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2
Porter's Early Years. 1870-1896

To understand the underpinnings of Edwin Stanton Porter's approach to filmmaking, we must turn to the world in which he was born and spent the first twenty-three years of his life.[1] As with any individual, his subsequent activities were a complex response to these formative experiences—in his case, one that involved significant continuities. With his films often nostalgically longing for a lost past and a romanticized childhood, a biographical study must reassert the concrete character of that world. Porter grew up in Connellsville, Pennsylvania, a small town fifty miles southeast of Pittsburgh. Its population in 1870, the year of his birth, was 1,292. Despite this modest size, it was not a rural community but a small industrial center.

In the 1870s Connellsville functioned principally as a railroad repair center.[2] By the end of the decade, it was producing large amounts of coke—processed coal used primarily for making steel. Connellsville coke soon became known as the best in the country, and the area depended on this industry for its prosperity. Connellsville more than doubled in size by the 1880 census to 3,615 inhabitants. Although the town had its share of small businessmen, including Porter's father, his extended family, and friends, the environs were dominated by the economic realities of large-scale production. The often-troubled relationship between absentee owners of extensive coke works and a large number of "cokers"—workers who mined the coal and tended the coke ovens—was a fundamental aspect of Connellsville life. Connellsville also boasted various forms of commercial popular culture, in which Porter participated. This environment provided Porter with the experiences, presuppositions, and skills that were to facilitate, shape, and influence his subsequent work as a filmmaker.


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The Porter Family

Edwin S. Porter was born on April 21, 1870, to Thomas Richard and Mary (Clark) Porter. His namesake was Edwin M. Stanton, a Democratic politician from Ohio who served as Abraham Lincoln's secretary of war. This name was Porter's own, somewhat later choice, for his parents called him Edward; and as a short chubby boy, he went by the nickname of "Betty."[3] The youngest member of his family for ten years, Ed ultimately became the fourth of seven children, the others being Charles W. (born 1864), Frank (1867), Mary (1868), Ada (1880), John (1883), and Everett Melbourne (1889). His father, Thomas Porter, was one of at least seven brothers who grew up in nearby Perryopolis. Their father, Edward's grandfather, was a stone cutter.[4] After the Civil War, several brothers moved to Connellsville, which was expanding with the growing coke trade. In the 1870s Thomas's older brother Henry, also a stone cutter, became Connellsville's postmaster, a much-sought-after position, which kept his children employed as postal clerks. Through combined financing and partnerships, the Porter clan established or invested in several local enterprises.

Porter's father was a small businessman often dependent on his more successful siblings. When Edward was born, Thomas Porter was working as a cabinetmaker. By the following year he was running Porter & Brother, a furniture store and undertaking establishment owned by his older brothers. The only funeral service in town for the next seven years, Porter & Brother rented furniture for these and other occasions. As Connellsville expanded rapidly in population, the firm began to sell factory-made furniture, for which it also enjoyed a local monopoly. By late 1877 the business was jointly owned by Thomas and John Porter, with John's son Everett Melbourne acting as co-manager. Four years later, John Porter was reportedly worth $50,000, while "Thomas Porter, the managing partner, has very little outside of his investment in firm but is economic, industrious and temperate."[5]

Thomas Porter assumed control of the undertaking business in 1888 when Everett Melbourne, who had been increasingly ill with consumption, died in February, a month after his father. Edward's oldest brother, Charles W. Porter, was soon brought into the family business, renamed Thomas Porter & Co. The local newspaper glowingly described the firm shortly after Thomas had taken full charge:

. . . Of this house it is only fair to say that they have probably done as much toward accelerating the commercial activity of the town by their enterprise as any other concern within its limits. They occupy part of the three-story building of Soisson's Block on Main Street. Their room is of spacious dimensions, being 20 × 70 feet in extent, with a large manufacturing room and other necessary outbuildings in the rear. They unquestionably carry as large a stock as any to be found in the country, including dining-room, reception and drawing room, parlor, library and bedroom suites of every description. In their undertaking department they are equally well equipped, carrying


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caskets, coffins, etc. of all grades and sizes. They own two fine hearses, one for children and one for adults, besides a large and beautiful funeral car. Mr. Thomas Porter is especially fitted by nature and practical experience for the delicate duties devolving upon him of the embalming of the dead.

