Edison and the British Labour Market.

Progress, Volume IV, Issue 5, 1 March 1909, Page 152

Edison and the British Labour Market.

A correspondent of the Times, having visited the great inventor at his laboratory in New Jersej^, reports him as having said : "Here I've had to close down my phonograph factory in England — what's the name of the place? I've forgotten; somewhere near London. All the others in Europe paying, we couldn't make that one pay. We get good work out of the French and the Belgians and the Germans and Austrians, but the English — no good. Belgians 85 per cent., English 30 per cent." Mr. Edison meant ratio of productive capacity. He went on: "Mind, I'm not speaking of the English mechanic. He's all right; none better in the world. I'm talking of the common labourer — man you pick up on the streets. What is it? Too much booze? Or general deterioration? Or M'hat?" Now, the man who is primarily wanted in a phonograph factory is the skilled mechanic, who makes the machines, not the common labourer who humps the cases. Yet Mr. Edison is reported to have praised the skilled mechanic to the skies — "all right; none better in the world," and denounced the other as a boozer and a degenerate. Out of this dilemma there are only two ways. Either the correspondent failed to understand the usually plain English of the great inventor, or he "faked the par" without ever going near him.

A new process for making an insulator, according to the "Electrical Beview," has appeared on the Continent. It resembles ebonite and consists of a mixture of tan bark with onethird of sulphur The whole is heated until the sulphur melts. The mixture is well stirred and then cooled ,when it takes the form of small black grains. These are put in a pressure mould and heated, the result being a block of insulating material of any form. For more than a year past Dr. S. Leduc, of the Medical School of Nantes, has been engaged upon experiments connected with the possibilities of the use of electricity for the slaughtering of animals for food consumption, and with good results. The term electriculture has been applied to the use of electricity as an aid in the cultivation of plants and vegetation, and it would appear, from the reports circulated at intervals from various sources, that in this there is offered an attractive field for research with every promise of distinct beneficial results being achieved.