Clemens’s unsparing account of his own beguilement into financially supporting James W. Paige’s development of an automatic typesetter is so manifestly autobiographical that it is judged to be among the chapters Clemens drafted for the autobiography, although he did not explicitly identify it that way. The manuscript, now in the Mark Twain Papers, was written in two separately paginated stages. The first part (twenty manuscript pages) was written in December 1890, almost ten years after Clemens began investing in the typesetter and at a point when his total investment had reached or exceeded $170,000, despite Paige’s failure to produce a successful prototype. The second part (nine manuscript pages) starts with “End of 1885” and was written in late 1893 or early 1894, when Clemens had left his family in Europe and traveled to New York to participate in negotiations concerning the typesetter. He must have written it before 1 February 1894, when he reached a new agreement with Paige that he believed would make him wealthy (Notebook 33, TS pp. 47, 51, CU-MARK).
Paine quoted from the manuscript in his biography ( MTB, 2:903–5, 913), and in his edition of the autobiography he published most of the first part (with the usual silent omissions), but only four paragraphs of the second part ( MTA, 1:70–78). Neider did not include any part of this text in his edition. Clemens continued to excoriate Paige in the Autobiographical Dictation of 2 June 1906.
[Written in the closing days of 1890.]Ⓐapparatus note
This episode has now spread itself over more than one-fifthⒶapparatus note of my life—a considerable stretch of time, as I am now fifty-five years old.
Ten or eleven years ago, Dwight Buell, a jeweler, called at our house and was shown up to the billiard room—which was my study; and the game got more study than the other sciences. He wanted me to take some stock in a type-setting machine. He said it was at the Colt Arms factory, and was about finishedⒺexplanatory note.Ⓐapparatus note I took $2,000 of the stock. I was always taking little chances like that; and almostⒶapparatus note always losing by it, too—a thing which I did not greatlyⒶapparatus note mind, because I was always careful to risk only such amounts as I could easily afford to lose. Some time afterward I was invited to go down to the factory and see the machine. I went, promising myself nothing; for I knew all about type-setting by practical experience, and held the settled and solidified opinion that a successful type-setting machine was an impossibility, for the reason that a machine cannot be made to think, and the thing that sets movableⒶapparatus note typeⒶapparatus note must think or retire defeated. So, the performance I witnessed did most thoroughlyⒶapparatus note amaze me. Here was a machine that was really setting type; and doing it with swiftness and accuracy, too. Moreover, it was distributing its case at the same time. The distribution was automatic:Ⓐapparatus note the machine fed itself from a galley of dead matter, and without human help or suggestion; for it began its work of its own accord when the type channels needed filling, and stopped of its own accord when they were full enough. The machine was almost a complete compositor; it lacked but one feature—it did not “justify” the lines; this was done by the operator’s assistant.
I saw the operator set at the rate of 3,000 ems an hour, which, counting distribution, was but little short of four case-men’s workⒺexplanatory note.
William HamersleyⒺexplanatory note was there. I had known him long, I thought I knew him well. I had great respect for him, and full confidence in him. He said he was already a considerable owner, [begin page 102] and was now going to take as much more of the stock as he could afford. Wherefore I set down my name for an additional $3,000Ⓔexplanatory note. It is here that the music begins.
Footnote. Hamersley now says we never had any such agreement. He will revise that remark presently.Ⓐapparatus note
Before very long Hamersley called on me and asked me what I would charge to raise a capital of $500,000Ⓐapparatus note for the manufacture of the machines. I said I would undertake it for $100,000. He said, raise $600,000, then, and take $100,000. I agreed. I sent for my partner, Webster; he came up from New York and went back with the project. There was some correspondence. Hamersley wrote Webster a letter which will be inserted later onⒺexplanatory note.
