ON the day his month was up Tommy reported to Mr. Thompson. The president of the Tecumseh Motor Company was reading a legal document. He put it down on the desk and looked at Tommy.
“The month is up to-day, Mr. Thompson,” said Tommy.
Mr. Thompson nodded. Then he asked, neither quizzically nor over-seriously, “Do the men in the shop like you?”
Tommy decided to tell the truth, unexplained and unexcused. “Yes, sir.”
Thompson said, slowly: “The reason I wanted such a man as I advertised for in the New York Herald was so that I might ask him the question I am now going to ask you.”
“Yes, sir,” said Tommy, and concentrated on listening.
“What difference do you find between my Tecumseh works and your college?”
Tommy heard the question very plainly; he even saw it in large print before his eyes. He repeated it to himself twice. This was not what he had expected to report upon. He needed to do some new thinking before he could answer.
This delayed the words of the answer so that Tommy presently began to worry. He knew that Mr. Thompson's mind worked with marvelous quickness. He looked at the owner of that mind. It gave him courage. He said, honestly:
“Mr. Thompson, I wasn't expecting that question, and I have to think.”
“Think away,” said Thompson, so cheerfully that Tommy blurted out:
“May I do my thinking aloud?”
“Do, Tommy. And don't be afraid to repeat or to walk back. I'll follow you, and the crystallization also. Think about the differences.” Tommy felt completely at his ease. “Well,” he began, and paused in order to visualize the shop and the men and their daily duties, “you tell your men what they must do to keep their jobs. Their product must always be the same, day after day. At college they tell a man what he must do in order that he himself may become the product of his own work. A man here is a cog in a machine. At college he is both a cog and a complete machine.” Tommy looked doubtfully at Mr. Thompson, who said:
“You are right—and very wrong. In the men themselves, Tommy, what is the difference?”
“I should say,” Tommy spoke cautiously, as if he were feeling his way, “that it was principally one of motives and, therefore, of—of rewards!”
“Yes, yes, so you implied. Don't bother to write a thesis. Give me your impressions both of the human units and of the aggregation.” Tommy remembered the impressions of his first day at the plant. The feeling had grown fainter as he had become better acquainted with his fellow-workmen and they with him.
“It's in the way the men feel. Of course,” he hastily explained, “that's a childish way to put it. At college a man belongs to the college twenty-four hours a day. If he makes one of the teams or the crew, it's fine. But if he doesn't, so long as the college wins he is tickled to death. I suppose at college a fellow has no family cares and—well, it is complicated, isn't it?” And Tommy smiled helplessly at Mr. Thompson.
“Tell me some more, Tommy,” said Mr. Thompson.
Tommy, still thinking of differences, went on, bravely indifferent to whether or not he was talking wisely.
“I rather think here a man's duty is fixed too—too—well, too mathematically. The exact reward of efficiency is fixed for him in advance. It keeps the company and the men apart. The college is equally the undergraduates and the faculty and the alumni and—It's hard to make myself understood. I hadn't thought about this particular—”
“Never mind all that, Tommy. What else can you think of now?”
“I think the men don't belong entirely to the shop because the shop doesn't belong entirely to them.”
“Do you want them to be the owners?”
“No, not the owners of the property, but to feel—”
“Hold on. How can they be owners and not owners?”
“Well, if you could find some way by which the owner also could be a laborer and the laborer also an owner, I think you'd come close to solving the problem.”
“Yes, I would. But how?” Mr. Thompson smiled.
“I don't know. I haven't the brains. But if I were boss I'd study it out. It is pretty hard where so many men are employed. All I know now is that the men, notwithstanding all the schemes to make them anxious to be first-class workmen, are working for money.”
“They can't all be artists or creative geniuses, with their double rewards,” interrupted Thompson.
“No; but here you pay them for the fixed thing. You don't pay them for the unfixed thing, as the college does. That's why we love it.”
“What is this unfixed thing and how can we pay for it?”
“Well, a man gives labor for money; he doesn't give service for anything but love.”
“Don't any of our men love their work?”
“Yes, lots of them. But they don't love the shop as we love the college.”
Thompson nodded thoughtfully. Then he asked, abruptly, “If you owned this plant and were successful financially, what would you do?” Tommy looked straight into his chief's eyes and answered, decisively, “I'd hire Thompson to run it for me, and I'd never interfere with him.” Thompson's face did not change. “What,” he asked, “would you expect Thompson to do?”
“To find out some way by which each man would do as much as he could without thinking of exactly how much he must do to earn so many dollars.”
Thompson laughed. “Some job that, Tommy!”