The house was established eighteen years ago under the style of Porter and Brother. This was in a small way, but by diligence in business and energy, fair and honorable dealing, this house now represents the very best class of houses in Western Pennsylvania in the line of fine furniture and funeral directors.[6]

By the early 1890s Charles Porter and his father may have had a falling out: the son set up his own company, eventually forcing Thomas Porter into retirement.[7]

Thomas Porter's success was more modest than his brothers'. Shortly after Edward was born, Samuel, John, and Henry Porter formed a partnership with three other Connellsville men to conduct a general foundry and plow manufactory. The firm added a new branch in 1873 for forgings and machine work. By 1880 some of the partners were bought out and the firm became known as Boyts, Porter & Company. Its most successful product, the Yough pump, captured a substantial market among mining companies across the country. The business flourished and became one of the two major manufacturing establishments in Connellsville during the 1880s.[8]

Edward Porter had other relatives living in Connellsville. His cousin William Porter had a large family and carried on the family trade as a stone cutter.[9] His mother's family was also from the borough. His uncle William Clark sometimes served as justice of the peace, and a great great grandfather, Abraham Clark, had signed the Declaration of Independence. With several aunts likewise living in the area, Edward was related to a significant portion of the population.[10]

Family life was of central importance to the Porters and other Connellsville residents. The disintegration of a family through death or separation was the worst tragedy a person could suffer, according to the Keystone Courier , which often featured such incidents on its front page.[11] When Henry Porter learned of his eldest son's death, he suffered a stroke, from which he never fully recovered, dying less than two years later.[12] After Everett Melbourne's death, Thomas Porter named his next child after this deceased nephew. Thomas Porter's role as funeral director meant that death and loss of family constantly impinged on the Porter household. No doubt this left a strong impression on young Edward, most likely shaping his development from an early age. Moreover, loss was something that Porter experienced very directly later in his life, when attempts to start a family would be repeatedly frustrated as his wife suffered a dozen miscarriages.[13] In reaction, the filmmaker became preoccupied with the family unit. Although family-centered dramas were common in early-twentieth-century popular culture, Porter drew on such narratives with remarkable frequency. From Life of an American Fireman (1903) to Rescued from an Eagle's Nest (1908), it is the saving of the parents' only child (or in the case of Lost in the


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Alps [1907], their two children) that dominates and brings relief. This perpetually happy conclusion stands in stark contrast to Porter's own life. He was not so fortunate, and his inability to have children contributed to his growing reclusiveness and eccentricity in later years.[14]

While Porter's family was part of Connellsville's community of small businessmen and shopkeepers, the town's merchants are of additional interest in that four of its members eventually purchased the rights to "Edison's Vitascope" in 1896.[15] J. R. Balsley was a prominent builder with a lumber mill. F. E. Markell owned drugstores in Connellsville, neighboring New Haven, and East Pittsburgh. R. S. Paine ran a shoe store and had some additional capital invested in other ventures, including a Florida orange grove. Cyrus Echard worked in the coal trade. These local merchants were a closely knit group. They served together on committees, celebrated each other's birthdays, and hired each other's children to clerk their stores. J. R. Balsley's son, Charles H. Balsley, was Ed Porter's best friend. In 1890-91, both worked for the slightly older J. F. Norcross, who had inherited his father's tailoring establishment. The three bachelors formed a youthful triumvirate, not only at work but in their occasional pursuit of adventure. Work and leisure were interwoven in a single, all-male environment. Their work life, with its informality and equality, was in marked contrast to the coke industry's regimentation and hierarchy. After Norcross married and moved west in the fall of 1892, Porter opened his own business as a merchant tailor.[16]