I will remark, here, that James W. PaigeⒺexplanatory note,Ⓐapparatus note the little bright-eyed, alert, smartlyⒶapparatus note dressed inventor of the machine, is aⒶapparatus note most extraordinary compound of business thrift and commercial insanity; of cold calculation and jejune sentimentality; of veracity and falsehood; of fidelityⒶapparatus note and treachery; of nobilityⒶapparatus note and baseness; of pluck and cowardice; of wasteful liberality and pitiful stinginess; of solid sense and weltering moonshine; of towering genius and trivial ambitions; of merciful bowels and a petrified heart; of colossal vanity and— But there the opposites stop. His vanity stands alone, sky-piercing, as sharp of outline as an Egyptian monolith. It is the only unpleasantⒶapparatus note feature in him that is not modified, softened, compensated by some converse characteristic. There is another point or two worth mentioning:Ⓐapparatus note he can persuade anybody; he can convince nobodyⒶapparatus note.Ⓐapparatus note He has a crystal-clear mind, as regards the grasping and concreting of an idea which has been lost and smothered under a chaos of baffling legal language; and yet it can always be depended upon to take the simplest half dozen facts and draw from them a conclusion that will astonish the idiots in the asylum. It is because he is a dreamer, a visionary. His imagination runs utterly away with him. He is a poet; a most great and genuine poet, whose sublimeⒶapparatus note creations are written in steel. He is the Shakespeare of mechanical invention. In all the ages he has no peer. Indeed, there is none that even approaches him. Whoever is qualified to fully comprehend his marvelous machine will grant that itsⒶapparatus note place is upon the loftiest summit of human invention, with no kindred between it and the far foothills below.
But I must explain these strange contradictions above listed, or the man will be misunderstood and wronged. His business thrift is remarkable, and it is also of a peculiar cut. He has worked at his expensive machine for more than twenty years, but always at somebody else’s cost. He spent hundreds and thousands of other folk’s money, yet always kept his machine and its possible patents in his own possession,Ⓐapparatus note unencumbered by an embarrassingⒶapparatus note lien of any kind—except once, which will be referred to by and by. He could never be beguiled into putting a penny of his own into his work. Once he had a brilliant idea in the way of a wonderfully valuable application of electricityⒺexplanatory note. To test it, he said,Ⓐapparatus note would cost but $25. I was paying him a salary of nearly $600 a month and wasⒶapparatus note spending $1,200Ⓐapparatus note on the machine besides; yet he asked me to risk the $25 and take half of the result. I declined, and he dropped the matter. Another time he was sure he was on the track of a splendid thing in electricityⒺexplanatory note. It would cost only a trifle—possibly $200—Ⓐapparatus noteto try some experiments; I was asked to furnish the money and take half of the result. I furnished money until the sum had grown to about $1,000Ⓐapparatus note, and everything was pronounced ready for the grand exposition. The electric current was turned on—the thing declined to go. Two years later the same thing was successfully worked out and patented by a [begin page 103] man in the State of New York and was at once sold for a huge sum of money and a royalty-reserve besides. The drawings in the electrical journal showing the stages by which that inventor had approached the consummation of his idea, proving his way step by step as he went, were almost the twins of Paige’s drawings of two years before. It was almost as if the same hand had drawn both sets.Ⓐapparatus note Paige said we had had it, and we should have known it if we had only tried an alternating current after failing with the direct current; said he had felt sure,Ⓐapparatus note at the time, that at cost ofⒶapparatus note $100Ⓐapparatus note he could apply the alternating test and come out triumphantⒺexplanatory note. Then he added, in tones absolutely sodden with self-sacrificeⒶapparatus note, and just barely touched with reproach,Ⓐapparatus note
“ButⒶapparatus note you had already spent so much money on the thingⒶapparatus note that I hadn’t the heart to ask you to spend any more.”
If I had asked him why he didn’t draw on his own pocket, he would not have understood me. He could not have grasped so strange an idea as that. He would have thought there was something the matter with my mind. I am speaking honestly; he could not have understood it. A cancer ofⒶapparatus note old habit and long experience could as easily understand the suggestion that it board itself a while.Ⓐapparatus note
In drawing contracts he is always able to take care of himself; and in every instance he will work into the contracts injuries to the other party and advantages to himself which were never considered or mentioned in the preceding verbal agreement. In one contract he got me to assign to him several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of property for a certain valuable consideration—said valuable consideration being the re-giving to me of another piece of property which was not his to give but already belonged to me!Ⓐapparatus note See assignment, Aug. 12, 1890Ⓔexplanatory note.Ⓐapparatus note I quite understand that I am confessing myself a fool; but that is no matter, the reader would find it out anyway, as I go along. Hamersley was our joint lawyer, and IⒶapparatus note had every confidence in his wisdom and cleanliness.