“That's why I'd hire you.”
“And the dividends for the stockholders?”
“They'd increase.”
“Are you sure of that?”
Tommy stiffened. “I know I've talked like a silly ass, Mr. Thompson. But—”
“That's why I hired you. From to-day on your salary will be thirty dollars a week.” Tommy felt the blood rush to his cheeks. Also he then and there composed a telegram to send to his father. Then it seemed to him it couldn't be true. Then that though it was true, it couldn't last.
“Mr. Thompson, I—I don't know how to thank you,” he stammered.
“Then don't try. And although you are not entitled to it by our rules and regulations, you will get two weeks' vacation, beginning Saturday, on full pay at the new rate. I'm going away today myself. As for your future—” He paused and frowned slightly.
Tommy knew it! It couldn't last!
“Yes, sir?”
“I'm afraid I'm going to keep you.” And Mr. Thompson turned his back on Tommy.
TOMMY'S first thought after leaving Mr. Thompson's office was that he ought to go to New York and see his father. But almost instantly he dismissed it. The two weeks on full pay at the new salary were not given to him as a vacation to be idle in, but as a heaven-sent opportunity to help Bill ten hours a day. It was only later that he thought he would also be helping himself in so doing.
He told Bill the news, and before Bill's congratulations had more than begun he suggested that Bill try to get two weeks off, so that they could work together.
“Nothing doing.”
“How do you know?”
“I've tried,” said Bill.
Bill then told Tommy that he had made some changes in the apparatus, but they had not helped a bit.
“Are you thinking of a trip round the world just because you thought you had a patent?” asked Tommy.
“I was only thinking of you,” said Bill, quietly. He did not wish to fight. He was not discouraged. In fact, the problem was so much bigger than his original carburetor notion that he was quite reconciled to working on it a thousand years if necessary. He knew he would solve it. The tough part, of course, was that somebody else might reach the Patent Office ahead of him.
“You needn't think of me. Think of the work, old top,” said Tommy, amiably. “If instead of being an Irish terrier you were an English bulldog, you'd never let go your grip.”
“I haven't,” said Bill; “but I'm going to bed.”
“Thank Heaven to-morrow is Saturday,” said Tommy. “We'll have the whole afternoon. We'll try—”
“Don't talk about it or I won't sleep,” said Bill, so unpugnadously that Tommy felt as if Bill were in a hospital.
“Everything is all right, Bill,” he said, and shook hands with his partner. Bill brightened up a bit. But it was Tommy who found it impossible to sleep. Valuable patents evidently were like good gold-mines—few and far between. He clearly saw the folly of his hopes; and then he convinced himself that wisdom lay not in hopelessness, but in patience.
After all, he was now getting thirty dollars a week. He could send fifty dollars a month to his father and still be much better off than he was at the beginning. But seventeen thousand dollars was an appalling sum!
And yet as he thought with his head and hoped with his heart, he felt that he was on the point of becoming valuable to the Tecumseh organization. He knew—how, he did not stop to demonstrate—that he had left the “prep” school and was about to enter college, the wonderful step by which a boy becomes a man in one day. There was nothing that Tommy could not become—under Thompson! He was free under a very wise chief. Upon the heels of this thought came contentment, and with contentment came sleep.
The experiments in the little shop in Mrs. Clayton's woodshed were more encouraging for the next few days. Bill had not sent the generator and the transformer to Mr. Kemble. He wished to make the kerosene ionize as rapidly at high as at low speed. The mechanical means at their command, however, seemed more than ever inadequate for the work.
On Saturday morning, the last day of Tommy's vacation, Bill received a letter from Mr. Kemble, the patent lawyer. He read it very carefully. Then he folded it and put it back in the envelope. He looked at Tommy and said, very quietly:
“I knew it!”
Tommy looked at the envelope, saw Kemble's name on the upper left-hand corner, and felt himself grow pale.
“No patent?” he asked. His dream, notwithstanding all his self-admonitions against exaggerated hopes, crashed about his head and left him stunned.
“Read it!” said Bill, and turned away.
Tommy drew in a deep breath, reached for the death-warrant, and said: “Cheer up, Bill! We are not dead and buried by a long shot.”
“I was thinking of you,” said Bill.
“So was I,” laughed Tommy. Bill's eyes gleamed with admiration.
Tommy read the letter without a tremor.
