“I know how to give an interview,” said Agnes. “This is not my first. Though if we’re successful, I daresay it’ll be my most fun.”
That Agnes relished an attack on W. H. Foster did not surprise Paul. There was a vengeful side to her, when wronged. It was another trait that he appreciated.
“Mr. Drucker is friendly to our side,” Paul said, “but he’s not ours completely. This will be a proper interview.”
“You paid him,” said Agnes boldly. It wasn’t a question.
Paul paused before speaking. “Not exactly.”
“Edison bought off some men from the Evening Post, so you followed suit with some men from The Times?”
“Westinghouse has given Mr. Drucker exclusive interviews, exclusive access to reports of coming products. In exchange, Drucker has written generously—and honestly—about those products. It’s not a bribe. It’s a relationship.” Paul emphasized the point: “We haven’t stooped to Edison’s level.”
Agnes raised an eyebrow. “Well,” she said, “do you think that might be why you’re losing?”
They found Leopold Drucker among the reporters scribbling away at their messy desks. Even the day after Christmas, the newsroom was loud with the clack of typewriters.
Paul watched raptly as Agnes sat for her interview. She was, in a word, excellent. Her performance was no less masterful than any he might imagine of hers onstage. Drucker’s secretary transcribed every word she uttered. Agnes spoke at a calm pace, as if this were any other social call. She treated Drucker like an old friend, despite their having met only minutes before. Her tone was light, both funny and refined. She was a small-town girl just delighted at what big-city dreams she now lived. And at the same time, she was a winking doyenne of New York society, elegant in her habits and ladylike in her proprieties.
She spoke of Paris, of London, of her lifelong passion for song. She mentioned her devoted mother, ever at her side. She was a na?f in the rough business of the theater. She let Drucker do the work of asking about the short midwestern tour in which she’d sung—why so quick? Hadn’t she liked Chicago?
“Chicago will forever be in my heart,” she said. “It is the Paris of the Middle West. There was only a small unpleasantness with a manager on the tour that bade me take my leave of it.” When pressed as to the nature of this unpleasantness, she demurred. “You’ll have to speak to Mr. Foster about all of that. He runs the troupe I was then singing with. Such lovely people. If you speak to any of the ladies in the troupe, please give them my love? They suffered such an unfortunate time. But yes, Chicago—what a heavenly town!”
Paul had to restrain himself from bursting into applause. Drucker could print that as it was. Only a few words, carefully chosen, had been required to do all the damage she’d wanted. “Ladies.” “Unfortunate.” “Suffered.” “A small unpleasantness.” She wasn’t smearing Foster’s good name. There was nothing libelous in what she’d said. Nothing even that smacked of a grudge. She sounded like she was attempting not to sully his reputation. And it was from such a tone that any reader of good judgment might draw her own conclusions about what sort of theater manager had caused an unpleasantness with his female singers. Any speculation as to the nature of this trouble would be left solely to the province of the reader’s ample imagination.
As the interview concluded, Mr. Drucker instructed his secretary to submit the transcribed interview to his editor by the evening. The newsroom seemed to silence itself as Agnes strolled out among the clerks and typists. Paul watched as she floated across the room.
“Oh, Cravath,” Drucker said to Paul. “There’s something came in yesterday that I thought you might want to see. It’s down on the second floor—I’ll show you. It’s a submission from the desk of Harold Brown.”
“Surely,” said Paul, “The New York Times is not going to print an editorial of Brown’s.” The Times had never been a Westinghouse paper, exactly, but neither had it been as sycophantically pro-Edison as its peers.
“It’s not an editorial. It’s an advertisement. A full page.”
“An advertisement for what?”
“For a demonstration,” said Drucker. “And dear Lord, does it look like it’ll be a show.”
What is a scientist after all? It is a curious man looking through a keyhole, the keyhole of nature, trying to know what is going on.
—JACQUES COUSTEAU
PAUL’S COLLECTION OF Harold Brown’s incendiary editorials had grown considerably over the previous months. The pile rested on the floor in his office, stacked to a point of structural instability. Almost every major newspaper in America had published one of the screeds. Their tone was as unyieldingly hyperbolic as the first. Alternating current had arrived, it had come to murder your children, and its deliverer was George Westinghouse.
Paul and Westinghouse had tried to educate the public on the science involved, to explain why alternating current was in fact less dangerous than direct. Westinghouse had personally penned editorials vouching for the safety of his systems. But so far the public had not been as moved by scientific reasoning as they had been by Brown’s colorful fabrications.
Brown was now taking his campaign a step further. He was set to launch a traveling road show. He would demonstrate to the public just how deadly Westinghouse’s current would be.
On New Year’s Day, 1889, Paul took the train to West Orange, New Jersey.
He found a crowded lecture hall. He guessed there to be almost a hundred other attendees besides himself, comprised of city safety officials, lighting company representatives, assorted engineers, and a healthy contingent of reporters. Brown’s tour was being advertised all along the East Coast. He was to perform in Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington. Edison country, Paul thought. Though on such trips Brown would have to travel on trains with brakes designed by George Westinghouse.
Harold Brown entered the lecture hall. To Paul’s surprise, he looked more like an actuary than a huckster. He was small, mild of demeanor, soft voiced; if he wasn’t the man of the hour, he would have disappeared into the crowd. Brown began his lecture by explaining that he had no “financial or commercial interest” in the nationwide debate over A/C versus D/C; his involvement in this scientific dispute was motivated only by his commitment to the truth. He then directed his audience’s attention to an animal cage. It was constructed from wood, but strung with copper wires between the bars. Inside, Brown had placed a generously sized black retriever. An assistant attached wires to the animal’s legs. One on the front right, the other on the rear left. The unsuspecting retriever did not bark as the copper pressed against its fur. Brown then showed his assembled crowd a direct-current generator. It was of “the type manufactured by Mr. Edison,” he explained. With the flick of a switch, Brown sent what he described as three hundred volts through the dog. The animal emitted a small yelp and briefly struggled to shake free. But of course the shackles wouldn’t budge.
“You see,” Brown intoned, “the direct current hurts no worse than a pinprick.”
He then turned the generator to four hundred volts and reapplied the current to the unhappy retriever. The barking grew louder.
Next it was seven hundred volts of D/C. The dog bellowed violently, banging its head against the bars of the cage. The poor thing shook until managing to loose the electrical wire on its front paw. Brown’s assistant dutifully reapplied it.
Shouts of protest erupted from the audience. Surely, a few men yelled, this was too much. Paul placed his head in his hands. He had a terrible feeling.