Once when I wasⒶapparatus note lending money to Paige during a few months, I presentlyⒶapparatus note found that he was giving receipts to my representative instead of notes! But that man never lived who could catchⒶapparatus note Paige so nearly asleep as to palm off on him a piece of paper which apparently satisfied a debt when it ought to acknowledge a loan.
I mustⒶapparatus note throw in a parenthesis here, or I shall do Hamersley an injustice. Here and there I have seemed to cast little reflections upon him. Pay no attention to them. I have no feeling about him, I have no harsh words to say about him. He is a greatⒶapparatus note fat good-natured, kind-hearted, chicken-livered slave; with no more pride than a tramp, no more sand than a rabbit, no more moral sense than a wax figure, and no more sex than a tape-worm. He sincerely thinks he is honest, he sincerely thinks he is honorable. It is my daily prayer to God that he be permitted to live and die in those superstitions. I gave him a twentieth of my American holding, at Paige’s request; I gave him a twentieth of my foreign holding at his own supplication;Ⓐapparatus note I advancedⒶapparatus note near $40,000Ⓐapparatus note in five years to keep these interests sound and valid for him. In return, he drafted every contract which I made with Paige in all that time—clear up toⒶapparatus note SeptemberⒶapparatus note, 1890—and pronounced it good and fair; and then I signed. These unique contracts will be found in the AppendixⒺexplanatory note. May they be instructive to the struggling student of law.Ⓐapparatus note
Yes, it is as I have said: Paige is an extraordinary compound of business thrift and commercial insanity. Instances of his commercial insanity are simply innumerable. Here are some examples. When I took hold of the machine Feb. 6, 1886, its faults had been corrected and a setter and a [begin page 104] justifier could turn out about 3,500 ems an hour on it; possibly 4,000. There was no machine that could pretend rivalry to it. Business sanity would have said, put it on the market as it was, secure the field,Ⓐapparatus note and add improvements later. Paige’s business insanity said, add the improvements first, and risk losing the field. And that is what he set out to do. To add a justifying mechanism to that machine would take a few months and cost $9,000 by his estimate, or $12,000 by Pratt & Whitney’sⒺexplanatory note. I agreed to add said justifier to that machine. There could be no sense in building a new machine. Yet in total violation of the agreement, Paige went immediately to work to build a new machine, although aware, by recent experience, that the cost could not fall below $150,000, and that the time consumed would be years instead of months. Well, when four years had been spent and the new machine was able toⒶapparatus note exhibit a marvelous capacity, we appointed the 12thⒶapparatus note of January for Senator Jones of Nevada to come and make an inspection. He was not promised a perfect machine, but a machine which could be perfected. HeⒶapparatus note had agreedⒶapparatus note to invest one or two hundred thousand dollars in its fortunes; and had also said that if the exhibition was particularly favorable, he might take entire charge of the elephant. At the last moment Paige concluded to add an air-blastⒶapparatus note, (afterwards found to be unnecessary); wherefore, JonesⒶapparatus note had to be turned back from New York to wait a couple of months and lose his interest in the thingⒺexplanatory note. A year ago, Paige made what he regarded as a vast and magnanimous concession: Hamersley and I might sell the English patent for $10,000,000Ⓐapparatus note! A little later a man came along who thought he could bring some Englishmen who would buy that patent, and he was sent off to fetch them. He was gone so long that Paige’s confidence began to diminish, and with it his price. He finally got down to what he said was his very last and bottom price for that patent—$50,000Ⓐapparatus note! This was the only time in five years that I ever saw Paige in his right mind. I could furnish otherⒶapparatus note examples of Paige’s business insanity—enough of them to fill six or eight volumes, perhaps, but I am not writing his history, I am merely sketching his portrait.
Greatest of all mistakes that things warn’t arranged so as to have four persons in the Trinity. But even then Paige wouldn’t stir a peg unless he could have the boss-ship.Ⓐapparatus note
End of 1885Ⓔexplanatory note.Ⓐapparatus note
Paige arrives at my house unheralded. [I was a small stockholder in the Farnham Co., but had seenⒶapparatus note little or nothing of Paige for a year or two.] He said “What’ll you complete the machine for?”
