Bonbright, in his business experience, had been like a man watching a
play in a foreign language, from a box seat--with an interpreter to
translate the dialogue. Now he found himself a member of the cast; very
much a member, with abundant lines and business. In his old position as
heir apparent to Bonbright Foote, Incorporated, he had been unhappy.
Time had hung heavily on his hands. He had not been allowed to
participate in actual affairs except as some automatic machine or
rubber stamp participates. There every effort of his superiors had been
directed to eliminating his individuality and to molding him to the
Bonbright Foote type. He had not been required to use his
brains--indeed, had been forbidden to do so.
In his new employment the condition was reversed. It seemed as if
everything his father had desired him to do was interdicted in Malcolm
Lightener's vast organization; everything that had been taboo before
was required of him now. He was asked to think; he was taught to make
his individuality felt; he was encouraged to suggest and to exercise
his intelligence independently. There were actually suggestion boxes in
every department where the humblest laborer might deposit a slip of
paper telling the boss any notion he had which he deemed of service to
the enterprise. More than that--any suggestion accepted was paid for
according to its value.
In Bonbright's father's plant change and invention were frowned upon.
New devices were regarded as impious. The typewriter was tolerated; the
telephone was regarded with shame. The Ancestors had not made use of
such things....Malcolm Lightener let no instrument for adding
efficiency pass untried. It was the same in office and in shop. The
plant was modern to the second--indeed, it was a stride ahead of the
minute. There was a large experimental laboratory presided over by an
engineer of inventive trend, whose business it was to eliminate and
combine processes; to produce machines which would enable one man to
perform the labor of three; to perform at one process and one handling
the work that before required several processes and the passing of the
thing worked upon from hand to hand.
If Bonbright had been interested in any phase of his father's business
it had been in the machine shops. Now he saw how costly were those
antique processes, how wasteful of time and labor. His father's profits
were large; Bonbright saw very quickly how a revolution in methods
would make them enormous. But he knew that revolution would not take
place--the Ancestors forbade....
The thing had started at the first moment of his connection with
Malcolm Lightener as an employee. He had reported promptly at seven
o'clock, and found Lightener already in his office. It was Lightener's
custom to come down and to go home later for breakfast.
"Morning," said Lightener. "Where's your overalls?"
"Overalls?" said Bonbright.
"Didn't I tell you to bring some? You'll need 'em. Wait, I'll send a
boy out for some--while we have a talk....Now then, you've got a job.
After six o'clock you and I continue on the same basis as before;
between seven in the morning and six at night you're one of the men who
work for me--and that's all. You get no favors. What they get you
get....There aren't any soft jobs or hangers-on here. Everybody earns
what he's paid--or he finds he isn't getting paid. Clear?"
"Perfectly," said Bonbright, not wholly at his ease.
"The object of this plant is to make automobiles--to make GOOD
automobiles, and to make the most of them that can be made. If one man
falls down on his job it delays everybody else. Suppose one man
finishing THIS"--he held up a tiny forging--"does a botch job....
There's just one of these to a car, and he's held up the completion of
a car. That means money.... Suppose the same man manages to turn out
two perfect castings like this in the time it once took to turn out
one.... Then he's a valuable man, and he hustles up the whole
organization to keep even with him. Every job is important because it
is a part of the whole operation, which is the turning out of a
complete automobile. Understand?"
"Yes."
"Some men are created to remain laborers or mechanics all their lives.
Some are foreordained bookkeepers. A few can handle labor--but that's
the end of them. A very few have executive and organizing and financial
ability. The plums are for them.... Every man in this plant has a
chance at them. You have.... On the other hand, you can keep on earning
what you're getting now until you're sixty. It's up to you.... I'm
giving you a start. That's not sentiment. It's because you've education
and brains--and there's something in heredity. Your folks have been
successful--to a degree and in their own way. I'm making a bet on
you--that's all. I'm taking a chance that you'll pay back at the box
office what you're going to cost for some months. In other words,
instead of your paying for your education, I'm sending you to school on
the chance that you'll graduate into a man that will make money for me.
But you've got to make good or out you go. Fair?"
"Yes," said Bonbright.
