THOMAS A. EDISON Menu Signed, April 28, 1921

AutographsThomas Edison Signed Menu Honoring Charles M. Schwab

THOMAS A. EDISON, CHARLES M. SCHWAB.
April 28, 1921, Menu Signed "Thos A Edison," "C.M. Schwab," "D.P. Kingsley," and "E. Eurana Schwab" in pencil on the full-color flag-embossed cover, University Club, New York City, 6.75" x 4.5", Choice Very Fine. Here, Edison and others who attended a luncheon honoring steel magnate Charles M. Schwab are enlightened and shocked by Darwin Kingsley's speech revealing that prior to U.S. entry in World War I, Schwab rejected a $100,000,000 bribe from the German government to break his war munitions contracts with the British. All three, and Schwab's wife, have signed the luncheon's patriotic menu.

This signed Menu has cardstock covers with two page, separate sheets, title and menu inside, all tied together with white ribbon. Title page reads: "Luncheon on the occasion of Presenting a Tribute to Charles M. Schwab at a Special Meeting of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York Thursday, April the Twenty-eighth Nineteen Hundred and Twenty-one", plus the Menu.
The menu is boldly signed by Schwab, Mrs. Schwab, Kingsley (President of the New York Life Insurance Company), and Edison. When Edison died in 1931, Schwab recalled that he "was first associated with Mr. Edison forty years ago, on New Jersey iron ore extraction, and every year since then has added to my admiration of him as a genius without peer. The world had lost a great man."

The April 29, 1921 New York Times column one headline reads: "Tells How Schwab / Spurned Germany's / $100,000,000 Bribe." The offer was made before the United States entered the war. The "Times" reported, in part, "A bribe, which will probably go down in history as the largest ever offered to a private indivdual, was spurned by Charles M. Schwab when he refused an offer of $100,000,000 from the German Government to break his contracts with Lord Kitchener [then British Secretary of State for War] for war munitions of which the British troops in France stood in sore need to stem the German advance in the early stages of the war. Likewise, he refused to consider a counter offer of $150,000,000 from the British Governmernt, which sought to purchase outright the plants of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation at five times their value, so as to prevent the Germans from getting control of them and perhaps of the crux of the munitions situation. 'There is not enough money in Germany and Great Britain combined to buy the Bethlehem Steel Corporation until it has executed its obligations to the British Government,' was the answer made by Mr. Schwab when the richest bait of all time was dangled before his eyes. The momentous decision made by Mr. Schwab at a time when German intrigue was trying to throw its tentacles around the earth was briefly outlined by Darwin P. Kingsley, President of he Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, at a reception given yesterday to Mr. Schwab..."