“What will it cost?”
“$20,000—certainly not over $30,000.”
“What will you give?”
“I’ll give you half.”
“I’ll do it—butⒶapparatus note the limit must be $30,000.”
“Hamersley’s a good fellow and will be invaluable to us—we can’t get along without him as our lawyer. Shan’t we give him a slice?”
“Yes. How much?”
“Shall we say a tenth?”
“All right—yes.”
[begin page 105] The contract, (signed Feb. 6, 1886) was drawn by Hamersley. It is an excruciatingly absurd piece of paper. It bound me to requirements which had not been talked about, but they looked easy and I accepted them. But it was not till monthsⒶapparatus note afterward that upon trying to sell a part of my interest to raise money for the machine I found I hadn’t any ownership of any kind. My 9/20Ⓐapparatus note interest had become a purely conditional one. Failing the conditions, I would have nothing back but my $30,000 and 6 per cent interestⒺexplanatory note.
Hamersley was my trusted old friend, and as I thought, my lawyer also. I was spending $30,000Ⓐapparatus note to build his tenth of the machine. Yet he drew that contract and was present at the signing of it, and found nothing unrighteous about it.
The $30,000 lasted about a year, I should say. My contract was fulfilled, but Paige had fallen far short of finishing the machine—though he said he could finish it for $4,000; and could finish it and give it a big exhibition in New York for $10,000. After an interval, during which I did not see him, he applied for a loan of this money and offered to pay back double some day.
I sent word that I would furnish the $4,000, but would take nothing but 6 per cent. (Witness, F. G. WhitmoreⒺexplanatory note.)
When the $4,000 was gone, he said a littleⒶapparatus note more would do. I furnished a little more and a little more, takingⒶapparatus note 6 per cent notes until atⒶapparatus note last the machine was finished but not absolutely perfected. It could not have stood a lengthy test-exhibition. The notes then aggregated (with interest) about $53,000 or $55,000. I was out of pocketⒶapparatus note more than $80,000, with nothing to show for it but the original idiotic contract.
I then struck the idea of asking for royalties to raise money on. I asked for five hundredⒶapparatus note. Paige said—
“You can have as many as you want. I’ll give you a thousand.”
I said no, I would take onlyⒶapparatus note five hundred.
The royalty deed was made and signedⒺexplanatory note. We were all feeling fine. Paige asked me to give him back his notes. I made Whitmore do it, though he strenuously objected.
I went on finishing the machine at the rate of $4,000 and upwards a month. I had no fears or doubts. [But I found royalties not very salable, and stopped trying to sell them.]Ⓐapparatus note
Hamersley was in a sweat to get a new contract out of Paige allowing a company to organize in the ordinary wayⒶapparatus note and manufacture the machine. Presently Paige consented—and contract No. 2 was the result. It recognized my share.Ⓐapparatus note A rough one on me, but anything seemed better than the old contract—which was a mistake.
A few months later contract No. 3 (the May contractⒶapparatus note?) was made. It recognized my share.
These were not promising contracts for a company to take hold of.
Then came the “June” contractⒺexplanatory note—a good and rational one. All this time these various contracts merely recognized my American rights. My foreign 9/20 were conditioned upon my paying the patent-expenses as they accrued (which I did) and the ultimate expenses of starting [begin page 106] work in the foreign countries—a condition which has not yet arrived. Now none of the previous contracts actually gave me an ownership, but this June one gave me the machine and everything, bag and baggage.
However, John P. Jones thought the foreign rights should be put into this contract, and I wrote to Paige to interline this addition. He sent for my copy of the June contract and Whitmore brought it and left it with him—which was a mistake.
We couldn’t get it from him any more. He said it wasn’tⒶapparatus note a real contract, because it had a blank in it (for his salary.)
I came down from Onteora to see what the trouble was, and Whitmore urged me to stand out for the restoration of that stolenⒶapparatus note contract; but Paige insisted that a new one which he had been drawing up was much better. I signed it, and also assigned my foreign rights back to Paige, who now owned the entire thing (Hamersley’s shares, too) if this contract failed to materialize. It had but sixⒶapparatus note months to runⒺexplanatory note.
