Dakota farmers' leader. (Canton, S.D.) 1890-19??, 1912-09-27

out of a possible hundred and forty
four-and had let down for a little re-
creation. In brief, he had Strolied
over to an abandoned Erie Railroad
track which runs near his laborato r
les TO witness the trial or ms
famous storage batteries on train
of tramway cars built for CUBAN
tramway The batteries, blacK
cylinders about the size OF an ordl-
nary stove waterback, were "feedlng
taking from the wires Of the Orange
electric railway system enough cur
rent to reduce an old line battery TO
a fluid. He stood with his hands
stuffed in his trousers pockets and MS
big, gentian-blue eyes of dreamer
fixed on the batteries, and as he look
ed he talked, half to his listeners,
group of street railway men, and half
to himself.
Nothing sensational about it, but
it's going to change things lot.
We're shipping ten of those batteries
a day to New York now, for the use
of automobile trucks. Some OF them
-Edison' s eyes lost their look of the
dreamer and became those of a shrewd,
humorous Yankee land some OF
them to male-factors of great wealth,
l suspect Doing all we can to make
them happy-they need 1T in these
times You see, people used to say
when was boy that three dishonest
dollars in the hand don't do you so
much good as one honest dollar
here Edison counted an imaglnar ry
old-fashioned silver cartwheel into
one of those powerful, sensitive-tinger-
ed hands of his-"and if any male
factor of great wealth is buying thes
batteries mind, don't say there are
any such-we're giving him honest
dollars
"Who's you candidate in this cam
paign?" he added, suddenly shifting
the conversation to his ne Arrest
neghbor, 'Not Taft?"
mop"
'Roosev elt?'
"No?"
"Oh, you're one of those academic
fellows!' said Edison, poking him in
a friendly way "Don'tknow jackson
is dead?" He laughed a dry laugh.
But In second more he had assumed
his expression of dreamer, as he al
ways does they say, when that dyna-
mo of mind is whirling within; and
he fell to talking politics. All that af-
ternoon, indeed, the campaign seemed
to engage one lobe of his brain, while
the other was on controllers and cur
rents and feed wires. He kept re-
turning to the subject; and as we
tried moving and backing and stop
ping in the Jersey fields, as we in
spected the car barnes, as he made his
way home to the laboratory, he de-
livered himself of these remarks:
sOf course I'm Progressive be-
cause 1 m young at sixty-ive That is
the first reason and this is Young
mans movement. There are lot OF
people who die in the head after
they're fifty. They're the ones who
get shocked if you propose anything
that wasn't going when they were
boys. It's the way the world goes =
the young push ahead and do things.
and the old stand back. l hope III
always be with the young
':You see, getting down to the bot
tom of things, this is a pretty raw,
crude civilization of ours pretty
wasteful, pretty cruel, which often
comes to The same thing, doesn't it?
And in a lot of respects we Americans
are the rawest and crudest of all.
Our production, our factory laws, our
charities, our relations between capl-
tai and labor, our distribution-all
wrong, out of gear. We've stumbled
along for a while, trying to run new
civilization in old ways, and we've
got to start to make this world over
Gust look at us beside Germany,
for example; not that Germany has
done everything. but she's made a
start. OF course, Germany's a mon
archy. She has just now good en-
peror aud an efficient ruling class.
Give them bad ruler and degeDer-
ate ruling class = that's likely TO hap
pen at any time in monarchy and
it would all go to grass, OF course.
But have you thought what a re-
public could do, even if she only went
as far as Germany? No great stand
ing army, rulers responsible to the
people so that they could be changed
If they went wrong-have you thought
what we Americans could do, the
most efficient people in the world?
$50 you can see I'd naturally be for
the party which comes nearest to
romising change-going to the bot
tom of things and setting them right.
! don't need to say, I guess, that it's
the Progressive party. The Progress
sive party and Roosevelt. We're
coming to new era. We've got to