Dear Mr. Byrnes,—Referring to the carburetor you submitted to me last week, I am inclosing with this letter copy of a patent issued last December to B. France, which is the only prior patent I have been able to find at all pertinent to your subject. I am not prepared at the present moment to say whether you infringe upon it or not, but there is a serious doubt. I think I should consult with Professor Jenkins again, as soon as you have been able to make some of the tests and investigations he suggested. It will be necessary for you to ascertain as definitely as possible exactly what are the effects and limitations of your alternating-current apparatus. It would be well to build and try out France's device, in an experimental way, of course, for the purpose of analyzing it and the differences that exist. With the results of this work before me, I could probably reach a definite conclusion on the question of infringement. I have not failed to note that whereas your resulting gas is of such a character as to permit your engine to be started cold, France has not mentioned this very important subject, and by his omission I conclude that he has not obtained that important result. This suggests a substantial and possibly fundamental difference between your invention and his; but I must confess his patent appears to have been drawn to cover a device such as yours using the alternating current. Consequently you will see the advisability of pursuing your investigations along the lines mentioned, to the end of ascertaining whether yours is an independent invention or merely another form of France's. It will not be necessary, in view of your successful reduction of your invention to actual practice, to file an application until the subject has been further illumined. Your dates are protected, but you should proceed with your experiments without delay, and I shall be interested in hearing the results or to talk with you further in connection with the inclosed patent.
Very truly yours,
Hudson G. Kemble.
“What did you want to scare me for, you murderer?” reproached Tommy.
“Well, doesn't that mean—”
“It means that we've got to consider what we must do,” interrupted Tommy.
“I'll do nothing,” said Bill, doggedly.
“Oh yes, you will,” contradicted Tommy, pleasantly.
“You fool!” shouted Bill, furiously, “what can I do? How can I do it, with only an hour or two after dinner? Do you think I can do anything here when the cold weather comes?”
“Talk to Thompson. He'll find a way. Oh, you needn't think he'll cheat you. I'll vouch for him”—Tommy spoke savagely—“a blamed sight quicker than I would for a suspicious lunkhead of an inventor.”
“Yes, he's got you hypnotized,” said Bill, with grim decision. Then, because he saw in Tommy's face the loyalty that he himself felt toward Tommy, he went on: “Well, Tommy, I give up. It's all yours. You can talk to Thompson and get what you can out of him.”
“No, you will talk to him, and then you can come back and tell me I don't know Thompson. And, anyhow, the time of our discovery is now a matter of record. Nobody can get back of the priority of claim. I tell you, Bill, if you must do business, you'd better pick out a man who is as much of a gentleman in his office as he is in his own home.”
“I'm not afraid,” said Bill, boldly. “But you arrange for the meeting.”
Afraid to talk to Thompson? Tommy almost laughed. Then he remembered that he himself was afraid to talk to Thompson about one thing!
But perhaps if he did talk to Thompson about it Thompson might help.
Perhaps!
And Tommy, after half a month of peace, once more thought of the secret.
TOMMY was at his old desk in the outer office when Thompson arrived on Monday morning.
“How do you do, Mr. Thompson?” said Tommy, boyishly trying not to look as grateful as he felt.
Thompson stopped and shook hands. “I want to get off some letters. Tell Miss Hollins I need her, won't you? When she comes out you come in”; and Thompson passed on.
Tommy waited for the stenographer to come out of Mr. Thompson's office. Then he walked in.
“Who talks first?” asked Thompson.
Tommy, thinking of Bill's needs, said, “I think I'd better.”
“Go ahead!” smiled Thompson.
Then Tommy told him about Bill's experiments and what he and Bill had done and what Professor Jenkins said, and then showed him Mr. Kemble's letter, which Thompson read carefully. Tommy waited. Thompson folded the letter, returned it to Tommy, and said:
“Tommy, you knew what you didn't have, so you went to the right place to get it.”
“Yes, sir. Bill wants to see you.”
Thompson laughed, somewhat to Tommy's surprise, and said, “Go and bring him in now.” Presently Tommy appeared with Bill.
“Good morning, Mr. Thompson,” said Bill. Thompson nodded. Then he asked Bill, quietly, “Well?”
“Tommy told you, I believe.”
“He didn't tell me what sort of man you are nor what sort of man you think I am. So all I can ask you is: What do you really want me to do?”
“I don't want you to do anything,” answered Bill, uncomfortably.
“I understand you have been experimenting with a kerosene-carburetor. A carburetor is one of a thousand problems to us. To you it is your only problem. Please bear that in mind. You may develop something of great value to all users of explosive engines. But I cannot tell you the exact number of dollars I'll pay for the improvements and patents you haven't got yet. I propose, instead, this: Give us the refusal of your inventions and improvements. Let your own lawyer draw up the papers that you and he think necessary to prevent us from buying your brains too cheaply. I believe you are honest, and I always bet on my judgment. That's my business.”