"All right. Remember it....You've got the stuff in you to make a man at
the top--maybe. But you don't start at the top. You've got to scramble
up just like anybody else. Right now you're not worth a darn. You don't
know anything and you can't do anything. Day labor's where you
belong--but you couldn't stand it. And it wouldn't be sense to put you
at it, or I would. I'd set you to sweeping out the machine shops if I
thought you needed it....Maybe you figured on sitting at a mahogany
desk?"
"I came to do whatever you put me at," Bonbright said. "I've been fed
up on sitting at a mahogany desk."
"Good--if you mean it. I hear a lot of four flush about what men are
willing to do. Heaps of them repeat copybook platitudes....You're going
to wear overalls and get your hands dirty. If you don't like it you can
always quit....I know how to do darn nearly everything that's done in
this place. The man who gets up near me has got to know it, too." Here
was a hint for Bonbright of the possibilities that Malcolm Lightener
opened up to him. "This morning you're going into the machine shop to
run a lathe, and you're going to stay there till you KNOW how it's
done. Then we'll move you some place else. Your place is in the office.
But how soon you get there, or whether you ever get there, is up to
you. Like the looks of it?"
Bonbright was silent a moment. When he spoke it was not in reply to
Lightener's question, but to put into words a fear that had become
apparent.
"The men," he said; "how about them?...You know, father sort of
advertised me as a strike breaker and that kind of thing. Our men hate
me. I suppose all laboring men feel that way about me."
"We don't have any unions here. I run my own plant, and, by gracious! I
always will. I give my men fair pay--better than most. I give them all
the opportunity they ask for. I give them the best and safest
conditions to work in that can be had. I figure a good crew in a plant
is a heap more valuable than good machinery--and I keep my machinery in
repair and look after it mighty careful. But no union nonsense.... You
won't have any trouble with the men."
Bonbright was not so sure.... Presently the boy returned with the
overalls. Lightener wrote a note and handed it to the boy. "Take this
man to Shop One and give this note to Maguire," he said; then he turned
to Bonbright and jerked his thumb toward the door. Bonbright got up
without a word and followed the boy.
In a moment the boy opened a big door, and Bonbright stepped through.
The sight took away his breath--not that he had never seen this room
before, but that he was now seeing it through other eyes, not merely as
a spectator, but as a participant. It seemed to him as if the
dimensions of the room should be measured not in feet, but in acres. It
was enormous, but huge as it was it was all too small for the tangle of
machinery it contained. To Bonbright's eyes it seemed a tangle. A
labyrinth of shafting, countershafting, hung from the high ceiling,
from whose whirring pulleys belts descended to rows upon rows of
machines below. It looked like some strange sort of lunar forest, or
some species of monstrous, magic banyan tree. Here were machines of a
hundred uses and shapes, singly, in batteries--a scrambled mass it
seemed. There were small machines--and in the distance huge presses,
massive, their very outlines speaking of gigantic power. Bonbright had
seen sheets of metal fed into them, to be spewed out at another point
bent and molded to a desired form. Overhead conveyers increased the
scrambled appearance. Men with trucks, men on hurried errands, hurried
here and there; other men stood silently feeding hungry
contrivances--men were everywhere, engrossed in their work, paving
scant attention to anything outside their task. And rushing up to
Bonbright was a wave of composite sounds, a roar, a bellow, a shriek, a
rattle, a whir, a grind.... It seemed the ultimate possibility of
confusion.
But as he walked down the aisle, dodging from time to time men or
trucks that regarded him not at all, but depended on him to clear the
way and to look out for himself, he was able to perceive something of
the miraculous orderliness and system of it. He was given a hint of the
plan--how a certain process would start--a bit of rough metal; how it
would undergo its first process and move on by gradual steps from one
machine to the next, to the next, in orderly, systematic way. No time
was lost in carrying a thing hither and thither. When one man was
through with it, the next man was at that exact point, to take it and
contribute his bit to its transformation.... Something very like a
thrill of pride passed over Bonbright. He was a part of this marvel....
Through this room they walked--the room would have sufficed in extent
for a good-sized farm--and into another, not smaller, and into another
and another. His destination, Shop One, was smaller, but huge enough.
The boy led Bonbright to a short, fat man. in unbelievably grimy
overalls and black, visored cap.
"Mr. Maguire," he shouted, "here's a man and a note from the boss."
Then he scurried away.
