Page:Memoirs of Henry Villard, volume 2.djvu/348

 grown into the principal electrical manufacturing and contracting company in Germany. He proposed to them and to his syndicate, before his return to New York, that they should join with him and enter the electrical business in the United States by an alliance with existing American interests. In conjunction with leading New York firms, and helped by the invaluable counsel of the late C. H. Coster, he matured a scheme for the absorption of all the Edison Light and Manufacturing Companies into a new corporation, with sufficient fresh capital for manufacturing electrical apparatus on a large scale. Out of this grew the Edison General Electric Company, organized in April, 1889, with a capital of $12,000,000, of which he and the German parties named held over one half. He became president of it, and remained such until the summer of 1892. In that time, the capital of the company was increased to $15,000,000. The German friends made a handsome profit by the sale of their holdings before his retirement from the presidency owing to the consolidation of the Edison General Electric Company with the Thomson-Houston Electric Company as the General Electric Company, of which he disapproved. His judgment against uniting with the Thomson-Houston Electric Company was fully borne out by the collapse of the General Electric Company within a year and a half.

It is in place to mention here that Mr. Villard was a firm believer from the outset in the availability of electricity as a motive power for transportation. Just as he was the first to introduce an electric light plant on an ocean steamer, it was under his presidency that electric street and other railroads obtained considerable development. He was also convinced that the certain progress in the art of using the electric current for power and traction purposes would, sooner or later, lead to its substitution for steam even in factories and on standard railroads, and, as early as January, 1892, he convened a conference of electrical and railroad experts in New York to consider the