“But suppose you thought my price was too high?” asked Bill, defiantly.
“You are free to sell to the highest bidder. I think we can afford to pay as much as the next man. To make it fair for us to have the first call on your inventions, we will give you the use of the shop and laboratories, machinery, materials, and such help as you need. Then we'll lend you money for your living expenses, on your unsecured notes, without interest, for as long a time as you need—say, five or ten years. You will take out the patents in your own name at your own expense. You don't have to assign them to us. If we pay you on a royalty basis we pledge ourselves not to keep others from using your inventions if we ourselves don't. You come and see me when you've settled the conditions and terms to your satisfaction. Bring as many lawyers with you as you wish. Now, Bill,” finished Mr. Thompson, “go ahead and ask your two questions.”
“What two questions?” asked Bill, who had followed Mr. Thompson's speech with some difficulty by reason of a surprise not far removed from incredulity.
“First, why I offer to do so much for you without binding you to sell to us at our own price; and, second, where the joker is in my offer, anyhow.”
“I wasn't going to ask anything of the kind.” Bill spoke with much dignity.
“They are perfectly natural questions to ask, unless you had made up your mind to accept any offer blindly. I'd like to answer them, anyhow.”
“Then I guess you'd better,” said Bill, a trifle defiantly.
“I made that proposition to you because I've made it to others. I want you to realize as quickly as you can that in working for the company you are working for yourself. When a man is neither a hog nor an ass, I am perfectly willing to do business with him on his own terms. Just take it for granted that I know you as well as you know yourself. Am I taking such an awful risk, Bill?”
“But you don't know me,” said Bill, in duty bound.
Thompson smiled. “Well, your first question is answered. Now for the second.”
“There is no need of it, Mr. Thompson,” said Bill, with decision.
“Give me the pleasure of letting me tell you that there is no joker.”
Bill looked steadily at Mr. Thompson and said, “I didn't think there was any.”
“But now you know it,” said Thompson.
“And I want to say that Tommy here is my partner—” began Bill.
“That's all nonsense,” interjected Tommy, quickly.
“Yes,” agreed Mr. Thompson, very seriously, “that's all nonsense. But both of you had better look a long time before you swap that kind of nonsense for wisdom. Don't be brothers in business if you want to be rich and lonely. Bill, Tommy is buncoing us out of thirty dollars a week. Is that enough for you?”
“It's more than enough,” said Bill, eagerly.
“Then it is just enough to be contented with. Get to work as soon as you can. You have no time to waste, because from now on Byrnes is working for Byrnes. It will suit me down to the ground. Draw up your own contract and bring it here.”
Bill looked at Thompson. Then he said, resolutely, “I will!”
“Both of you go somewhere now and talk it over. Tommy, I'll see you to-morrow about your own work. I've got a man-sized job for you. Good morning.” Thompson nodded and, turning to his desk, pushed one of the row of call-buttons. His attitude showed he expected no further speech, so they left the room without another word.
Outside Tommy turned to Bill. “What did I tell you—hey?”
“You poor pill, do you think I've worked here two years for nothing? You bet I'll get a hustle on. Do you think we ought to get a lawyer?”
“Yes; he meant what he said. You needn't worry about the price he'll pay for your invention. Just get to work.”
“What is your job going to be?” asked Bill, curiously.
“I don't know. But I hope—” Tommy caught himself on the verge of expressing the hope that it would be something which might enable him to bury the secret once for all.
“What do you hope, Tommy?”
“That you will land with both feet, now that you have a decent place to experiment in,” said Tommy. He couldn't say anything else to poor Bill, could he? It wasn't his secret to share with anybody, and, anyhow, he meant what he said.
Mr. Thompson did not make his appearance at the works until late in the afternoon. He told Tommy:
“You'll have to dine with me to-night, Tommy, Will you?”
“Yes, sir.” Then realizing that he merely had obeyed a superior, he added, in his personal capacity, “Delighted!”
“Has Bill done anything?”
“He consulted Mr. Williams.”
Thompson shook his head. “He is our lawyer.”
“That's why Bill picked him out,” said Tommy. He felt like adding that he thought Bill considered that the Thompsonian thing to do. Thompson looked at him meditatively.
“What a wonderful thing youth is,” he mused, “and how very wise in its unwisdom.” He nodded to himself. Then: “You let Bill alone. He's saved. To-night at six-thirty. Mrs. Thompson has not yet returned, but you are going to meet her as soon as she does. You might take Bill to La Grange and say I said Bill was to have everything he asks for. Don't bother to dress, Tommy.” Mr. Thompson nodded, a trifle absently it seemed to Tommy, and went into his office. And Tommy wasn't aware that the mixing of his personal affairs with the shop's business made him belong to the company utterly.