Maguire looked at the note first, and shoved it into his pocket; then
he squinted at Bonbright--at his face first; then, with a quizzical
glint, at his clothes. Bonbright flushed. For the first time in his
life he was ashamed of his clothes, and for a reason that causes few
men to be ashamed of their clothes. He wished they were of cheaper
cloth, of less expensive tailoring. He wished, most of all, that the
bright new overalls in the bundle under his arm were concealing them
from view.
"You're a hell of a looking machinist," said Maguire.
Bonbright felt it to be a remarkably true saying.
"The boss takes this for a darn kindergarten," Maguire complained.
"Ever run a lathe or a shaper or a planer?"
"No."
"He said to stick you on a lathe.... Huh! What's he know about it?...
How's he expect this room to make a showing if it's goin' to be charged
with guys like you that hain't nothin' but an expense?"
Bonbright got the idea back of that. Maguire was personally interested
in results; Maguire wanted his room to beat other rooms in the weekly
reports; Maguire was working for something more than wages--he was
playing the game of manufacturing to win.
"You go on a planer," Maguire snapped, "and Gawd help you if you spoil
more castings than I figger you ought to.... The boys here'll make it
hot for you if you pull down their average."
So the boys were interested, too. The thing extended downward from the
bosses!
"Goin' to work in them clothes?" asked Maguire, with a grin.
"Overalls," said Bonbright, tapping his parcel.
Maguire went to his desk and took a key from a box. "I'll show you your
locker," he said; and presently Bonbright, minus his coat, was incased
in the uniform of a laborer. Spick and span and new it was, and gave
him a singularly uncomfortable feeling because of this fact. He wanted
it grimed and daubed like the overalls of the men he saw about him. A
boyish impulse to smear it moved him--but he was ashamed to do it
openly.
Maguire led him to a big contrivance which was called a shaper. A boy
of eighteen was operating it. On its bed, which moved back and forth
automatically, was bolted a great cake of iron--a casting in the rough.
The machine was smoothing its surfaces.
"Show him," Maguire said to the boy, "then report to me."
The boy showed Bonbright efficiently--telling him what must be done to
that iron cake, explaining how the machine was to be stopped and
started, and other necessary technical matters. Then he hurried off.
Bonbright gazed at the casting ruefully, afflicted with stage fright.
... He was actually about to perform real labor--a labor requiring a
certain measure of intellect. He was afraid he would make a mistake,
would do something wrong, and possibly spoil the casting. He started
the planer gingerly. It had not seemed to move rapidly when the boy was
operating it, but now the bed seemed fairly to fly forward and snap
back. He bent forward to look at the cutting he had made; it was right.
So far he was all right.... Surreptitiously he laid his palm in a mass
of grease and metal particles and wiped it across his breast.... It was
an operation which he repeated more than once that morning.
Gradually his trepidation passed and he began to enjoy himself. He
enjoyed watching that casting move resistlessly under the tool; watched
the metal curl up in glittering little curlicues as the tool ate its
way across. He looked with pleasure at the surface already planed and
with anticipation of the surface still in the rough.... It was
interesting; it was fun. He wondered vaguely if all men who worked at
tasks of this kind found pleasure in them, not appreciating that years
of doing the same thing over and over might make it frightfully
monotonous. The truth was the thing had not yet become work to him. It
was a new experience, and all new experiences bring their thrill.
Until the noon whistle blew he hardly took his eyes off his work. He
did not know that Maguire passed him a dozen times, not stopping, but
watching him closely as he passed.... With the stopping of work about
him he realized that he was tired. He had lifted weights; he had used
unaccustomed muscles. He was hot, sweaty, aching. He was hungry.
"Where do we eat?" he asked the man who stood at the next machine.
"Didn't you bring no lunch?"
"No."
"Some doesn't," said the man, as if he disapproved exceedingly of that
class. "They feed at the hash house across the street.... Hain't broke,
be you?"
Bonbright understood the kindly offer implied. "Thank you--no," he
said, and followed to the big wash room.
He ate his lunch from the top of a tall stool. It was not the sort of
food he was accustomed to, and the coffee was far from being the sort
that had been served to him in his home or in his club--but he hardly
noticed it. When he was through he walked back across the street and
stood awkwardly among his mates. He knew none of them.
An oldish, smallish man looked at him and at his overalls, and grinned.
"New man?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Thought them overalls wasn't long off the shelf. You done a good job,
though, considerin'."