The coke industry impinged on every aspect of daily life in Connellsville, expanding from 5,000 ovens in 1880 to more than 17,000 by 1893.[17] In 1880 a visitor found his entrance into town "lit up by the lurid glare of coke ovens, while the stars were obscured by the murky smoke."[18] With crowded streets, Connellsville was a "business town where everyone seemed to have an object in view," he observed. "Here and there a drunken man reeled along, and from various drinking houses came the noise of revellers." As he passed along the borough's main thoroughfare he saw "the reflected light of the Pittsburg and Connellsville Gas, Coal and Coke Company's ovens. The ovens number 250, the longest continuous line of ovens in the region." The fumes destroyed nearby vegetation and damaged crops and fruit trees. Industry triumphed over agriculture, and when farmers sought redress through the courts, the justice system finally ruled in favor of the coke operators.[19] Coal mining, tending coke ovens, and running the trains was dangerous work. While the large number of industrial accidents and deaths owing to "consumption" and bad air contributed to the prosperity of the Porter undertaking establishment, the fumes also affected the Porters' health. As a child, Edward suffered bouts of pneumonia aggravated by the bad air.[20]

Although Connellsville's merchants prospered when the coke industry did well and suffered when it did badly, those who owned the industry and those


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who worked in and around it were removed from many aspects of small-town life. Cokers lived in company housing and bought most necessities from company stores. Their alienation from the local community increased after 1879 when "foreign," that is, Eastern European, labor was brought into the region.[21] The formerly strong kinship and ethnic ties between the cokers and the townspeople began to break down as a result. By 1889 Henry Frick controlled the region's coke trade, and the coke works were owned by distant corporations that had little direct interest in the local communities.[22] For local small businessmen—members of the old middle class—the fundamental opposition was between themselves and mammoth corporate entities represented by the coke industry, not between labor and capital. To a significant extent, these men worked outside the labor-capital dialectic and saw it as a foreign and undesirable intrusion.

Dependent on the coke works for their general welfare, the small-town merchants often felt helpless. Their anxiety increased whenever tension erupted into class warfare. Strikes occurred throughout Porter's youth: in 1877, 1879, 1880, 1883, 1886, 1887, 1889, and 1891.[23] The strikes of 1886 and 1891 were particularly brutal and protracted. The owners sought to break these actions by importing scab labor, thereby forcing strikers to resort to violence to keep the mines closed. The coal operators in turn hired ex-policemen and Pinkertons to protect their interests. In the strike of 1891, cokers were killed and the National Guard was called in. Porter observed a mounting pattern of violence as the coke industry expanded and Frick consolidated his position within it.

The difficult relationship existing between Connellsville's old middle class and the coke industry was apparent in the Democratic Keystone Courier , which spoke primarily for the town's small businessmen, its principal advertisers. Its pages contained editorials preaching against strikes—opposing the operators who provoked them as much as the miners who undertook them. The Courier constantly called for arbitration and the avoidance of conflicts that disrupted business, not only the coke business but the merchants'. It saw itself as an impartial judge in such situations and felt free to lecture both sides on their responsibilities. The paper and the old middle class saw themselves as representing public opinion and providing a moral weight that should be decisive. In the midst of "the most general strike ever inaugurated here," the Courier asserted that "unbiased observers unite in the opinion that if the latter [the workers] return to work, public feeling will compel the former [the operators] to grant the advance asked and remedy the abuses complained of—abuses that even the operators admit do exist."[24] Imbued with this attitude since childhood, Porter later expressed similar desires for the reconciliation of labor and capital. This moral judgment claiming to operate objectively above the conflict is apparent in a number of his films, including The Ex-Convict (1904).

