Youth Challenges Part 46

"I'll send over blue prints and specifications--and my cost figures.

Probably our costs will be lower than yours...."

"They won't be," said Bonbright, with a tightening of his jaw. "Can you lend me Mershon for a while?" Mershon was Lightener's engineer, the man who had designed and built his great plant.

"I can't, but I will."

"As soon as he can arrange it, please. I want to get started."

"He'll be there in half an hour."

Mershon came, a gray, beefy, heavy-faced man--with clear, keen, seeing eyes.

"Mr. Lightener has loaned you to me, Mr. Mershon. It was a tremendous favor, for I know what you can do."

Mershon nodded. He was a man who treasured up words. He must have had a great store of them laid by, for in his fifty years he had used up surprisingly few.

"This is what I want," Bonbright said. "First, I want a plant designed with a capacity of twenty thousand Lightener engines. You designed Lightener's engine plant--so you're about the one man to give me one that will turn out more engines with less labor and at lower cost than his. That's what I want."

Mershon's eyes lighted. "It will cost money," he said.

"I'll find the money; you give me the plant," Bonbright said. "And second, I want a survey made of this present plant. I know a lot of it is junk, but I'm not competent to say how much. You will know what to do. If I have to junk the whole outfit I'll do it. I don't want to waste money, but I want these mills to be the equal of any mills in the country.... Not only in efficiency, but as a place to work. I want them safe. You will understand. I want the men considered. Give them light and air. Wait till you see our wash rooms!" He shrugged his shoulders.

"It isn't enough to have the best machines," he said. "I want the men to be able to do the best that's in them.... You understand?"

Mershon nodded.

"The next room is yours." Bonbright pointed toward his old office, the one it had been the family custom to close on the accession of the heir apparent, and never to reopen until a new heir was ready to take up his duties. He felt a sort of pleasure in this profanation. "You'll find it large enough. If you need more room, ask for it.... Get what a.s.sistants you need."

"No more interruption of production than necessary," said Mershon.

"Exactly.... And we need that new plant in a hurry. I've taken a contract to make ten thousand engines for Mr. Lightener this year."

It was that day that he called Rangar into the room. Rangar had been uneasy, fearful, since his old employer had died. He had been an important figure under the old order; a sort of shadow behind the throne. He wondered what would happen to him now. More especially if Bonbright had a notion of some of his duties under Bonbright's father.

He was not kept in suspense.

"Mr. Rangar," said Bonbright, "I have been looking through the files.

Some of your duties have become clear to me. I was familiar with others.... Perhaps my father required a man like yourself. I do not.

The old way of doing things here is gone, and you and I could not be happy together. I shall direct the cas.h.i.+er to give you a check for six months' salary..."

"You mean--"

"Exactly what I say."

"But--you don't understand the business. Who is going to run it while you learn?"

"I don't want to know how this business was run. It's not going to be run that way.... There's nothing you could teach me, Mr. Hangar....

Good afternoon."

Rangar went white with rage. Animosity toward this young man he had harbored since the beginning; it flowered into hatred. But he dared not voice it. It was not in Hangar's nature to be open, to fight without cover. If he spoke, the check for six months' salary might be withdrawn, so, uttering none of the venom that flooded to his lips, he went away.... Rangar was the sort of man who vows to get even. ...

That evening Bonbright sat in his window and watched the army of his employees surge out of the big gate and fill the street. Five thousand of them.... It was a sight that always fascinated him, as it had that first evening when he saw them, and came to a realization of what it meant to be overlord to such a mult.i.tude. More than ever he realized it now--for he was their overlord. They were his men. It was he who gave them the work that kept them alive; he who held their happiness, their comfort, their very existence in the hollow of his hand.... And he knew that in every one of those five thousand b.r.e.a.s.t.s burned resentment toward him. He knew that their most friendly feeling toward him was suspicion.

It was easy to rebuild a plant; it was simple to construct new mills with every device that would make for efficiency. That was not a problem to awe him. It needed but the free expenditure of money, and there was money in plenty.... But here was a task and a problem whose difficulty and vastness filled him with misgiving. He must turn that five thousand into one smooth-running, willing whole. He must turn their resentment, their bitterness, their suspicion, into trust and confidence. He must solve the problem of capital and labor.... An older, more experienced man might have smiled at Bonbright--at his daring to conceive such a possibility. But Bonbright dared to conceive it; dared to set himself the task of bringing it about.

That would be his work, peculiarly. No one could help him with it, for it was personal, appertaining to him. It was between Bonbright Foote and the five thousand.

It was inevitable that he should feel bitterness toward his father, for, but for his father, his work would now be enormously more simple.

If these men knew him as he was--knew of his interest in them, of his willingness to be fair--he would have had their confidence from the start. His father had made him appear a tyrant, without consideration for labor; had made him a capitalist of the most detestable type. It was a deep-seated impression. It had been proven. The men had experienced it; had felt the weight of Bonbright's ruthless hand....