After dinner, as they drank their coffee in the library, Thompson asked him:
“Don't you smoke?”
“Not any more.”
“Why not?”
“I gave up smoking when I felt I couldn't afford it. I smoked rather expensive cigarettes.”
“You can afford them now.”
“Well, I don't quite feel that I can; and, anyhow, the craving isn't very strong.”
“Tommy, my idea of happiness would be the conviction that the more I smoked the better I'd feel. Do you mind talking shop here, Tommy?”
“Not a bit; in fact, I—” He caught himself on the verge of saying that Mr. Thompson could not pick out a more pleasing topic. Thompson smiled slightly. Then he leaned back in his chair and relaxed physically.
“Tommy”—he spoke very quietly—“I think I know you now so that I don't have to ask you to tell me anything more about yourself. In fact, I know you so well that I am going to talk to you about myself.”
Tommy's expectancy was aroused to such a high pitch so suddenly that he was distinctly conscious of a thrill. Mr. Thompson went on: “Can you guess what made me go into automobile manufacturing?”
“I suppose you saw very clearly the possibilities of the business,” ventured Tommy, not over-confidently.
It seemed too commonplace a reason, and yet it was common sense.
“I won't be modest with you, Tommy. I'll say right out that few men who develop a big business successfully are primarily concerned with the cash profits. The work itself must grip them. Of course when the reward is money, if they make a great deal this merely proves how efficient their work is. As a matter of fact, I went into this business twelve years ago because—” Thompson paused. His eyes were half closed and his lips half smiling, as if he were looking at young Thompson and rather enjoying the sight; the paternal mood that comes over a man of forty when he gets a glimpse of the boy he used to be. He went on, “Because I had a dream about a pair of roller-skates.”
“Roller-skates? Were you in that business?”
“I wasn't in any business. I had tried half a dozen things, only to give them up. And each time people told me I was a fool not to stick to what I was in, especially as I was making good. But I couldn't see myself devoting my whole life to such work. I was on my way to talk to a man who had lost all his teeth. He had a proposition that looked good to me.”
He glanced at Tommy, but Tommy shook his head and paid Thompson the stupendous compliment of not smiling.
“Don't you see, my boy, he had no teeth, but he had brains. Therefore he capitalized his misfortune. He'd got dyspepsia because he could not masticate and hated soup. So he invented a machine for chewing food not only for the toothless, but for the thoughtless who bolt their food. Not a food-chopper, but a food-grinder. No more dyspepsia; no need of Fletcherizing; the machine did it for you. He had evolved a series of easy maxillary motions to stimulate the salivary glands, and he had gathered together hundreds of quotations from the poets and from scientists and wise men of all time. I tell you it promised.
“Well, as I was going along, cheered by the vision of an undyspeptic country as well as of our selling campaign, a little boy bumped into me—hard! But I didn't get angry with him, because he was on roller-skates, and I then and there had one of my dreams. I saw a day when all sidewalks would consist of two parallel tracks or roadways, very smooth, of some vitrified material. And I saw every human being with a pair of rubber-tired auto-skates run by radium batteries. And, of course, that made me decide not to see the toothless man but to go into automobiles.”
Tommy was listening with his very soul. The more we know of our heroes the less apt we are to worship them. But this hero's autobiography, instead of destroying illusions, really intensified the sense of difference on which most hero-worship is founded.
“My mind,” observed Tommy, ruefully, “wouldn't work that way.”
“Oh yes, it would if you'd let it, instead of thinking that dreaming is folly. A man who keeps his eyes open can get valuable suggestions from even his most futile wishes. Autos were considered luxuries then, but I saw the second phase, even to the greater health of the community and the increase in suburban land values. Better artificial lighting has lengthened man's working-day, but the stupendous world-revolution of the nineteenth century was effected by the locomotive and the steamship. When man ceased to depend upon wind and oats for moving from place to place, he changed politics, science, commerce—everything. Indeed, all the that now afflict us have arisen from the changes which make it impossible for the old-time famines to follow crop failures in certain localities. They have raised the standard of living and should have put an end to poverty as they have to political inequality. Well, there is no need to philosophize about it.”
“It is very interesting,” said Tommy.
“Yes, it is. That is why I went into the manufacture of automobiles. They are a necessity. That is precisely why I want this company to be doing business long after you and I are dust and forgotten.”