Despite being caught in the middle of the labor-capital conflict, Con-


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nellsville's merchants generally favored the miners, who were their real or potential customers—and often relations or members of the same church. Certainly it was in their self-interest, for when the coke workers were fully employed and well paid, local business prospered too. During the strike of January and February 1886, a temporary alliance was forged between the miners and many of the merchants. The store owners donated food and clothing, while the miners demanded an end to the "pluck-me's"—company stores that advanced credit to their employees, making money by inflating prices and depriving local merchants of revenues they might otherwise have expected. Significantly, the strike was won by the workers, although the company-store issue was not resolved.[25]

There were limitations and contradictions in the Courier's support for the working class. To retain the paper's support, the coke workers had to stay within the law even if operators brought in scab labor. Attempts by workers to meet these threats with violence or the destruction of company property were strongly condemned. Socialists and other radical elements were anathema. Old-middle-class support for the working class therefore functioned within a limited framework. Within similar limits, Porter's sympathies for the working class are evident in films such as The Kleptomaniac (1905).

Growing up in Connellsville, Porter apparently adopted the strong prejudices that his family and friends held against many immigrant groups. During the 1880s the town's native white population developed a deep-seated antipathy for Eastern European immigrants. The first explosion of hostility came in February 1883, when an open letter accused the "Hated Hun" of barbaric acts. "One of the most degrading influences brought to bear on our community is the indiscriminate importation of Hungarian serfs and their employment on public works, in preference to good located citizens who are willing and can perform more and better labor for the same pay," this "Appeal to the Christian Public" claimed.[26] The Courier , at first appalled by the vituperative attacks, soon adopted the same terminology. Such hostility focused on the "not overly clean habits and queer customs" of the "Hated Huns." Native workers were disturbed by a common sight: "their women in a state of semi-nudity at work in the . . . blinding dust of a coke yard forking the product of the ovens."[27] By 1886, 25 percent of the cokers were Poles, Hungarians, and Bohemians, while another 10 percent were Germans and Prussians.[28] These workers were initially seen as the tools of the operators who brought them to their mines. During the strike of 1886, however, they proved to be more militant and radical than their domestic counterparts. When they rioted to maintain the effectiveness of the strike, the "Hated Huns" were characterized as lawbreakers and dangerous radicals.

Porter was almost certainly a member of the nativist Order of United Mechanics, which sprang up to challenge the disruptions caused by the protracted, violent strike of 1891. A member of this secret beneficial association had to be a native-born American, of good moral character, believe in a supreme being,


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favor the public school system, oppose the union of church and state, and be capable of earning a living.[29] Edward Porter's friend and employer, J. F. Norcross, and his best friend's father, J. R. Balsley, sat on the order's financial committee, which organized a parade of its membership in Connellsville on July 4, 1891. The Courier announced, "The Biggest Fourth in the History of the Town Promised by American Mechanics, The Red Flag of the Socialists Recently Displayed in the Coke Regions Stirs the Blood of the UAM's. . . . They are anxious to show the foreign rabble who rally under it how well American labor loves the American flag."[30] J. R. Balsley, one of the order's most active members, gave a Memorial Day speech denouncing the troublemakers.

We are sorry that there is in our land today an element of discontent, but when we know that this class is made up of the scum of foreign nations and a few weak minded of our own land, there need be little [to] fear from this quarter. These men would not be satisfied with any laws that human skill could enact. If it was possible for them to enter heaven, they would at once want to change the ruling of the divine master.[31]

The ethnic stereotypes in Porter's The Finish of Bridget McKeen (1901), Cohen's Fire Sale (1907), and Laughing Gas (1907) were consistent with the attitudes Porter developed in the western Pennsylvania coke region. They had many counterparts in popular culture and reflected the general ethnic and racial prejudices of most native-born whites.

