“Want the job of night engineer here?” Gilbert asked him. “Pays forty-five a month.”
“Go to work right now if you say so,” Ford assured him.
“All right. I’ll have another man here to relieve you at six in the morning. Come down to the office some time to-morrow and I’ll put your name on the payroll.”
In one day Ford had got the very opportunity he wanted—a job where he could study electricity at first hand.
An hour later Mrs. Ford, who had spent the day drearily unpacking trunks and putting the telescope bags under the bed in a hopeless attempt to make a boarding-house bedroom homelike, received an enthusiastic note.
“Got fine job already. Working all night. Go to bed and don’t worry. Everything is settled splendidly.—Henry.”
He had forgotten to mention that his wages were forty-five dollars a month.
CHAPTER XII
LEARNING ABOUT ELECTRICITY
Forty-five dollars a month and a twelve-hour-a-day job—for these Henry Ford had traded his big, pleasant home, with its assured comfort and plenty, and his place as one of the most prosperous and respected men in Greenfield. The change would have been a calamity to most men.
Henry Ford was happy. The new job gave him a chance to work with machinery, an opportunity to learn all about electricity. His contentment, as he went whistling about his work after Gilbert left, would have seemed pure insanity to the average person. Forty-five dollars a month!