Thompson looked at Tommy, a heavy frown on his face—exactly as if he were fighting on, even after death, thought Tommy. It made the youngster whisper, “Yes!”
“So I formed the company. I had to dwell on the money profit to raise capital. Nobody knew I was a dreamer. I began without experience, but I saw to it, Tommy, that I also began without prejudices. I have learned a great deal in ten years. I have studied automobiles constantly, but even when I was working merely to make money I saw the work going on after me. So I have felt it necessary to study men even more closely than machinery and manufacturing processes. No man can tell what the product of this company will be twenty years hence; it may be flying-machines. But we ought to know; the men who will be running it then—the product of the company's policy! The kind of men I want to-day is the kind that will be wanted to-morrow, that will be wanted always! Do you see?”
“Yes, sir,” said Tommy.
“It was no hard job to make money. It was infinitely harder to convince my associates that there was more money in reducing our immediate profits in order to make ours a permanent investment. I am now ready to throw a million dollars' worth of machinery and patterns into the scrap-heap. We shall manufacture a car very soon that will not need much changing for ten years. Of course we'll improve and refine and simplify it as we find advisable. I'll be able to carry out some of my dreams now. This time the dream comes after the product!”
Tommy did not know what the dream was and he couldn't see the product; but he imagined a wonderful time to come.
“It's great!” he gasped.
“It is more difficult to eliminate the undesirable man than the inefficient employee. My men are not yet all that I wish, but they will be after they have worked in our new plant a few months. I have studied all the methods that manufacturers and managers have used to foster and reward the competitive spirit among workmen. I want team-work as well as individual efficiency, but my men must all be Tecumseh men. Do you love the company?”
“You bet I do!” And Tommy's eyes glistened.
“Are you sure it isn't merely gratitude for Thompson?” And Thompson looked so serious that Tommy was compelled to be honest. He thought before he answered.
“Of course it is both.”
“I don't want you to think of Thompson, but of the Tecumseh.”
“But how can I think of the company and not think of you?”
“By thinking not of the president and not of yourself, but of the work—the work that will be here long after Thompson and Leigh are gone. I will give you an opportunity to develop yourself along those lines which will most gratify the desires of your grown manhood.”
Tommy nodded his head twice quickly, and drew in a deep breath.
“To be intelligently selfish you must be intelligently unselfish. You must love the Tecumseh for what the Tecumseh will do for you. Do you see that?”
“Yes,” answered Tommy; “but I'd love it even if—”
“That's because you are a boy with a wonderful unlived life. Keep it up, because unreasoning love is a good foundation for the maturer habit of affection from which I expect the Tecumseh stockholders and the Tecumseh employees alike to benefit. I am after a family feeling. Some day I'll tell you the story of Bob Holland, the treasurer of the company, the only man I know who thinks of dollars as an annoying necessity, but of the Tecumseh finances in terms of health insurance. He is one of my Experiments.” And Thompson smiled.
Knowing that he also was one and fearing because he was, Tommy, who did not feel like smiling, smiled as he asked:
“Are all your Experiments always successful?”
“Always,” answered Thompson, emphatically. “Always,” he repeated, and looked unsmilingly at Tommy. And Tommy made up his mind that the least he could do was to see to it that Thompson's record was not broken.
“Grosvenor is another, and Nevin,” went on Thompson. “You know them. La Grange is still a Sophomore, but on the right road. Bill Byrnes is a first-day Freshman. Watch him. I won't give the others away. You know Leonard Herrick?”
“Yes, sir.”
“But you don't know why I pay him a salary?”
“No, sir.”
“For his grouch. I made him cultivate it, until from being merely a personal pleasure he elevated it to the dignity of an impersonal art. What was only a grouch has become intelligent faultfinding. He is the cantankerous customer on tap, the flaw-picking perfection-seeker, our critic-in-chief. He is a walking encyclopedia of objections, and they have to be good ones. He's a wonder!”
Thompson paused and looked at Tommy doubtfully. Tommy wondered why.
“It used to worry me whenever I thought of that man's family life, so I looked about for a wife for him, and when I found the woman I wanted I married him off to her before he could say Jack Robinson. She is very happy. She is stone-deaf and has borne him two children—both girls. I didn't arrange for their sex, Tommy; honest I didn't; but I prayed for girls! Anyhow, he got them. He'll butt his head against them in vain; they are women and they will be modern women. They will preserve his grouch until he's through living. His usefulness to the company will thus be unimpaired and he'll die in harness, grouchy and an asset to the end. Do you still want to know whether all my Experiments are successful?”