After signing it I spoke doubtfully of my chances, and PaigeⒶapparatus note shed a few tears, as usual, and was deeply hurt at being doubted; asked me if he hadn’t alwaysⒶapparatus note taken care of me? and had he ever failed of his word with me? hadn’t he always said that no matter what happened (meaningⒶapparatus note a falling-out—which I had suggested) I should have my 9/20 of every dollar he ever got out of the machine, domestic and foreign; that if he died (as I had suggested) his family would see to it that I got my 9/20. Then—
“Here, Charley Davis, take a pen and write what I sayⒺexplanatory note.”
He dictated and Davis wrote.
“There, now,” said Paige, “areⒶapparatus note you satisfied now?”
I went on footing the bills, and got the machine really perfected at last, at a full cost of about $150,000, instead of the original $30,000Ⓔexplanatory note.Ⓐapparatus note
Ward tells me that Paige tried his best to cheat me out of my royalties when making aⒶapparatus note contract with the Connecticut Co.
Also that he tried to cheat out of all share Mr. North (inventor of the justifying mechanism;) but that North frightened him withⒶapparatus note a lawsuit-threat, and is to get a royalty until the aggregate is $2,000,000Ⓔexplanatory note.
Paige and I always meet on effusively affectionate terms; and yet he knows perfectly well that if I had his nutsⒶapparatus note in a steel-trapⒺexplanatory note I would shut out all human succor and watch that trap till he died.
Ten or eleven years ago, Dwight Buell . . . was about finished] Dwight H. Buell owned a shop on Main Street in Hartford, and was a director of the Farnham Type-Setter Manufacturing Company. The machine he wanted Clemens to invest in was invented by James W. Paige, who—in collaboration with the Farnham Company—was building a prototype in a workshop at Samuel Colt’s firearms factory in Hartford. Clemens first purchased stock in the Farnham Company in the fall of 1881 (Geer 1882, 341, 455; 18 Oct 1881 and 25 Oct 1881 to Webster, NPV, in MTBus, 171–73).
rate of 3,000 ems an hour . . . four case-men’s work] A compositor setting material by hand pulled the metal types for characters and spaces one at a time from a case—a wooden tray divided into compartments—and placed them, in reverse order, in a composing stick. The full stick was then transferred to a galley tray, where the types were held in place to allow a proof to be printed. The “dead matter”—types that had already been set and used for printing—was then distributed by hand back into the case for reuse. An “em” was a measure equal to the square of the height of one type, and therefore varied according to the size of the font. The ems in one line were multiplied by the number of lines to determine the quantity of typeset material (Pasko 1894, 145; Stewart 1912, 21, 61, 85). In September 1890, shortly before writing the present account, Clemens claimed that an operator of the Paige compositor could set 8,000 ems of type per hour, more than ten times what a hand typesetter could produce (11 Sept 1890 and 27 Sept 1890 to Jones, CU-MARK; printed document enclosed with the letter of 11 Sept, “Saving-Capacity of the Several Machines,” annotated by Clemens, photocopy in CU-MARK).
William Hamersley] Hamersley (1838–1920), an attorney, served from 1868 to 1888 as the state prosecutor for Hartford County. In 1886 he was elected to the lower house of the Connecticut General Assembly, and in 1893–94 served as Superior Court Judge. As president of the Farnham Company, he was one of the earliest investors in the typesetting machine (Connecticut State Library 2006; N&J3, 141 n. 50).
I set down my name for an additional $3,000] In mid-1882 Clemens recorded in his notebook that he owned two hundred shares in the Farnham Company, worth $5,000 ( N&J2, 491).
Hamersley wrote Webster a letter which will be inserted later on] Clemens did not insert a letter into this account, nor has any letter from Hamersley to Webster been found.