How could he make them believe it was not his hand? How could he make them believe that the measures taken to crush the strike had not been his measures; that they had been carried out under his name but against his will? It sounded absurd even to himself. n.o.body would believe it.

Therefore he must begin, not at the beginning, but deeper than the beginning. He could not start fairly, but under a handicap so great as to make his chances of winning all but negligible.... It would be useless to tell his men that he had been but a figurehead. For him the only course was to blot out what had gone--to forget it--and to start against odds to win their confidence. It would be better to let them slowly come to believe he was a convert--that there had been a revolution in his heart and mind. Indeed, there was no other way. He must show them by daily studied conduct that he was not what they feared he was....

He did not know what he was himself. His contact with Malcolm Lightener's workingmen had given him certain sympathies with the theories and hopes of labor; but they had made him certain of fallacies and unsoundness in other theories and ambitions. He was not the romantic type of wealthy young man who, in stories, meets the under dog and loves him, and is suddenly converted from being an out-and-out capitalist to the most radical of socialists. It was not in him to be radical, for he was steadied by a quietly running balance wheel.... He was stubborn, too. What he wanted was to be fair, to give what was due--and to receive what was HIS due.... He could not be swayed by mawkish sentimental sympathy, nor could he be bullied. Perhaps he was stiff-necked, but he was a man who must judge of the right or wrong of a condition himself. Perhaps he was too much that way, but his experiences had made him so.

If his men tried to bulldoze him they would find him immovable. What he believed was right and just he would do; but he had his own set notions of right and justice. He was sympathetic. His att.i.tude toward the five thousand was one of friendliness. He regarded them as a charge and a responsibility. He was oppressed by the magnitude of the responsibility.... But, on the other hand, he recognized that the five thousand were under certain responsibilities and obligations to him. He would do his part, but he would demand their part of them.

His father had been against unions. Bonbright was against unions. His reason for this att.i.tude was not the reason of his father. It was simply this: That he would not be dictated to by individuals who he felt were meddling in his affairs. He had arrived at a definite decision on this point: his mills should never be unionized.... If his men had grievances he would meet with them individually, or committees sent by them--committees of themselves. He would not treat with so-called professional labor men. He regarded them as an impertinence.

Whatever differences should arise must be settled between his men and himself--with no outside interference. This was a position from which nothing would move him.... It will be seen he was separated by vast s.p.a.ces from socialism.

He called together his superintendents and department foremen and took them into his confidence regarding his plans for improving and enlarging the plant. They came, if not with an air of hostility, at least with reserve, for they were nearer to the men than they were to Bonbright. They shared the prejudices of the men. Some of them went away from the meeting with all of their old prejudices and with a new belief that Bonbright added hypocrisy to his other vices; some withheld judgment, some were hopeful. Few gave him implicit belief.

When he was done describing the plans for the factory, he said: "There is one more thing I want to speak about. It is as vital as the other.... We have recently gone through a strike which has caused bitterness toward this inst.i.tution on the part of the men. There has been especial bitterness toward myself. I have no defense of myself to make. It is too late to do that. If any of you men know the facts--you know them. On that point I have nothing to say.... This is what I want to impress on you men who are in authority. I want to be fair to every man in this plant. I am going to give them a fit place to work. Many parts of this plant are not now fit places. From every man I shall demand a day's work for a day's pay, but no more. You are in direct authority. I want each of you to treat his men with consideration, and to have an eye for their welfare. Perhaps I shall not be able to make the men feel toward me as I want them to feel, but if it can be brought about, I want them to know that their interests are my interests....

That is all, except that to-morrow notices will be posted in every department stating that my office door is open to any man who works for me--any man may come to me with complaint or with suggestion at any time. The notices will state that I want suggestions, and that any man who can bring me an idea that will improve his work or the work in his department or in the plant will be paid for it according to its value.

In short, I want the co-operation of every man who draws wages from this concern...."

As they went back to their departments the men who left the meeting discussed Bonbright, as he knew they would and hoped they would.

"It's a four flush," declared one old fellow, hotly.

"I don't know.... Wait and see," said another. "He looked like he meant it."

Wait and see! That was the general att.i.tude. They took nothing on trust, but put it squarely up to Bonbright to prove himself by his actions.

Mershon came into the office. "How about this construction work?" he asked. "Need an army of bricklayers. What about the unions?"

Was this question coming up so quickly? Bonbright frowned. His att.i.tude toward the unions must become public and would inevitably raise another obstacle between himself and the men, but he was determined on the point.

"A man has a right to join the Masons or the Knights of Columbus, or the Bricklayers' Union," he said, presently. "That's for him to say, but when he comes to work here he comes as an individual."

"Open shop?"

"Yes."

"You won't recognize any union? I want to know how I stand with them at the beginning."

"I'll recognize no union," said Bonbright.

The card of a young man from Richmond's office was brought in.

Bonbright sent word for him to be admitted.