Thompson looked so meaningly at Tommy that Tommy flushed as he answered:
“I don't know whether I can ever do anything to repay you—”
“The company, Tommy,” corrected Thompson, quickly.
“But I know I'd rather work here for five dollars a week than anywhere else for a hundred.”
“That answers your question. Now for your job!” Thompson became so serious that Tommy knew his would be a difficult task. Well, he would do it or die trying!
“Your job is to be the one man in the employ of the Tecumseh Motor Company who can walk into the president's private office at any time without knocking.”
Thompson was frowning so earnestly that Tommy felt a sharp pang of mortification at his own failure to grasp exactly what the job meant. But Thompson went on:
“You will find, Tommy, that even wise men can be unreasonable and square men can be petty and brave men can whine—at times. But in the end their errors correct themselves, just as political fallacies do in the affairs of a nation. You must help the men to feel toward the Tecumseh as you do. It is a big job. If you make good I can tell you that all of us will be in your debt, no matter what your salary may be.”
Thompson spoke so earnestly that Tommy said: “How can I ever be to them what you are to me? How can I possibly be that?”
“Always be ready to put yourself in the other man's place, but insist upon a fair exchange and make him put himself in your place, which is very difficult indeed, but not impossible. The new plant will make it easier for you. It will be the model plant of the world, not only as to machinery, but also as to comfort and looks! I will make the men boast of it. I have elaborate plans for the democratization of this place, and I am not neglecting self-interest or vanity. Bonuses, pensions, honor rolls, and such things are easy. What is not so easy is to make the men glad to work for and with the company. I haven't many precedents to guide me, and so many plans that promised well and looked fine on paper have failed, sometimes failed inexplicably. My men must be both free men and Tecumseh men, and they have no life habit to help them in this—such as the convention of patriotism, for example. I warn you, Tommy, that you must be one of my principal assistants. You will represent in my office all the men who are getting less than ten dollars a day. You must do more than present their grievances—anticipate them! There is no string to this. In fighting for them you will be fighting for me and for yourself and for the whole Tecumseh family. And now do you want to let me beat you at billiards before you go home?”
“Mr. Thompson, I couldn't hold a cue just now if my life depended on it. I want to think about what you have told me. I'm afraid I am not old enough to—”
“I've given you the biggest job in the shop because, being very young, you have no experience to make a coward of you. And don't think too much about the preambles to your own speeches hereafter. Good night, Tommy.”
TOMMY did more hard thinking in the next few days than he had done in his four years at college. He blamed himself for his stupidity that prevented him from seeing the first step. He could not visualize his start. Notwithstanding Thompson's admonition, it was usually the preamble to the speech that was the stumbling-block, for Tommy did not know that there is work which not the head but the heart must do.
Since he could not formulate a plan of campaign in detail, he simply walked about the shop talking genial generalities to the men. He did not know that while he was trying to be a friend to these men they also were becoming friends to him, and he presently found himself telling them all he knew about the new plant, of which they had heard vague rumors, of the better times that were coming, and how one of the greatest problems of all time was settled here, since all jobs were going to be life jobs. And, of course, he could not help asking them one at a time what really was needed to make their life in the shop better, more comfortable, and more worth while working for.
They took him at his word, because though he was young and utterly inexperienced he was also wise enough to listen to wisdom. They answered his questions and freely gave of their own infallibility. He heard architects when he wanted sociologists and lawyers when he wanted brothers, and political economists when he wanted college boys; but he was wise enough to continue to listen attentively. He asked each man confidentially whether it would be possible for him to evolve a plan that would make them all one family. And each promised to think about it. In fact, many even promised to give Tommy the one plan that would do it.
Thompson had little to say to Tommy. He made no suggestions and asked for no reports. But one day, as Tommy was going into the laboratory to see Bill Byrnes, he met the president. He saw that Thompson had something important to say.
“Tommy, have the men given you a nickname yet?”
“They all call me Tommy.”
“But a nickname?”
“Well,”—and Tommy smiled forgivingly—“some of them call me D. O.”
“What does that mean?”
“Door Opener!”
Thompson's face lighted up. He held out his hand and he shook Tommy's so congratulatorily that Tommy realized in part what had happened. He felt that he was progressing.
“Keep on the job, D. O. Remember that miracles are worked with men by men, and not by machinery nor by wages alone.” And Thompson walked off, smiling.
Tommy walked into Bill's new quarters. Bill was happy beyond words, having no financial cares. His contract called for the sale of his patents to the Tecumseh at a price and on a basis to be determined by three men, one chosen by Byrnes, one by the company, and the third by both the others.
