The Vagabonds

by Jeff Guinn

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  Early on Saturday morning, February 28, five cars—three Fords and two Cadillacs—set out from Fort Myers. Supplies were suitable for rugged exploring and camping—tents, guns, fishing rods—but not the clothing. With the exception of the guides, who knew better but apparently hadn’t warned their employers, the gentlemen wore coats and shirts with stiff collars and ties. The ladies were fashionable in long dresses and bonnets. Adventure or not, this was still a public outing. The elegantly bedecked party set off gaily and rattled along for perhaps five or ten minutes before encountering the first obstacle to its merry agenda.

  Directly outside of town, what locals described as “wish to God” roads commenced—roads only in the sense that they were dirt paths scored on each side by two deep ruts from wagon wheels and occasional car tires, and drivers wished to God that the going was easier. Maneuvering to drive in the ruts meant risking tires getting wedged tight. If the ruts weren’t sticky with mud after rain, they were usually clogged with sand. Driving around the ruts kept cars bouncing over stones and semiexposed palmetto roots. Madeleine Edison, who kept a journal about the trip, compared the experience to enduring a wild carnival ride, only for many hours instead of a few measured minutes. But soon the jouncing became secondary. Recent rain in the area caused “ponding,” standing pools of water that were deceptively deep. Dirt became gluey mud. Tires stuck. Charles Edison, at the wheel of one of the cars, asked a guide how to tell the spots of highest ground beneath the water. He was informed, “You just have to feel your way.” Edsel Ford brought a camera, and several of his snapshots showed male passengers gallantly walking through the water and mud alongside the cars so the vehicles would be lighter and less likely to bog down. In some places the water reached to their knees. It took much of the day just to reach LaBelle. Along the way, they encountered other travelers making better time, and waved politely to the locals perched on the seats of their ox-drawn wagons.

  But at least there was still some semblance of road. That ended when the five-car procession turned south just past LaBelle. A barely discernible trail reached the mushy curl of land that comprised the outer edge of the Everglades and then disappeared altogether. Openings appeared between clumps of trees. The three guides, who’d hunted and explored in the area, now had to move ahead and guide the cars from one safe spot to the next. Insects, many of them biting varieties, swarmed everywhere. There were flowers and plants that Burroughs identified, but it was difficult getting out of the cars to gather around him. Any misstep might result in sinking ankle deep in muck.

  A sense of excitement remained. Everyone knew it was going to be hard going, and this place with its earthy smells and eerie shadows was certainly more exotic than anything everyone but the guides had ever experienced before. Clara Ford looked less at sights described by Burroughs than the ground immediately around her. She knew snakes were everywhere, even if she didn’t see them. As the adventurers rode, the autos jostled along such uneven ground that Madeleine Edison feared “being suddenly dashed into all this loveliness over the back of the car, and not missed for several hours.”

  In the swamp, as on the waterlogged Fort Myers–to–LaBelle road, progress was far slower than anticipated. They barely reached the Deep Lake area that day and rushed to set up camp before dark. Though far from the luxury enjoyed by Ford and Burroughs on their earlier auto trip, there were still amenities. The guides put up tents, spreading palmetto leaves on the ground to keep blankets and sleeping bags dry. Mosquito netting was draped over tent flaps to keep sleepers as bite-free as possible. Madeleine Edison described “live oak trees by the side of a reedy little lake.” Ford went exploring, taking along Charles Edison and a .22 target pistol. The automaker amused himself by blasting the heads off snakes—Charles counted three such decapitations. The guides flushed out and shot a pheasant, which was technically out-of-season poaching. Even though he wasn’t in on the kill, Ford posed for Edsel brandishing the trophy, which the hired hands then cleaned and cooked for dinner. Theodore Edison, apparently less sympathetic to fowl than four-legged creatures, didn’t object. Edsel snapped another photo of his father’s friend Edison sprawled on the ground, sleeping with his head on Mina’s lap. In all, it was a challenging but rewarding day. Everyone looked forward to the next morning when real adventures could begin. There would be so many sights to see, surely even more brightly plumed birds and dazzling flowers—despite its murk, the Everglades was proving such a colorful place—and also alligators sunning on riverbanks. These scaly monsters surely didn’t represent any real danger. The guides had guns, after all.

  But then the skies darkened from the presence of ominous clouds as well as night, and the croaking frogs and buzzing insects were drowned out by approaching thunder. Winter months in this area were the dry season, but there were occasional exceptions, and this threatened to be one. The ladies in their fine clothes feared getting drenched. Burroughs, Ford, and Edison anticipated a lingering storm would drive wildlife back into the Everglades depths, depriving them of opportunity for close study. The guides’ concern was by far the most practical—they hoped they were camped on sufficiently high ground for their employers to survive flooding. Then the storm struck, unleashing a savage deluge that crashed down in sheets. Madeleine Edison, possessed of a descriptive bent, later wrote that “like rabbits before a hunting party the members of the expedition came hurtling one by one into the tent” initially reserved for the women. It was the biggest and most stout. A few others sheltered in a smaller tent intended for the men. All everyone could do was huddle under blankets and hope that rising water wouldn’t gush over the tents’ palmetto leaf carpets, which it did within minutes. Then a blast of wind blew the big tent over. There were valiant attempts to pin the sides to the ground while Charles Edison repositioned a critical ridge pole. But one side of the tent still waved loose in the gale and everyone was soaked from head to foot. Water rose inside, and it took little imagination to mistake floating branches for snakes.