Porter and Connellsville's Cultural Life

Porter has been portrayed by some historians as a naïf who "had no background or experience in art" and so was unaware of the implications of his work.[32] This is certainly inaccurate, for he was an active participant in Connellsville's cultural life at a time when it was being fundamentally transformed. During the 1870s commercial, popular culture had come to Connellsville only infrequently. The churches, public schools, and the local press were the principal cultural institutions. For an evening's entertainment, a minister might deliver a light-hearted lecture on subjects such as "Fashion" or the local debating society argue topics such as "Can the existence of God be proven without the aid of divine revelation?" or "Should foreign immigration be prohibited?"[33] Performances by touring theater groups were rare and not well attended. When Thorne's Comedy Company came to town in April 1880, twenty people were in the audience, and the play was dismissed as "worse than mediocre." This, the first company to be reported in the Keystone Courier , did not survive its Connellsville performance and was disbanded.[34] The next troupe to visit the borough, the Stenson Comedy Company, did not pass through town for another eight months. In 1880 residents were dependent on their occasional visits to Pittsburgh for most of their theatrical entertainment.


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In September 1881, however, work began on Connellsville's first commercial theater, the Newmyer Opera House, a source of civic pride, "as finely furnished as any in the country."[35] According to one local reporter, "The stage is fitted up with a thousand dollar piano, a five-piece parlor set and Brussels carpet. The drop curtain is one of the prettiest we have seen anywhere, and is supplemented with abundant scenery of various kinds."[36] After opening with a performance of Camille , the opera house was frequented by many traveling companies.

Edwin Porter later recalled: "I worked around a local theater of which my brother was manager; acted in the capacity of ticket taker, usher, etc."[37] While the Newmeyer did have a manager named Porter during the 1883-84 and 1884-85 seasons, this was Byron Porter, at most a distant relative.[38] His small orchestra provided visiting theatrical companies with music. It also gave concerts, performing pieces that were arranged, and in at least one instance composed, by Byron Porter himself.[39] Called "the leading artist in this section of the state,"[40] Byron Porter was apparently an important figure in Ed Porter's early life. The two Porter families were closely associated; and, as manager of the opera house, Byron Porter had to maintain links with the town's main undertaker and furniture store in case he needed additional seating. Young Edward was an apparent beneficiary. Byron Porter was also the town's first photographer and ran a photographic gallery and art store. He may have taught Edward the rudiments of photography, an invaluable skill for his subsequent career.[41]

The Newmyer Opera House exposed Porter to a wide range of theatrical experiences. The ever-popular Uncle Tom's Cabin , which enjoyed a unique place in American cultural life, was performed there many times during Porter's Connellsville residence. In later years he was said to have acted out the story as a child, assuming the role of slave owner Simon Legree.[42] Other companies gave minstrel shows, melodramas, various works by Gilbert and Sullivan, travesties like the seriocomic Medea , Irish plays like Hibernica and Shamus O'Brien , and even a few tragedies. Performances included Daniel Boone; or, On the Trail (a local favorite), Peck's Bad Boy, The Count of Monte Cristo (minus James O'Neill), and She , adapted from Rider Haggard's book and produced by William Brady. The opera house was also used by the Kickapoo Indians, a medicine show; for wrestling matches; and to host a visit by John L. Sullivan, the world's boxing champion.[43] This eclecticism of subject matter would find continuity in much of Porter's own filmmaking career, if only as a result of similar commercial pressures. Certain of his pictures may have also been informed by Porter's early experience in the opera house—for instance, Uncle Tom's Cabin (1903), the Irish drama Kathleen Mavourneen (1906), Daniel Boone (1906), and She (1908). His later conception of cinema as filmed theater must have owed something to this as well.