James W. Paige] In the early 1870s in Rochester, New York, Paige (1842–1917) set about inventing a typesetting machine, which was granted a patent in 1874. This original machine, however, lacked any mechanism for justifying or distributing type. Paige moved to Hartford, and in 1877 joined with the Farnham Company, which was developing a distributor for its own typesetter, a “gravity machine with converging channels” (Legros and Grant 1916, 378). Paige began to design a new machine that could both set and distribute type. By 1882, when he produced a working model, the enterprise had cost nearly $90,000. The Farnham Company withdrew its support, and Clemens agreed to find additional investors (Lee 1987; “Private Circular to the Stockholders of the Farnham Type-Setter Manufacturing Company,” 26 Jan 1891, CU-MARK; N&J3, 36 n. 69).
wonderfully valuable application of electricity] Clemens may be referring to another of Paige’s inventions, a printing telegraph. Clemens tried to promote the project for several months in 1885 ( N&J3, 170, 181 n. 12).
splendid thing in electricity] In the summer of 1887, while perfecting a dynamo for his typesetter, Paige had an idea for a revolutionary electromagnetic motor that might be very lucrative. Although Clemens briefly supported his experiment, on 16 August he signed a contract stipulating that Paige was to proceed at his own expense. Clemens received a one-half share in the invention and agreed to reimburse Paige should it prove successful ( N&J3, 338 n. 111; “1887. Agreement of J. W. Paige regarding Magnetic Electro Motor dated 16th August,” CU-MARK).
he could apply the alternating test and come out triumphant] In a notebook entry dated 1 November 1888 Clemens remarked on Nikola Tesla’s recently patented alternating-current motor:
I have just seen the drawings and description of an electrical machine lately patented by a Mr. Tesla, & sold to the Westinghouse Company, which will revolutionize the whole electric business of the world. It is the most valuable patent since the telephone. The drawings & description show that this is the very machine, in every detail which Paige invented nearly 4 years ago.
Tesla “tried everything that we tried, as the drawings & descriptions prove; & he tried one thing more—a thing which we had canvassed—the alternating current. That solved the difficulty & achieved success” ( N&J3, 431).
another piece of property . . . assignment, Aug. 12, 1890] This contract stipulated that Paige would grant Clemens all “right, title and interest in his inventions . . . and in the domestic and foreign patents obtained and that may be obtained therefor,” in return for one-quarter of the gross receipts from the eventual sales or rentals of the machine. For the agreement to be valid, Clemens had to pay Paige $250,000 within six months. The property that “already belonged” to Clemens was evidently the foreign royalties. He made the following notebook entry in April 1893, when he met with Paige in Chicago:
Paige . . . called again tonight. I asked him if his conscience troubled him any about the way he had treated me. He said he could almost forgive me for that word. He said it broke his heart when I left him and the machine to fight along the best way they could &c. &c. . . . When his European patent affairs are settled, he is going to put me in for a handsome royalty on every European machine. This would be very generous except for the fact that his present contract with the Connecticut Co already does that for me. We parted immensely good friends. (Notebook 33, TS pp. 8–9, CU-MARK; N&J3, 576 n. 4; “Copy of Contract between S. L. Clemens & James W. Paige—Aug 12th 1890,” CU-MARK)
contracts will be found in the Appendix] No such appendix—presumably a collection of all the contracts with Paige—has been found.
Pratt & Whitney’s ] The Pratt and Whitney Company, a machine and tool manufacturer incorporated in Hartford in 1869, was engaged to produce the prototype (Geer 1882, 254, 459).
Jones . . . lose his interest in the thing] John P. Jones (1829–1912), a native of England, went to California at the start of the gold rush, settling in Nevada in 1867. He became superintendent and then part owner of the Crown Point mine in Gold Hill, which struck a rich vein of silver and made him wealthy: by 1874 his monthly income was reported to be half a million dollars (29 Mar and 4 Apr 1875 to Wright, L6, 439 n. 5). He represented Nevada as a U.S. senator from 1873 to 1903. Clemens’s attempts to induce Jones to invest in the typesetter began in early 1887, and continued for several years. In July 1890 Jones inspected the machine during one of its operational intervals and made a token investment of $5,000. In early September Clemens had a contract drawn up whereby Jones agreed to “use his best endeavors” to raise $950,000 and “organize a corporation” which would purchase Clemens’s interest and assume his obligation to pay Paige $250,000 by February 1891. Jones may never have signed this agreement; in any event, on 11 February he wrote that he had been unable to interest any investors. In fact, two of the men he had approached were “large stockholders in the ‘Mergenthaler,’ ” the Paige machine’s chief competitor (Jones to SLC, 11 Feb 1891, CU-MARK; see the note at 106.23–24). Clemens drafted a reply, which he apparently never sent: “For a whole year you have breathed the word of promise to my ear to break it to my hope at last. It is stupefying, it is unbelievable” (14–28 Feb 1891 to Jones, CU-MARK; N&J3, 278–79 n. 183, 565 n. 261, 572–73, 576–77 n. 6; 8 Sept 1890 [with enclosed contract] and 11 Sept 1890 to Jones, CU-MARK; 22 Feb 1891 to Goodman, NN-BGC).