  The storm eased slightly, and the groundwater receded a little. After a while, everyone in the tent tried to lie down in the least damp spots. Madeleine wrote that Edsel “brought in one of the automobile cushions to act as a raft and after taking soundings all over the tent lay down where the water was shallowest.” The sodden gypsiers fell into fitful dozes. They awoke to a gray morning and the possibility of more bad weather. All but one of the campers laughed at their bedraggled appearances—most were wrapped in dripping blankets. But Bessie Krup refused to leave the tent until she had dry garments to wear. No one had any spare items to loan her. Every stitch in camp was soaked. Ford strung a rope between some trees and hung Bessie’s clothes and some of the blankets on it to dry. The guides managed to light a fire, and over breakfast the situation seemed less dire. They sang some songs. Charles Edison composed a limerick:

  Consumption, pneumonia and grip[pe]

  Will be the result of this trip.

  We’ll all die together

  From the inclement weather

  On the door mat of Heaven we’ll drip.

  But besides joking, there was little else to do on Sunday. Going forward in the cars was risky. So was setting out on foot to search for interesting plants and wildlife. To Clara Ford’s dismay, snakes driven from their holes by floodwater slithered everywhere. Nearby splashing sounds might originate with small, harmless swamp creatures or alligators. The obvious alternative was to stay by the fire and gradually dry off. At some point the guides ventured out and shot a deer, but venison didn’t become part of the day’s menu. Instead, his family tried to keep the deer’s death secret from Theodore Edison, who would have been horrified. It was an uncomfortable, frustrating day.

  Either that night or on Monday morning, they voted whether to stick it out in the Everglades, hoping for better weather and the chance for drier adventures or else head home to Fort Myers. Only Charles Edison and Burroughs wanted to stay. Charles wrote later that the others “just couldn’t see much
of this camping life and these snakes. . . . [Burroughs and I] couldn’t go on if the rest of them went back, so we finally had to give the thing up. But we did get quite a ways down in the big cypress, and it was wild country.” The caravan straggled home to Fort Myers. Once they were fully dried off and rested, everyone looked back on the Everglades trip as less a debacle than a sort of slapstick hoot. They laughingly described each other’s disheveled appearances following the Sunday night storm. Burroughs praised Edison and Ford as “good playfellows.” Mina Edison worried that Clara Ford might not have had the same amount of good-natured fun as everyone else: “We talked of snakes too much of which she is mortally afraid.” Edison and Ford discussed subjects of mutual interest, most business-related, some more general. Edison lectured on the dangers of smoking cigarettes—he claimed that the paper, though not the tobacco, was poisonous when burned. Ford was fascinated. The men fished off Edison’s dock, and both families and Burroughs took a two-day boat trip up the Caloosahatchee River. The weather improved and everyone enjoyed the sunshine—Burroughs went so far as to favorably compare the local climate to Hawaii. Tellingly, though the men at least could have attempted a second Everglades expedition—they still had the cars, equipment, and guides available—they chose not to do so. Laugh at the memory of their first attempt as they might, they had no desire to risk another.

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  The Fords and Burroughs left Fort Myers by train on March 10. The Edisons stayed in Florida for another month. About a week before they returned to New Jersey, Edison received a letter from Ford thanking him for “the most enjoyable [vacation] that we have ever had.” Ford also had a request: Based on what they’d recently discussed about cigarettes, he asked Edison to send “a special letter from you in your own writing” explaining the dangers of smoking them, which Ford would post in his factory for the edification of employees. Edison, who, though he avoided cigarettes, still chewed tobacco and smoked cigars, was pleased to comply. In part his letter read:

  The injurious agent in cigarettes comes principally from the burning paper wrapper. The substance thereby formed is called “Acrolein.” It has a violent action on the nerve centers, producing degeneration of the cells of the brain. . . . Unlike most narcotics this degeneration is permanent and uncontrollable. I employ no person who smokes cigarettes. Yours Thos. A. Edison

  Everything Ford- or Edison-related attracted attention from the newspapers, and Ford’s factory posting of Edison’s letter was no exception. Spokesmen for cigarette companies read stories about it and protested vehemently. An advertising agent employed by Philip Morris Cigarettes bought ads in major newspapers, declaring that his client’s customers should not “make the mistake of [believing] that just because Mr. Edison is a genius in ELECTRICITY, he is also infallible in ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY.” The New York Times, previously generous in its coverage of all things Edison, suggested in an editorial that Edison had little scientific basis for his claim—the stinging headline read, “An Inventor Out of His Field.”

