He went
right out to see the man in charge, and found Dr. Laws there also--the
most excited man of all!
"The Doctor demanded to know what caused all the trouble, but his man
stood there, staring and dumb. As soon as Edison could get Laws'
attention he told him he knew what the matter was.
"'Fix it! Fix it! and be quick about it!' Dr. Laws shouted.
"Edison went right to work and in two hours had everything in running
order. Dr. Laws came in to ask the inventor's name and what he was
doing. When told, he asked the young man to call on him in his office
the next day. Edison did so and Laws said he had decided to place Edison
in charge of the entire plant at a salary of three hundred dollars a
month!
"This was such a big jump from any wages he had ever received that it
quite paralyzed the youthful inventor. He felt that it was too much to
last long, but he made up his mind he would do his best to earn that
salary if he had to work twenty hours a day. He kept that job, making
improvements and devising other stock tickers, until the Gold and Stock
Telegraph Company consolidated with the Gold Indicator Company."
CHAPTER XXII
FAME AND FORTUNE
"At twenty-two," the lecturer continued, "while Edison was with the Gold
and Stock Telegraph Company, he often heard Jay Gould and 'Jim' Fisk,
the great Wall Street operators of that day, talk over the money market.
At night he ate his lunches in the coffee-house in Printing House
Square, where he used to meet Henry J.
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