Edison's Hammer

(William Hammer, Thomas Alva Edison's assistant, has reached the end of his tolerance. His boss is planning to electrocute an elephant for a publicity stunt.) If he goes through with this, the dam has burst. I'm done with him. Of all the tricks he's pulled, this is the lowest, cheapest, cruellest. Worst. Yes, Edison. He can't be serious, can he? To execute an elephant? He's out there, grinning like a Barbary ape. Where two or more newspapermen are gathered, Alva loses all his self-control. He'll be there now, perspiring, shouting, lathered, excited to his flinty, vulgar soul. I'm William Joseph Hammer. Who are you? A quarter-century I've spent with him, but now the scales have fallen from my eyes. The man's a pirate and a charlatan. Inventor? Him? Well, since I'm stranded here in shabby Coney Island in the rain, ignored and slighted, spited yet again, I'll tell you. Edison did not invent the light bulb - that's what he employed me for. Besides, I'll name a dozen scientists who'd made a working lamp some years before. What is he good at? He's a patent-mill! He takes out patents like a dentist, teeth (except that dentists never put their name on what they've pulled). The man has got no shame. The team has all the talent, he the grin: we think the thoughts, and Alva cashes in. I think he's met his match in Westinghouse. The so-called war of currents. Who will win? America will buy one set of goods, and where this country leads, the others go. To get his system in American homes, He'd kill his grandma. Hence this all-time low. He's worse than Czolgosz. At the very least, the latter had nobility, although misguided. Alva has no other cause beyond himself. Those motion picture-things are here for Alva's glory. When the blow extinguishes that poor beast's life, you'll know whose self-promoting hand was on the tiller. Saint Thomas Alva Edison's a killer.