End of 1885] These words mark the beginning of the second section of Clemens’s account, written several years after the first part. It begins on a new sequence of pages, and was probably written in late 1893 or early 1894, when Clemens was in New York working with Henry Rogers to negotiate a new contract with Paige (see the note at 106.23–24).
The contract . . . $30,000 and 6 per cent interest] A contract of 6 February 1886 stipulated that Clemens would pay Paige’s expenses up to $30,000, plus an annual salary of $7,000, and Hamersley would provide “professional services,” while the machine was perfected. After a successful prototype was tested, Clemens and Hamersley were to raise the money to manufacture it. A corporation would then be formed, with Clemens receiving 9/20 of the stock. If they failed to obtain the “necessary capital” within three years, however, they were entitled to reimbursement of the money they had advanced, from any profit that “may at any time thereafter accrue.” In the meantime, Paige retained “title of the property purchased with the money furnished . . . in pursuance of this agreement” (“Agreement,” CU-MARK).
F. G. Whitmore] Franklin Gray Whitmore (1846–1926), owner of a real estate office and Clemens’s Hartford business agent, supervised the building of the typesetter at the Pratt and Whitney works in 1886 (Burpee 1928, 3:952; N&J3, 189 n. 27).
royalty deed was made and signed] By the terms of a deed of 26 September 1889 Clemens paid Paige $100,000 (presumably with funds already advanced) in return for a royalty of $500 on every machine that would eventually be sold. Clemens then tried to sell his interest at a cost of $1,000 for each “five hundredth part of my interest in the royalty of five hundred dollars” (“Deed” in CU-MARK; N&J3, 518 n. 119).
contract No. 2 . . . contract No. 3 (the May contract?) . . . “June” contract] A contract drawn up in December 1889 (“No. 2”), which provided for the establishment of a corporation and gave Clemens 9/20 of the stock (an amount equal to his current interest in the typesetter), may never have been ratified. The “May” and “June” contracts have not been found ( N&J3, 576 n. 5, 579 n. 23; contract of 14 Dec 1889 in CU-MARK).
I signed it . . . It had but six months to run] That is, the contract signed in August 1890 (see the note at 103.20–21).
Charley Davis, take a pen and write what I say] Charles E. Davis was the Pratt and Whitney engineer who supervised the manufacture of the typesetter. When Clemens visited Chicago in April 1893 to check on the progress of the machine, he received a visit from Davis, who mentioned that he “still holds the paper which Paige dictated to him one day to quiet me, in which he says that no matter what happened he and I would always share and share alike in the results of the machine” (Notebook 33, TS p. 9, CU-MARK; N&J3, 246 n. 71).
