James Howe and Sons Company did not seem overjoyed by the letter of introduction and for some time it seemed as if Roger could not pass the young woman who guarded the main office door. He was finally admitted, however, to the office of Mr. Hearn, the general manager. Hearn was a man of forty, full faced and ruddy.
"I get the idea! I get the idea!" he said impatiently when Roger was about half way through his explanations.
Roger flushed. "You can't possibly, Mr. Hearn. I haven't reached the main idea yet."
"I've got enough to convince me that you're hopelessly impractical. Give it up, young man! Give it up and get into something that'll pay the bill at the corner grocery. Solar power is about as practical as wave power. Fit merely for the dreams of poets. Sorry not to be able to give you more time. Good day! Miss Morris, call in the foundry boss."
Roger found himself in the street before he had finished rolling up his drawings. "Well, I'll be hanged!" he muttered. Then he suddenly smiled. "I think I came down here with an idea that we'd be turning out machines in a couple of months! Gee, if I'm landed by Christmas, I'll be lucky." He pulled out the third letter of introduction, and his head lifted defiantly, started off to present it.
The Dean had been generous with his letters, but by the end of the first week in Chicago, Roger had presented them all. Curiously enough, in all this week of meeting with manufacturers Roger told but one of them his ultimate dream. John McGinnis, maker of kerosene engines, was elderly and Irish and immensely interested in Roger and his idea.
He slapped Roger on the back. "It's a grand idea, me boy! If I wasn't just about to retire, hanged if I wouldn't help you to build one plant. How come you ever to take up solar heat though, with the world all howling for a real kerosene engine?"
They were sitting in McGinnis' pleasant office, the windows of which overlooked Lake Michigan. The old man had cocked his feet up on his mahogany desk and had about him an air of leisurely interest. He gave Roger the mate to the long brown cigar he himself was smoking and after a few minutes Roger said, hesitatingly:
"When I was a kid of fourteen, labor difficulties ruined my father. He owned a little plow factory, employing a couple of hundred men. I got a good deal of the men's side for I worked as a forge boy that summer, but after the crash, for a long time, I was all for father's side of the matter. Gradually though, I began to think differently.
"I began to be sorry for the men as well as for my father. They were hardworking, ambitious chaps who wanted to get ahead, just as my father did. They took the only way they saw for getting ahead. They didn't believe that just because father was the brain of the concern, he should be well-to-do and they poor.