“How's Charlotte?” asked Tommy, for Bill's sister had not been well.
“Better. That specialist that Mr. Thompson got from Cleveland to see her has done her a lot of good.”
“You never told me about that, Bill,” said Tommy, reproachfully.
“Well, Thompson asked me about my family and I told him about her—or, rather, he guessed it. How he did it I don't know. And I kind of thought that you'd rub it in. But he won't lose anything, I can tell you.” Bill saw impending speech in Tommy's face, so he went on hastily in order to avert it: “I've got a cinch here, Tommy. We'll all be rich yet, you bet! And say, La Grange knows more than I thought. Now watch this.” And Bill began to put his new apparatus through its paces for Tommy's benefit.
It had worked successfully fifty times that day; but on this, the fifty-first, before a witness, it balked.
“Yes, that's fine!” said Tommy, with great enthusiasm, and waited for the profanity.
But Bill merely frowned and fumbled with the wires. Then he exclaimed, blithely: “Sure thing; the nut worked off! It never happened before, and you can bet it never will again. Now watch it!”
Tommy watched it. It worked smoothly. Then Bill took the apparatus to pieces and showed Tommy that the vaporization of the kerosene had been complete.
“I've made a lot of improvements. La Grange is working now on the generator. He is really a good electrician,” said Bill, with an air of doing justice to a friend who had his faults as all men, even the best, have. Tommy laughed outright. The change in Bill's nature, now that he had no worries, struck him as being quite funny.
“What's biting you?” asked Bill.
“Oh,” said Tommy, “I just thought of something. Keep on the job, Bill. Your friends and your country need you.”
Bill was again at work before Tommy walked out of the room. A great world this, thought Tommy, in which each man had his work, in which he could think of himself and gratify his personal desires, and withal one in which the work of each man would harmonize and merge with the work of the others. He felt a greater admiration for Thompson than ever, but he also began to feel that even without Thompson it was well to work for the Tecumseh Motor Company. If Thompson lived he certainly would make the Tecumseh greater than Thompson.
During the following fortnight Tommy was able to fill himself with joy by bringing some grievances to Thompson. They were minor affairs, but Thompson treated them as seriously as though they were disasters. They were adjusted to the satisfaction of all concerned.
Sometime afterward Thompson sent for Tommy. “Tommy,” said Thompson, his eyes on Tommy's, “I think you ought to go to New York.” Tommy's face showed consternation. “What's happened, Mr. Thompson? My father—”
“Oh no, I have remembered what you told me about getting 'ads' for your college paper. Well, we are going to double our capital stock. Our stockholders are perfectly able and anxious to subscribe to the new issue, but I want you to place some of it among your friends, since you cannot take any yourself. A little later I hope to perfect a plan whereby you and all the men who stay with us will be able to get some of the stock on terms that all of you can meet. I want you, Tommy, to feel a personal responsibility in the management of the company. You can do it by inducing personal friends to buy a couple of thousand shares of our stock. I have prepared a statement showing what we have done and what we are doing, and an estimate of what we expect to do. Our books and our plant are open for examination by any expert your friends may want to send here. We shall have a big surplus, and the book value of the shares will always be much more than par; but we are going to reduce the price of our car every chance we get, and we are going to provide for pensions and life insurance and bonuses for the men. We have no Utopian schemes, and no more elaborate theory than the desire to make this a permanent and continuously productive organization. I don't want any man for a stockholder who expects the company to run its business as he would not have the nerve or the conscience to run his own. I am going not only to give, but to take a chance in giving. The statement I have prepared for you here is for your guidance, that you may make my intentions clear to your friends. You don't have to call attention to the big fortunes that have been made in the automobile business, because I wish you to interest only people who already are interested in Tom Leigh.”
Tommy's feeling of relief had grown as Mr. Thompson spoke. He ceased to think of certain dark possibilities. But there still remained one.
“I don't know whether I can sell the stock or not, Mr. Thompson.”
“I don't expect you to succeed. I only expect you to try,” Thompson reminded him.
“Of course I'll try,” said Tommy, hastily.
“My reasons are good business reasons, Tommy, because I have your future in mind. Can you leave to-night?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Very well.”
Tommy hesitated; then he held out his hand and said, “Good-by, Mr. Thompson.”
“Wait a minute. Tell the cashier to let you have a hundred dollars expense account.” Then he shook hands. “Place that stock, Tommy!” he said.
A little later, when he said good-by to Bill Byrnes, Tommy realized for the first time how deeply rooted in Dayton his life was. He didn't feel that he was going home, but that he was leaving it!