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?"