Response to Earlier Morality Accusation This is inresponse to a cowardly unsigned who suggested that Thomas Alva was a pedophile The entire section was deleted I think the response is worth keeping as it delves into the intrigue in Edison s life Isn t the U S age of consent 18 as unsigned stated Hey IDIOT this was the NINETEENTH CENTURY Thoughout the western world females marrying at the age of 16 were common Never raising as much as an eyebrow from the emerging Victoian era Actually a young girl marrying a man who was middle aged and still in the prime of life was applauded AND encouraged as well as her parents for matching her with any man who had established means What was frowned upon at that time and still very much today was if the man were eighteen to her say sixteen or both were the same teen age Though today as was true then a parent could get a waiver and consent to the union A young marriage was mightily discouraged by society AND the girl s parents in that bygone era as they saw young love as impetuous irrational and especially IMMATURE Unless the man was shown to be of more than sufficient means maturity and responsibility that he came from a respected family the whole idea was nixed Also remember that arranged marriages were still quite common in turn of the century America And too fathers were eager to get their daughters married off as soon as possible so they wouldn t get radical ideas of independence floating in their heads Not like the mail order brides of the rambling Old West Actually would it surprise you that arranged unions are still widely carried out today accross every interested section and spectrum of society in the West It s just more informal as the female ESPECIALLY is tasked by parents and relatives to choose a mate within the liking of the parents and often times relatives Got ta please Mom and Dad my grandparents AND priest ya know You should also study more about Edison s life before making moronic and scurrilous accusations If you did delve further you would find that Edison s second marriage was more a politcal arrangement than anything else as little Mina was a neice of Thomas Alva s principal enemy and competitor JUPITER PIERPONT MORGAN Struggling as the latter was to keep his floundering gas light industry afloat against the inevitability of the electric street lamp So the marrige was a very strategically diabolic investment on Morgan s part to overtake Edison business which eventually happened We are reminded that Morgan a a ROBBER BARON This is what they do It is strange that you d call Alva Edison a pedophile Why unless you seek to marr his reputation talk Veryverser Following this clarification perhaps it was the article s author who attempted to resolve this by offering the results of his genelogical study of what was conventional in such relationships in that period that Edison lived This I felt was inadequate so I countered with We are talking SOCIAL CONVENTIONS here of course Naturally long before the 1960sA D women s liberation all females needed their parents or guardian s s consent whether they were co habitating with them or the women were apart from them and or had indepenent means This was common all over the world with this tradition being broken beginingin in North America by enforced emigration for example of Irish and other European refugees in the nineteenth and then again in the early twentieth centuries Even women who were twenty one years old in the turn of the nineteenth and early twentieth century s middle class strata were required to seek a respectable well heeled sponsor to give consent to a bethrotal if these females ever were to hope to enter what was then regarded as respectable society This all seemed to chagge in America after World War I as there seemed to have been a definite cultural shift throwing off those old traditions of a previous generation and epoch Edison s age difference is a non issue Even in most parts of Asia and Europe today age in a marriage of an older man to a well sometimes much younger woman is revered Here in the States various wealthly and powerful men among them old Hollywood and media types flaunt their marriage to virtual child brides Woody Allen Rupert Murdock as obvious examples Curious wouldn t you agree that in both cases cited these men chose YOUNG ORIENTAL WOMEN rather than western ones for their sunset years In Alva Edison s case this was sort of a wirlwind romance manipulated by the girl s uncle as I cited above to get at Edison and control of his company Think Napolean Bonafart s divorce of Josephine to marry a Hapsburgh princess and the world shattering events that ensued from such a political union Special Contr