As a successful filmmaker, Edwin Porter recalled other jobs that acquainted him with the mechanical end of the theatrical business. "Later my brother was


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'advance' for Washburn and Huntington's circus. I was on the bill car. In that way I came to have a general idea of the circus business. I also traveled with him a part of the season in comic opera."[44] Although these experiences are impossible to verify, they were not unusual for the period; Vaudeville magnate Benjamin Franklin Keith entered the world of commercial amusements after visiting the circus at seventeen.[45] Edward Franklin Albee and Frederick F. Proctor, both prominent vaudeville entrepreneurs, also had early circus experiences.[46] Circuses were the major form of commercial summer amusement in many sections of the United States and frequently came to Connellsville while Porter was growing up. A visit from Barnum's Circus was an important event on the year's calendar, with 20,000 people seeing the main attraction in one day. In 1888 Forepaugh's Wild West Show stopped off and reenacted the holdup of the Deadwood Stage and "Custer's last rally."[47]

Porter also claimed to have been an exhibition skater. Roller-skating became a craze for the first time in the mid 1880s. During the winter of 1884-85 Connellsville had two indoor skating rinks. At their height, the rinks offered recreational skating in which the sexes mingled in casual social contact. Rink managers drew customers by presenting exhibition skaters, bicycle acts, and variety companies. They organized competitions and sponsored "a neck-tie and apron social."[48] Only a few out-of-town performers are mentioned in press clippings, but Porter could have easily been a local demonstrator. Porter thus associated himself with the three major forms of popular culture then making their appearance in Connellsville: the opera house, the circus, and the skating rink.

The emergence of commercial, popular culture in Connellsville during the 1880s produced a cultural split within the town's middle class. The rise of various amusement forms challenged what Alan Trachtenberg has called a virtually official middle-class image of America that was "a deliberate alternative to two extremes, the lavish and conspicuous squandering of wealth among the very rich, and the squalor of the very poor."[49] This Protestant culture sought to enrich people's lives through self-cultivation and self-education. It was centered in the churches, which provided an array of lectures and other educational opportunities. Among these were several examples of pre-cinematic screen entertainment. The lantern shows Paradise Lost, The Customs and Times of Washington , and Sights and Scenes in Europe were given at Methodist, Episcopal, and Lutheran churches.[50] A panorama showing painted scenes of America and Europe was exhibited by Presbyterian and Baptist denominations.[51] In Connellsville, as in most communities outside the metropolitan centers, these two entertainment forms continued to be aligned with religious institutions seeking to educate, inspire, and entertain their mostly middle-class congregations.

The opera house, the circus, and the skating rink did not attempt to educate their patrons; they sought instead to address their desires. They drew middle-


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class people away from evening lectures. Trying to revive these older forms of community entertainment, some lectures were moved to Newmyer Opera House; attendance, however, did not improve.[52] In frustration ministers and conservative newspapers denounced the skating rinks, but without success. "The louder the denunciations, the more popular the rinks grew."[53] This reaction against secular, comparatively informal forms of amusement was intensified with the appearance of the Salvation Army in 1886. The pro-amusement Keystone Courier reported its arrival with derisive headlines, calling the group "a case of misdirected energy."[54] The Young Men's Christian Association, which appeared in Connellsville in late 1884, was a more moderate attempt to maintain or expand the church's position in an increasingly secularized cultural life.[55] In the confrontation between church-oriented, moralizing culture and popular commercial culture, Porter sided with the latter.

Porter's early experiences reflect the extent to which the American middle class participated in the amusement realm. Too often commentators link the "official" cultural programs of churches and elites with the entire Protestant middle classes. Too often informality, camaraderie, and frivolity are located within the working classes. Yet important, probably dominant, elements of the Connellsville middle class did not conform to this Victorian ideal or stereotype. They undoubtedly had strong ties to the plebeian culture described by Francis G. Couvares.[56] Popular entertainment was not segmented by class as much as many historians have suggested. Rather, cultural divisions within classes are at least as important when examining leisure activities.

