Heroes of the Telegraph

What with the money he had lent, or spent on books or apparatus, when the Memphis lines were transferred from the Government to a private company and Edison was discharged, he found himself without a dollar. Transported to Decatur, he walked to Nashville, where he found another operator, William Foley, in the like straits, and they went in company to Louisville. Foley's reputation as an operator was none of the best; but on his recommendation Edison obtained a situation, and supported Foley until he too got employment. The squalid office was infested with rats, and its discipline was lax, in all save speed and quality of work, and some of his companions were of a dissipated stamp. To add to his discomforts, the line he worked was old and defective; but he improved the signals by adjusting three sets of instruments, and utilising them for three different states of the line. During nearly two years of drudgery under these depressing circumstances, Edison's prospects of becoming an inventor seemed further off than ever. Perhaps he began to fear that stern necessity would grind him down, and keep him struggling for a livelihood. None of his improvements had brought him any advantage. His efforts to invent had been ridiculed and discountenanced. Nobody had recognised his talent, at least as a thing of value and worthy of encouragement, let alone support. All his promotion had come from trying to excel in his routine work. Perhaps he lost faith in himself, or it may be that the glowing accounts he received of South America induced him to seek his fortune there. At all events he caught the 'craze' for emigration that swept the Southern States on the conclusion of the Civil War, and resolved to emigrate with two companions, Keen and Warren.