Background
Charles Edison was born in August 3, 1890 in Llewellyn Park, New Jersey, United States. He was the son of Thomas Alva Edison, the inventor, and Mina Miller.
Businessman governor inventor animal behaviorist
Charles Edison was born in August 3, 1890 in Llewellyn Park, New Jersey, United States. He was the son of Thomas Alva Edison, the inventor, and Mina Miller.
Raised in a mansion, Edison attended several prep schools, graduating from the Hotchkiss School in 1909. He matriculated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for three years because "Father wanted me to be able to read a blueprint. "
On his father's advice Edison left MIT before graduation for a $15-a-week job to gain administrative training at Boston Edison Company. One year later he joined the Edison Illuminating Company.
Edison had earlier worked for his father as a common laborer. The twelve-hour-a-day, six-day-a-week schedule, lack of dispensaries in the plant, and low wages appalled him. Consequently, as a young executive he strove to improve working conditions, exhibiting compassion, managerial talent, and a capacity for hard work. Edison showed his independence by pursuing artistic interests in Greenwich Village, New York City, where he helped establish a literary magazine and a theater. He wrote poetry and befriended such luminaries as Edna St. Vincent Millay.
In 1915 he became chairman of the board of Edison Illuminating. Two years later, after president Woodrow Wilson named Thomas Edison chairman of the wartime Navy Consulting Board, formed to develop new weapons, Charles Edison became his father's governmental assistant. These World War I experiences put Edison in contact with Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
During the depression of 1921, Edison clashed with his father over the latter's desire to cut back Edison Industries' staff. Edison nearly left the company, only to concede later that his father was right. In 1926 Edison officially replaced his father as president and reorganized the company, enabling it to survive the Great Depression.
Between 1933 and 1936 he was vice-chairman of the New Jersey State Recovery Board, state director of the National Emergency Council, compliance director for the National Recovery Administration (NRA), and a member of the NRA board. He also served ably as regional director of the Federal Housing Administration for New Jersey.
On November 17, 1936, Roosevelt appointed Edison, an advocate of a strong navy, assistant secretary of the navy. Edison supervised naval expansion and assisted Secretary Claude Swanson, who was in poor health. Edison assumed most of Swanson's work for the next three years. Following Swanson's death, Roosevelt appointed Edison navy secretary on December 30, 1939. Despite delays in construction schedules, he secured a larger fleet, and construction standards improved. He also instituted significant reorganization. Edison prevented the sale of 162 obsolescent destroyers for junk. Fifty of these ships later went to England in the Destroyer-Naval Base Agreement. He was also responsible for the introduction of PT (patrol torpedo) boats into the navy and for the continuation of blimps, which were used as submarine spotters during World War II.
By October 1939 he supervised naval neutrality patrols in the Atlantic Ocean. Displeased with Edison's initial efforts, Roosevelt ordered him to employ forty additional destroyers. In June 1940 the president replaced Edison with Frank Knox. Why Roosevelt removed Edison is unclear. His dilatoriness in implementing the patrol policy might have been a factor. His hearing impairment (his father also suffered from deafness) caused Roosevelt to remark that Edison was "too deaf to be effective. " But political considerations were perhaps more important. Roosevelt could broaden support for his interventionist foreign policy by appointing Republicans, such as Knox, to his cabinet. Moreover, by persuading state Democratic boss Frank Hague of Jersey City to favor Edison's nomination for the governorship, Roosevelt could capitalize on the popular Edison's race that fall by carrying New Jersey in the presidential contest.
It was not until 1947, three years following Edison's term, that the state adopted a new constitution. In 1949 Hague was overthrown as mayor, vindicating Edison. After his governorship Edison resumed the presidency of Thomas A. Edison, Inc. , which merged in 1957 with the McGraw Electric Company.
In 1963 Edison joined the New York Conservative party and became an ardent backer of Barry Goldwater's unsuccessful presidential race in 1964. Afterward, deteriorating health kept him close to his Waldorf Towers apartment in New York City until his death.
Following Roosevelt's election as president in 1932, Edison joined the Democratic party, the only Edison to do so. He parried the criticisms of fellow businessmen by responding: "I believe in the new experiments going on. It takes courage to try new things and to stop them if they are not successful. "
Edison, who detested the political corruption associated with Hague's machine, cut himself off from Hague during the gubernatorial campaign. After winning the election, Edison nominated to the New Jersey Supreme Court a Republican who had led the opposition to the appointment in 1939 of Hague's son to the Court of Errors and Appeals, the state's highest tribunal. Hague vowed to break Edison as the latter sought to destroy Hague's financial and political power.
Roosevelt nevertheless continued to channel patronage through Hague, angering Edison. Edison never eliminated Hague. Lacking political sagacity, Edison failed to win over New Jersey's political leadership or control the legislature; and he faced an antiquated constitution, which limited his power as governor.
Politically Edison became increasingly antistatist. A rabid anti-Communist and promoter of the China lobby in the 1950's, he opposed the Eisenhower presidency for its liberalism.
Quotations:
"My father's fame cast a giant shadow. I hope to cast a small shadow of my own. "
"I want to make this perfectly clear: you can be sure that I will never be a yes-man except to my own conscience. "
"Any man who takes a job with the idea that it is simply a springboard for something else is a chump. His attention will be more on the other things than on the job at hand and so he will fail. "
"I have no desire to go in for tyranny or to play the part of King Charles. I hate tyranny in any field of human activity. "
He was a handsome, distinguished, and witty person.
On March 27, 1918, Edison married Carolyn Hawkins. They had no children.