Volume 1: A sound on Wall Street, Xinxiang City is busy copying books Chapter 166 Edison
Subtitle of this chapter: You know, pretending to be critical is not so smooth
“Bang!”
Just when our Master Yuan was about to act out a crucial move for the second time, the balcony door was opened by the waiter and two people walked out of the door. This time it was not a man and a woman, but an old man and a young man, both men in evening gowns.
The old man with white hair had deep wrinkles on his face and looked a little haggard, looking even older than Mr. Baker, who was nearly 80 years old. But he had a big forehead, two thick eyebrows and a pair of eagle eyes, and looked like a deep and wise man.
The young man was in his early twenties and was quite handsome, especially the upper part of his face, which was very similar to the old man.
"Ah, George. You are here indeed."
"Oh, it's you, Thomas. I didn't expect to see you here."
What the hell is going on? ? ? ! ! !
Yuan Yanshu's heart, liver, spleen, lungs, kidneys and brain were all furious. Why did such things always happen at the critical moment when she was trying to be the boss?
Is it because I haven't triggered the key event yet, so I can't act key in front of George Baker, the key NPC?
However, no matter how angry he was, he could only maintain his gentlemanly demeanor and stood up with the two Mr. Bakers to greet the two "uninvited guests."
Little Baker stood up and greeted the old man respectfully : "Hello, Mr. Edison."
"Louis, long time no see..."
Wait, what's this old guy's name?
Thomas... Edison?!
What else is there to say? Master Yuan immediately greeted with a smile on his face: "Hello, Mr. Thomas Edison."
The old man wearing the laurel wreath of "The Greatest Person in the World", "America's National Treasure", and "Benefactor of All Mankind" nodded and said, "Hello, you are..."
Mr. Baker said, "Mr. Edison, let me introduce you. This is my friend Neo Yuan."
"I've heard of you for a long time." The elegant Yuan Yan took the initiative to extend his hand and said, "It's a great honor to meet you here."
The great inventor shook hands with him and said with a puzzled look: "Neo Yuan? This name seems a little familiar."
The young man next to him reminded him: "Father, he is the Chinese who was wronged by the NYPD and BOI!"
Edison suddenly realized, "Oh, you are the Chinese. Look at my memory. Nice to meet you."
He pointed to the young man next to him and said, "By the way, this is my youngest son, Theodore Edison."
Mr. Edison also politely greeted everyone: "Hello, Mr. Baker. Hello, Mr. Louis Baker."
"Mr. Yuan, it's a pleasure to meet you! I love your "Detective Dee" so much, and my mother and sisters also like your "Chocolat" very much."
Our Master Yuan didn't expect to meet his fans here, so he could only smile modestly and said: "No, no, thank you very much..."
The five men greeted each other by name, asked the waiter to bring two chairs, and then sat down together.
Now the protagonists at this table are naturally not our Master Yuan, but the two old guys George Baker and Thomas Edison.
Mr. Baker asked half-jokingly, "Thomas, I'm really curious. Why don't you stay in the lab and come here to 'waste' time?"
“Ahem…” Mr. Edison coughed a few times, then smiled bitterly and said, “I haven’t been feeling well since the beginning of winter, so Mina insisted that I take a break. So she asked Theodore to bring me here to stay for two days.”
The Mina he was referring to was his second wife, Mina Miller Edison, who was twenty years younger than him. The youngest son born to the second wife of Edison in 1898 was Theodore Roosevelt in front of Yuan Yanshu.
A hundred years later, Chinese young people have a very surprising reversal of their impression of Thomas Alva Edison.
The Edison they knew when they were young was the curious child who learned how to hatch eggs from a hen; he was also the genius teenager who used the principle of light reflection to simulate the effect of a surgical light and thus saved his mother's life; he was also the hardworking inventor who said the famous saying, "Genius is 1% talent plus 99% perspiration."
But when they grow up, they will be surprised to find that the curious child, the talented boy and the hardworking inventor is actually... an evil capitalist who is stingy, vicious and despicable!
Especially compared with his old rival Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison seems even smaller. There is no need to talk about the grievances between these two people.
However, Tesla is not only far superior to the latter , but also more admirable in personal ethics. He gave up the patent of alternating current so that the whole world can use it for free. You know, this patent alone can theoretically make him the real richest man in the world.
Of course, it is hard to say whether he could have lived to become the world's richest man if he had not given up his alternating current patent.
Moreover, Nikola Tesla perfectly fits people's existing imagination of "mad scientists". For example, he claimed to have received alien signals, many people said that he was the one who caused the Tunguska explosion, and some people even said that he was an alien...More importantly, he never had much money in his life and died in poverty.
But then again, these days... well, in any day, to be a successful capitalist, you have to be stingy, vicious, and despicable.
Don't get me wrong, this doesn't mean that all big capitalists are bad people. On the contrary, there are really good people among them, and they are good people who have a strong sense of responsibility for society, are very compassionate to the people, and even care about the fate of all mankind.
Mr. George F. Baker present here is praised as "the most resolute man in the United States, but also the kindest man at heart."
There was another even more "contradictory" capitalist in the same era, that is "Steel King" Andrew Carnegie. This great philanthropist once said that people who are obsessed with money are people of low character. If I keep pursuing a career that can make money, I will definitely fall one day.
He said so and he really did it. Before his death in 1919, he donated almost all of his personal property, a total of 330 million US dollars, which was just the principal amount without interest.
But this did not stop Mr. Carnegie from using unfair means to attack his competitors and even harm his partners. In 1900, in order to pressure his old friend, the "coke king" Frick, to lower prices, he even sent people to destroy the latter's factory. He was forced to stop only after Frick threatened to expose all the dirty deeds they had done before.
The reason why George Baker, Thomas Edison, Andrew Carnegie, etc. became big capitalists is that they conformed to the objective laws of the capitalist stage of human civilization.
After becoming big capitalists, they themselves become part of the objective laws governing the operation of capitalist society, that is, the personification of capital.
In fact, this is just like the debate in a certain Eastern country a hundred years later about "whether landlords are good or bad". In a society with sharp class contradictions , it is hooliganism to ignore a person's class attributes and simply talk about his moral qualities.
A noble capitalist will not exploit the proletariat? Similarly, a patriotic landlord will not oppress poor peasant tenants?
For a Seres like Master Yuan who is committed to promoting the quintessence of Chinese culture, it doesn’t matter that Thomas Edison had a bad character; the key point is that he was in poor health!
