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The Edison factories at West Orange cover a space of about thirty acres, all fenced in with high pickets and barb-wire.  Over two thousand people are employed inside that fence.  There are guards at the gates, and the would-be visitor is challenged as if he were an enemy.  If you want to see any particular person, you do not go in and see him—­he comes to you and you sit in a place like the visitors’ dock at Sing-Sing.

With me it was different:  I had a note that made the gates swing wide.  However, one gatekeeper scrutinized the note and scrutinized me, and then went back into a maze of buildings for advice.  When he came back, the General Manager was with him and was reproving him.  In a voice full of defense the County Down watchman said:  “Ah, now, and how did I know but that it was a forgery?  And anyhow, I’d never let in a man what looks like that, even if he had an order from Bill Taft.”

The Edison factories, all enclosed in the high fence and under guard, include four separate and distinct corporations, each with its own set of offices.  Edison himself owns a controlling interest in each corporation, and the rest of the stock is owned by the managers or “family.”  With his few trusted helpers he is most liberal.  Not only do they draw goodly salaries, but they have an interest in the profits that is no small matter.

The secrets of the place are protected by having each workman stick right to one thing and work in one room.  No running around is allowed—­each employee goes to a certain place and remains there all day.  To be found elsewhere is a misdemeanor, and while spies at the Edison factory are not shot, they have been known to disappear into space with great velocity.

To make amends for the close restrictions on workers, an extra wage is paid and the eight-hour day prevails, so help is never wanting.

Ninety-nine workers out of a hundred want their wages, and nothing else.  Promotion, advancement and education are things that never occur to them.  But for the few that have the stuff in them, Edison is always on the lookout.  His place is really a college, for to know the man is an education.  He radiates good-cheer and his animation is catching.

To a woman who wanted him to write a motto for her son, Edison wrote, “Never look at the clock!” The argument is plain—­get the thing done.

And around the Edison laboratory there is no use of looking at the clock, for none of them runs.  That is the classic joke of the place.  Years ago Edison expressed his contempt for the man who watched the clock, and now every Christmas his office family take up a collection and buy him a clock, and present it with great ceremony.  He replies in a speech on the nebular hypothesis and all are very happy.  One year the present assumed the form of an Ingersoll Dollar Watch, which the Wizard showed to me with great pride.  In the stockade is a beautiful library building and here you see clocks galore, some of which must have cost a thousand dollars a piece, all silent.  One clock had a neatly printed card attached, “Don’t look at this clock—­it has stopped.”  And another, “You may look at this clock, for you can’t stop it!” It was already stopped.