"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.