Porter and Technological Innovation

A poor student who abandoned his formal education at an early age,[57] Ed Porter was inspired by the mythic Thomas Edison, famous stories of whose exploits and childhood were already celebrated in the press. The literature emphasized Edison's natural genius, which flourished without formal schooling, his unequaled instinct for useful inventions, and the assumed benefits of technology.[58] Porter, who would one day call himself Thomas Edison, Jr., sought to duplicate the childhood experiences of his idol. As an adolescent he sold newspapers on a train. In 1884-85, according to a later interview, Edward switched from "news butcher" to telegraph operator, working for the Pittsburgh, McKeesport and Youghiogheny Railroad at Demmler, located between Connellsville and Pittsburgh.[59] These were similar to the first jobs held by Edison. If this interview is correct, Porter began to work as a telegraph operator at the age of fourteen, beating his future employer by a precocious year. In the process he acquired a familiarity with electricity that was to help him enter the motion picture industry.

Connellsville and Porter's family were preoccupied with progress and being "up-to-date." Boyts, Porter & Company sold various mechanical innovations,


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and the town itself was transformed by basic technological amenities while Porter lived there. After working as a telegraph operator for three or four years, Porter "took up the plumbing trade." A local gas company acquired a franchise for Connellsville in 1886 and by the following year was busy laying pipes to the homes of local residents. In September 1887 plumbers were "busy putting in the pipes."[60] Porter found employment installing this precursor of Edison's electric light. Assuming its resources to be limitless, the gas company left street lamps on twenty-four hours a day, which exhausted its supply of gas within only a few years. No doubt this was a compelling reason for Connellsville to acquire an electric light system in 1889-90.

In September 1889 a group of Connellsville businessmen formed an electric light company and received the local franchise. The generators and equipment used to supply alternating current were purchased from the Westinghouse Company, based in East Pittsburgh. Electric street lights were turned on in Porter's hometown on February 15, 1890. In another few weeks electricity was illuminating stores and residences of Connellsville and neighboring New Haven.[61] By the beginning of 1891 Ed Porter and his friend and fellow tinkerer Charles Balsley had used their spare time to invent a current regulator for electric lamps; this dimmer allowed people to control the intensity of an electric light as they had done with gas light. With this invention, Porter's creativity and his preference for collaborative working methods become apparent; both would continue throughout his working life. The patent application was filed on January 17th and granted on May 5th.[62] Soon after it was approved, the Courier announced:

Charles H. Balsley and Edward Porter received this week letters patent on an Electric Current Regulator, the joint invention of the two young men. It is said to be superior in many respects to any thing yet invented in that line, and can be manufactured almost as cheaply as the ordinary incandescent burners now in use. They have received several flattering offers from manufacturers of electric light machinery, etc. for the right to manufacture and use the appliance on their lamps. The boys, however, are moving with caution in the matter, and have not yet accepted any of the offers. They have also received several orders for the regulator, but as they are not manufacturing the article, they could not fill the orders.[63]

By the following winter J. R. Balsley was selling the device to local residents.[64] Perhaps for this reason, the electric company was soon warning its customers "not to tamper or interfere in any way with any of the poles, wires, converters, conduits or fixtures, etc. controlling or delivering the current made by the Electric Company."[65]

Despite his skills as an electrician and telegraph operator, Porter chose to live in Connellsville and become a merchant tailor. Under other circumstances his early interest in amusements and electricity might have been forgotten and the young small-town businessman would have become a solid, if not stolid, com-


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Drawing for current regulator patented 
by Charles Balsley and Edwin Porter.


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munity member. Economic realities, however, intervened. In a town where there were too many tailors, his career choice proved to be a poor one. Dry goods stores (mostly run by Jewish businessmen) were exerting competitive pressures on merchant tailors like Porter by offering ready-to-wear clothing. Here Porter's resistance to a modern industrial system, a fact crucial to an understanding of his later motion picture career and his opposition to techniques of mass entertainment, was already discernible. Nor was this unusual. The U.S. Industrial Commission would soon note the willingness of Jews in the garment industry "to change the mode of production by using the sewing machine and division of labor against which the native tailor has shown a decided aversion."[66] Direct parallels with the motion picture industry can easily be established. People like Carl Laemmle, who managed a dry goods store in the early 1900s, quickly understood the implications and possibilities inherent in the nickelodeon form of entertainment, to which Porter never fully accommodated himself.