  Edison wasn’t used to his opinions on anything being challenged. He doubled down on his original claim. In particular, he told a Times reporter, “Mexicans as a race are not clear-headed” because they all smoked so many cigarettes. Despite his stating otherwise to Ford in his letter, Edison routinely employed smokers. Now he banned cigarettes from all of his businesses, posting signs declaring, “Cigarettes Not Tolerated. They Dull The Brain.”

  The fuss didn’t affect the friendship between Edison and Ford. In October 1914, the Edisons visited the Fords in Michigan. The wives continued to get along well, and the husbands envisioned endless business collaborations—for instance, while electric starters had been introduced in some cars manufactured by Ford’s competitors, Model Ts still required cranking by hand. At some point Ford suggested that Edison should develop a starter system for him—of course, Ford would pay all development costs. There was certainly fond reminiscing about the Everglades adventure. They must do something similar again, getting in cars and going, though with better planning and less risk of catastrophe.

  Then, in early December, Edison suffered a staggering blow. A raging fire destroyed his West Orange, New Jersey, laboratory and adjacent factory. Total damage to buildings and loss of equipment and materials was estimated at up to $5 million, and while Edison said publicly that $3 million of that was covered by insurance, his private correspondence indicated he received considerably less. Edison bravely claimed, “We’ll build up bigger and better,” but he faced considerable financial difficulty. Ford happened to be in New York at the time of the conflagration. He rushed to New Jersey to help. Edison later told a friend that Ford “didn’t say much, just handed me a check, ‘You’ll need some money, let me know if you need more.’ When I looked at the check, it was made out for $750,000. He didn’t ask for any security, and of course over the years I repaid the principal, though he would never take a cent of interest.” The facilities were rebuilt. No specific cause was ever determined for the fire, but Edison biographer Robert Conot offers a plausible suggestion. With employee smoking recently banned at the West Orange companies, “many of the men sneaked smokes in out-of-the-way places [on the property], and these were often full of combustible materials.”

  No matter how the blaze started, Ford came to Edison’s rescue. In material ways, their singular friendship remained unequal. Ford not only subsidized their joint business ventures, he sent cars as gifts, not only for Thomas and Mina Edison, but sometimes for their children. Though Ford insisted that his dealerships be headed only by men of impeccable reputation and habits, he granted one to a son of Edison’s first marriage even though Ford knew about the young man’s dissolute past. Ford constantly sought ways to serve Edison and his family.

  Though he was comfortable accepting all manner of tokens and tributes, Edison himself was not much of a gift giver. But he made clear his particular affection for Ford in another way. Like many of his prominent contemporaries, Edison ordinarily addressed other men by their last names, sometimes adding “Mr.” as a sign of additional respect or at least recognition of some special standing or rank. But to Edison, who trusted so very few, the carmaker from Michigan was “Friend Ford,” addressed as such in infrequent notes and sometimes in person. The appellation was perhaps the greatest compliment Edison could bestow.

  Edison balanced his relationship with Ford in two other critical ways. First, in the earliest years of their friendship, he reignited Ford’s sputtering ambition to continue achieving great things. In the time immediately following the massively successful market introduction of the Model T, Ford’s innovative energy diminished. He spent far less time at Ford Motor Company, and twice came close to selling the business. Sometimes he talked of returning to the unassuming life of a farmer. It was as though Ford believed he had achieved what he could, and all that remained was extended, soul-draining ennui. But Edison’s example convinced him otherwise. The great inventor could have decided in the 1880s that he’d contributed sufficiently to mankind, and taken his ease since. But Edison always sought the next great thing, and failures like mining innovation and concrete housing didn’t deter him. He never lost belief in himself. Beginning in 1912 when he and the inventor quickly became the closest of friends, Ford felt energized again, thanks in great part to Edison’s inspiration.

  Too, for all of Ford’s professional life he’d had to overcome skepticism from other successful men. He had always been the outsider, the one with the crazy ideas and clumsy social graces. Edison sympathized, because in his earliest years of prominence he was criticized for some of the same traits. The inventor not only accepted Ford for the rough-edged man that he was, he recognized in him the fine qualities that offset the carmaker’s obvious flaws. In one undated, handwritten memorandum, Edison described Ford as “an ever flowing fountain of energy, a vivid and boundless imagination . . . instinctive knowledge of mechanisms, and a talent for organization. These are the qualities that centre in Mr. Ford. He is also to be admired for
his very real solicitude for the welfare of the common people.” Ford was aware that Edison was one of the very few who genuinely liked him, and was profoundly grateful for it.

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  Beyond the pleasure it brought to the men themselves, the Edison-Ford friendship also thrilled ordinary Americans, whose lives were radically changed, to great extent blessed, by the two men’s inventions and innovations. Later in 1914 the outbreak of war in Europe, and America’s potential entry into the conflict, began dominating the news. That made it even more refreshing to read about Edison and Ford in newspapers and magazines—they were among the country’s most prominent celebrities, after all—and entertaining to wonder what future advancements the unique pair of friends would deliver. Only a generation or so earlier, electric lights in homes, phonographs, movies, affordable horseless carriages, substantial factory wages, and shorter workweeks would have been beyond public imagination. As individuals, Edison and Ford had already extended the boundaries of the possible. Now their genius was joined, and more miracles seemed certain.