This folder contains correspondence and other documents relating to employees and prospective employees. Also included are letters soliciting Edison's opinion regarding former employees seeking positions elsewhere. Among the documents for 1915 are items pertaining to Edison's involvement in the manufacture of chemicals and his interest in hiring chemists for his plant at Silver Lake, New Jersey. There are also comments by Edison about the service of his employees in the National Guard of New Jersey and his willingness to allow them full pay for a week to ten days of encampment. Some of the letters contain references to the fire of December 9, 1914, that destroyed or damaged more than half of the buildings in the West Orange laboratory complex. The correspondents include longtime Edison acquaintance Charles P. Bruch of the Postal Telegraph Cable Co. and former laboratory employee Frank A. Wardlaw.
Less than 1 percent of the documents have been selected. The unselected documents include numerous items bearing Edison's marginalia, typically remarking about his lack of need for the applicant at present. Courtesy of Thomas Edison National Historical Park.