During all this time Jimmy had continued in the employ of the Wentworth Company, and at the end of the first year his salary was fifty dollars a week. He no longer answered correspondence, but at the president’s suggestion devoted his entire time to learning all there was to know about the glass business—the making of optical glass particularly.
Then one day Mr. Wentworth had handed him a neat little stock-certificate assigning to him an equal number of shares in the new company with his mother. At the same time he was informed that his position with this subsidiary company would be that of assistant general manager, at a yearly salary of eight thousand dollars—which, Mr. Wentworth said, patting him on the back, “For a kid like you, is going some.”
Mr. Cooper and Isaac Merkle both received stock, and the former a position with the new company also.
So matters stood when at last the new factory was put into successful operation. And thus, from the brain of Jimmy Rand, coal miner in the Fallon Brothers’ mine, came into being the first of the new factories for the utilizing of coal without mining it. Coal was still mined, of course, for the world had thousands of uses for it besides the needs of factories. But Jimmy’s big idea used coal that never could have been mined. And it postponed, for many years, that inevitable day when the world’s coal supply was finally to come to an end.
Mr. James Rand smiled cheerfully at his president, this morning in Mr. Wentworth’s office, and the president, lighting himself another cigar, smiled cheerfully back at his youthful protégé.
“You always thought you were going to put it over, didn’t you, Jimmy?” Mr. Wentworth was saying.
Jimmy’s smile broadened to a grin. He looked fully six years older than when he had first come to New York, a trifle heavier, and infinitely more sophisticated; but he still had his ingenuous manner.
“Yes, sir, I did,” he admitted.
The president eyed him with affectionate appraisal. “You’re a pretty smart kid—in some ways.”
“They’ve been telling me that so much I’m getting to believe it,” said Jimmy.