of which General
Eckert had been elected president, the company having bought the
Automatic Telegraph Company. I did a lot of work for this company making
automatic apparatus in my shop at Newark. About this time I invented a
district messenger call-box system, and organized a company called the
Domestic Telegraph Company, and started in to install the system in
New York. I had great difficulty in getting subscribers, having tried
several canvassers, who, one after the other, failed to get subscribers.
When I was about to give it up, a test operator named Brown, who was
on the Automatic Telegraph wire between New York and Washington, which
passed through my Newark shop, asked permission to let him try and see
if he couldn't get subscribers. I had very little faith in his ability
to get any, but I thought I would give him a chance, as he felt
certain of his ability to succeed. He started in, and the results were
surprising. Within a month he had procured two hundred subscribers, and
the company was a success. I have never quite understood why six men
should fail absolute