Edison and the Electric Chair_ A Story of Light and Death - Mark Essig [95]
With word that judicial intervention once again blocked removal of dangerous wires, the public's impotence turned to rage. A population accustomed to violent death, meek before the corrupt alliance of government and business, suddenly found its voice. One marker of the depth of public anger was the unanimity of newspaper opinion. Joseph Pulitzer's crusading World, as expected, concluded that "men's lives are cheaper to this monopoly than insulated wires." More surprising were the reactions of the Times and Tribune, which usually sided with corporations and private property: Both papers urged that the dangerous light wires be cut down, and that the companies' officers be indicted for manslaughter. The Times claimed that the Board of Electrical Control was as responsible as the electric companies. If the board's members were convicted of murder in Feeks's death, the newspaper wrote, they would receive the death penalty and "the deadly current might be put to good use."12
Electrical execution was never far from people's minds during the wire panic. The grisly spectacle of Feeks's death accomplished in forty-five minutes what Edison and his allies had been trying to do for more than a year: It convinced the public that the Westinghouse current was terrible and deadly.
The World drafted Harold Brown as its in-house expert and sent a reporter to accompany him as he measured leakage from alternating-current wires. The Times quoted a lengthy tirade by Brown against alternating current, which included the reminder that "a certain electric light syndicate"—Westinghouse—"has recently acquired the Brush and United States Illuminating Company's stations," the two main offenders in the current string of deaths. The electric wire panic rehabilitated Brown's reputation. A magazine enlisted him to write an article on electrocution and the dangers of alternating current, and an electrical journal asserted that he "has done his utmost, either from pure philanthropy or the love of gain, to bring home to the public a possible danger." At this point few seemed to care that Brown had conducted secret deals and abused his contract with the state in order to malign the Westinghouse company. Brown slipped comfortably into the guise he had tried to wear since the summer of 1888: that of an altruist warning the public about a lethal threat.13
During the panic, Edison consulted with Brown several times, asking for statistics on accidental deaths and plotting strategy on how best to turn the publicity to their advantage. An investor in the Edison system took an optimistic view of Feeks's death, telling Edison that "there never has been such a grand occasion" to attack alternating current. "A communication from you to the principal newspapers" promoting direct current "would greatly benefit our companies . . . and boom the stocks," the man wrote.14
In this regard, Edison needed little prompting. When a reporter from New York appeared at his doorstep not long after Feeks's death, Edison greeted him with a question: "Have they killed anyone there today?" With his gray hair and gleaming gray eyes, Edison was half prophet of doom, half reassuring grandfather. He predicted that more innocents would die soon, and that the problem would not stop when the wires were buried. "When under ground," he warned, "the dangerous current will creep into your house, and will come up the manholes." Although eager to sow fear, Edison also offered a path to safety. "Is there not a law in New York against the manufacture of nitro-glycerine within the [city] limits?" he asked. "Well, there must be one against deadly currents. Let the Mayor keep the pressure reduced to 700 volts continuous current and to 200 alternating." These restrictions, Edison said, could be enforced "under police regulation,