On beholding the scene of action within, almost at a glance, John placed the puddler where he belonged. Here was the work of a master superintendent. Nothing was as it had been except the engine and furnace. Everything else had been relocated with one aim in view, which was to eliminate all unnecessary human motion and shorten the train of events from the raw material straight through to the finished nail packed in the keg and stored. Besides the physical achievement, which alone was very notable, there was a subtle psychic relation between Thane and his men. They worked on their toes and liked doing it for him.
“Shake,” said John, holding out his hand. “No, we won’t shut her up. We’ll take her as a pattern. If you can do this with all the mills we’ll walk away with it. Have you figured your costs? They must be fine.”
“In my head,” said Thane.
They stood at a little greasy box-desk screwed to the wall under a window dim with cobwebs.
“I’ll show you how to figure them,” said John. “Iron, so much; fuel, so much; kegs, so much; oil, and so forth, so much; wear and tear of tools and plant, so much; labor, so much; total, so much. Then kegs of nails, so many. Divide that by that and you have the cost per keg. Let’s see how it will work out.”
It worked out nearly as Thane had it in his head and John was sentimental with pride and satisfaction.
“Come on,” he said, impatiently. “Leave a man in charge of this, and we’ll see the other mills.”
Starting with more than a hundred mills, they scrapped twenty outright, saving only their contracts, raw material and stock on hand; others they consolidated. In the end they had fifty well equipped plants strategically placed to supply the trade by the shortest routes. They had all to be overhauled according to Thane’s ideas. He turned the Twenty-ninth Street plant into a training station and sent men from there to work the other mills. It was a large and complicated program. He carried it through so skillfully that he was appointed vice-president in charge of manufacturing, and John was free to organize the company’s business and function executively.
He raised the price of nails, first twenty-five cents a keg, then fifty, then seventy-five cents, and stopped. At that price there was a good profit. Thane was steadily reducing costs by improving plant practice and that increased profits in another way.
A dividend was paid on the preferred stock in the third month. The omens were fine. Still, John was uneasy. No New Damascus nails had been received under their contract with Enoch. The making of nails had not stopped at New Damascus. He made sure of that. No New Damascus nails were coming on the market, either, for John knew everything about the trade. Then what was to be expected?