I went on footing the bills . . . instead of the original $30,000] Clemens’s total investment, which he elsewhere estimated to be as much as $170,000, was equivalent to over $3 million in today’s dollars (SLC 1899a; AD, 28 Mar 1906). He finally stopped financing the machine in late February 1891, having failed to raise the necessary $250,000 to buy out Paige. Clemens traded his stock for royalties on future sales, hoping to eventually recover much of his loss. The following year, Paige contracted with the Webster Manufacturing Company in Chicago (Towner K. Webster, principal) to build a new machine, and the Pratt and Whitney prototype was dismantled and moved to that city. The invention continued to attract backers, among them a group of New York brokers who formed the Connecticut Company in 1892 and bought an interest in the Webster Manufacturing Company. In 1893 Henry Huttleston Rogers (the Standard Oil executive who took charge of Clemens’s financial affairs) organized the Paige Compositor Manufacturing Company—later superseded by the Regius Manufacturing Company—which negotiated with Paige, seeking to resolve the claims of the numerous investors and secure Clemens’s interest. The rebuilt machine continued to show promise, and in the fall of 1894 was tested by the Chicago Herald. According to one account, the machine performed well despite delays for repairs, and “delivered more corrected live matter” of the highest “artistic merit” than “any one of the thirty-two Linotype machines which were in operation in the same composing department” (Legros and Grant 1916, 381). But by then the 1890 model of the Linotype machine, invented by Ottmar Mergenthaler and based on a simpler and more practical concept, had captured the market. Clemens’s hopes were finally shattered. One of Paige’s patent attorneys later called the machine an “intellectual miracle,” the “greatest thing of the kind that has been accomplished in all of the ages”—but it was too impractical to be a commercial success: with eighteen thousand parts, it was impossible to manufacture in quantity, and too complicated to run long without repairs (Legros and Grant 1916, 381, 391). Rogers persuaded the Linotype Company to buy Paige’s patents, in order to eliminate any possible competition. Paige himself died in poverty in 1917 (25 Feb 1891 to OC, CU-MARK; HHR, 12–20, 25–26, 148 n. 2; Lee 1987, 59–60; N&J3, 546 n. 190; 11 Nov 1894 and 28 Nov 1894 to Rogers, Salm, and 2 Jan 1895 to Rogers, CU-MARK, in HHR, 94–95, 98–100, 115; Scientific American 1901).
Ward tells me . . . Mr. North . . . is to get a royalty until the aggregate is $2,000,000] Henry S. Ward was a New York broker who owned an interest in the typesetter through the Connecticut Company. Charles R. North was a Pratt and Whitney machinist; Paige agreed to pay him “$200 a month out of his salary & $400 to $500 per machine until he shall have received $2,000,000” ( HHR, 12, 31–34; Notebook 33, TS p. 8, CU-MARK).
had his nuts in a steel-trap] This remark alludes to an incident that Clemens actually witnessed, in which an acquaintance “got his Nüsse caught in the steel trap” of a sitz-bath (Fischer 1983, 47–48 n. 85; N&J3, 132, 135–36, 234, 356).
Source document.
MS Manuscript of 29 leaves, written in 1890 and 1893–94.The MS was apparently written in two stages. Part 1, pages numbered 1–20, ending with ‘boss-ship.’ (104.26), was written in black ink on pale-green laid paper, measuring 5½ by 8⅞ inches, and dates from the last days of 1890. Part 2, pages numbered 1–9, containing the rest of the text, was written in black ink on torn half sheets of cream-colored wove paper, with no embossment or watermark, measuring 5½ by 8¼ inches. Paine noted ‘Written about 1891’ on page 1 of the second part, but the paper is a type that Clemens used during the winter of 1893–94, when he was in New York working with Henry H. Rogers to negotiate with Paige. He was in touch in December and January with both Henry S. Ward and Charles R. North (see the note at 106.25–29), and he must have written part 2 sometime before 1 February, when Paine signed a new contract. There are penciled revisions by both Clemens and Paine on part 1; their authorship for the most part is easy to determine. A few brief passages are canceled in pencil, which makes it difficult to assign responsibility; it seems most likely, however, that Paine made these deletions when he prepared MTA. The passages are retained in the text and identified below. There are no clearly authorial revisions in pencil on part 2, but there are two penciled changes that have been ascribed to Paine. The first, a necessary correction, accords with the present text (at 106.25). The second has been rejected. In that instance the MS reads, ‘if I had his nuts in a steel-trap’ (106.31); Clemens deleted ‘nuts’ in ink but inserted no alternative word. The phrase was revised in pencil to ‘if I had his nuts him in a steel-trap’ in a hand that could be either Clemens’s or Paine’s. Clemens made no other revisions in part 2, and on balance it seems more likely that it was Paine who made the revision, to avoid offense. In any case, by restoring the original wording (and rejecting Clemens’s incomplete revision) we can be sure the reading is authorial.