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.