Bonbright blushed.
"Where you been workin'?"
How was Bonbright to answer? He couldn't tell the truth without shaming
himself in this man's eyes, and all at once he found he greatly desired
the good opinion of this workingman and of the other workingmen about
him.
"I--The last place I worked was Bonbright Foote, Incorporated," he
said, giving his father's institution its full name.
"Urn.... Strikin', eh?"
Bonbright nodded. He had struck. Not with a union, but as an individual.
"'Bout over, hain't it, from all I hear tell?"
"I think so," said Bonbright.
"Bad business.... Strikes is always bad--especially if the men git
licked. Unions hain't no business to call strikes without some show of
winnin'..... The boys talk that this strike never had no chance from
the beginnin'.... I don't think a heap of that Foote outfit."
"Why?"
"Rotten place to work, I hear. A good machinist can't take no pleasure
there, what with one thing and another. Out-of-date machines, and what
not.... That young Foote, the cub, is a hell winder, they say. Ever see
him?"
"I've seen him."
"His father was bad enough, by all accounts. But this kid goes him one
better. Wonder some of them strikers didn't git excited and make him
acquainted with a brick. I've heard of fightin' strikes hard--but never
nothin' like this one. Seems like this kid's a hard one. Wants to smash
hell out of the men just to see them smash.... How'd he strike you?"
"I was sorry for him," said Bonbright, simply.
"Sorry?... What's the idea?"
"I--I don't believe he did what people believe. He didn't really have
anything to do with the business, you know. He didn't count.... All the
things that he was said to do--he didn't do at all. His father did them
and let the men think it was his son."
"Sounds fishy--but if it's so somebody ought to lambaste the old man.
He sure got his son in bad.... What's this I hear about him marryin'
some girl and gettin' kicked out?"
"That's true," said Bonbright.
"Huh!... Wonder what he'll do without his pa. Them kind hain't much
good, I notice.... Maybe he's well fixed himself, though."
"He hasn't a cent," said Bonbright.
"Appears like you know a heap about him.... Maybe you know what he's
doin' now?"
"Working."
"Friends give him a soft job?"
"He's working in a--machine shop," said Bonbright.
"G'wan," said the man, incredulously. Then he looked sharply at
Bonbright, at his new overalls, back again at his face.
"What's your name?" he asked, suspiciously.
"Foote," said Bonbright.
"HIM?"
"Yes," said Bonbright.
The man paused before he spoke, and there was something not kindly that
came into his eyes. "Speakin' perty well of yourself, wasn't you?" he
said, caustically, and, turning his back, he walked away. ... That
action cut Bonbright more deeply than any of the few affronts that had
been put upon him in his life had cut. He wanted to call the man back
and demand that he listen to the truth. He wanted to explain, to set
himself right. He wanted that man and all men to know he was not the
Bonbright Foote who had brought on the strike and fought it with such
vindictive ruthlessness. He wanted to prove that he was innocent, and
to wring from them the right to meet and to be received by his fellow
laborers as one of themselves....
He saw the man stop beside a group, say something, turn, and point to
him. Other men turned and stared. Some snickered. Bonbright could not
bear it. He jostled his way through the crowd and sought refuge in the
shop.
The morning had been a happy one; the afternoon was dismal. He knew he
was marked. He saw men pointing at him, whispering about him, and could
imagine what they were saying. In the morning he had been received
casually as an equal. Nobody had welcomed him, nobody had paid
particular attention to him. That was as it should be. He was simply
accepted as another workman.... The attitude of the men was quite the
opposite now. He was a sort of museum freak to them. From a distance
they regarded him with curiosity, but their manner set him apart from
them. He did not belong. He felt their hostility.... If they had lined
up and jeered him Bonbright would not have felt the hurt so much, for
there would have been something to arouse his fighting spirit.
One remark he overheard, which stood aptly for the attitude of all.
"Well, he's gettin' what's comin' to him," was the sentence. It showed
him that the reputation his father had given him was his to wear, and
that here he would find no friends, scant toleration, probably open
hostility.... He got no pleasure that afternoon from watching his cake
of metal move backward and forward with the planer-bed.
When the whistle blew again he hurried out, looking into no man's face,
avoiding contacts. He sneaked away.... And in his heart burned a hot
resentment against the father that had done this thing....