In the spring of 1893, Porter's new business, already suffering from excessive competition, was battered by a financial panic and depression. The sales of Connellsville merchants fell precipitately, and Porter's small tailoring establishment was one of the first to close its doors—on June 15th, Edward filed for bankruptcy.[67] Ten days earlier, on June 5th, he had eloped to Cumberland, Maryland, with Caroline Ridinger, whose father was an architect in nearby Somerset, Pennsylvania.[68] Once he had declared bankruptcy, Porter left for Philadelphia. This forced separation from his hometown was an experience shared by many Americans. It undoubtedly fostered a nostalgia for small-town life, which was expressed not only in many nineteenth-century melodramas but in Porter's films The Miller's Daughter (1905) and The "White Caps " (1905).

In Philadelphia the ex-tailor enlisted in the navy on June 19, 1893, giving his name as Edwin S. Porter and his trade as telegraph operator. His enlistment record continues: "Eyes , Brown; Hair , Lt. brown; Complexion , Sunburned; Height , 5 feet 4¾ inches; Weight (pounds ), 150."[69] Two somewhat contradictory accounts of his naval career exist, and Porter is the probable source in each instance. After his three-year enlistment was over, the Connellsville boy briefly returned home and provided the local paper with this description of his tour:

Edward Porter returned last week from a long and interesting cruise on the United States Cruiser New York. He left here the beginning of June, three years ago. Going to Philadelphia, he was assigned on the 18th of the same month to the position of an assistant electrician on the vessel named which went into commission from the Cramp Navy yard on August 1st. His official position was Gunner's mate in the Dynamo Room. The ship was fitted up for a southern cruise at the Brooklyn Navy Yards, leaving for the scene of Brazil's trouble on Christmas day. The New York arrived at Rio on Jan 18th and was one of a squadron of six vessels which forced the demands of United States Admiral Bennett, allowing merchant ships from this country to land their stores on the insurgents' land. After these troubles the New York cruised among the West Indies till the middle of the following June, when she returned to New York


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and took out a number of naval reserves for practice. She later performed the same service in Philadelphia for the Pennsylvania reserves, returning to the West Indies and the water of Venezuela for an extensive cruise remain[ing] there till May. The vessel and crew were then recalled to New York to prepare for the opening of the great Kell canal. After joining the review there the vessel made a cruise on the Atlantic seacoast of our country, went into winter quarters at Hampton Roads and in May returned to New York bay where the largest fleet ever gathered in American waters was being concentrated. Our town representative on the crew has had a wide field of experience and has many incidents to relate about the scenes and people of his travels.[70]

This youthful account of Porter's adventures in the navy differs from a much later description in the Cyclopedia of American Biography , which claims that Porter "attracted the notice of his superiors by inventing a number of electrical devices to improve the naval communications service. He also assisted Bradley Allen Fiske (q.v.), later a rear admiral, in perfecting the Fiske range-finder."[71]

Porter's naval record offers a more mundane account of these years. The navy gave Porter modest rankings in seamanship (although high points in gunnery) and based him, for the last year at least, in the Brooklyn Navy Yard as a landsman. Although no notice of Porter's contributions to naval technology is to be found in his record, his work in the electrical field is credible, given his earlier accomplishments and later interests. Such work must have kept him in touch with Edison business associates. A cruise to Central and South America may help to explain Porter's later travels in that area as an exhibitor during 1896-97. The navy also altered Porter's personal life and habits. Although he maintained ties with friends and family, he no longer thought of western Pennsylvania as a place to work and live. Financial realities—his bankruptcy and $16 a month in naval pay—meant that Porter had to go where opportunity beckoned. He ended up trusting his future to his boyhood hero Thomas Edison and moving pictures.


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