“Four dollars a day.”
“Wages. Your salary will be thirty-five dollars a week. When can we begin to turn over?”
“Mr. Wattrous figured four weeks.”
“We’ll start to manufacture in three. Put on more men if necessary. Now let’s see where we’re at.”
Nelson showed Jim through the mill, explaining what must be done here, what was lacking there, why this machine sat so, why another machine must be driven from counter-shafting. He told him about the conveyer system, about everything, for mills and machinery were alike strange and mysterious to Jim.
“Is the general plan good?”
“Yes. But if it were my mill I would—”
“It is your mill. Make it run and make it run right. I’m going back to the office to have a look-see at the books and files.”
As he sat in the revolving-chair he felt again a wave of astonishment at himself. Was this Jim Ashe—the same Jim Ashe who got off the train at Diversity an hour ago? Most certainly it was, and yet how little that Jim Ashe knew about himself.
“I guess I’m due for a personal inventory,” he said to himself.