“The object of this plant is to make automobiles—­to make good automobiles, and to make the most of them that can be made.  If one man falls down on his job it delays everybody else.  Suppose one man finishing this”—­he held up a tiny forging—­“does a botch job. ...  There’s just one of these to a car, and he’s held up the completion of a car.  That means money. ...  Suppose the same man manages to turn out two perfect castings like this in the time it once took to turn out one. ...  Then he’s a valuable man, and he hustles up the whole organization to keep even with him.  Every job is important because it is a part of the whole operation, which is the turning out of a complete automobile.  Understand?”

“Yes.”

“Some men are created to remain laborers or mechanics all their lives.  Some are foreordained bookkeepers.  A few can handle labor—­but that’s the end of them.  A very few have executive and organizing and financial ability.  The plums are for them. ...  Every man in this plant has a chance at them.  You have. ...  On the other hand, you can keep on earning what you’re getting now until you’re sixty.  It’s up to you. ...  I’m giving you a start.  That’s not sentiment.  It’s because you’ve education and brains—­and there’s something in heredity.  Your folks have been successful—­to a degree and in their own way.  I’m making a bet on you—­that’s all.  I’m taking a chance that you’ll pay back at the box office what you’re going to cost for some months.  In other words, instead of your paying for your education, I’m sending you to school on the chance that you’ll graduate into a man that will make money for me.  But you’ve got to make good or out you go.  Fair?”

“Yes,” said Bonbright.

“All right.  Remember it. ...You’ve got the stuff in you to make a man at the top—­maybe.  But you don’t start at the top.  You’ve got to scramble up just like anybody else.  Right now you’re not worth a darn.  You don’t know anything and you can’t do anything.  Day labor’s where you belong—­but you couldn’t stand it.  And it wouldn’t be sense to put you at it, or I would.  I’d set you to sweeping out the machine shops if I thought you needed it. ...Maybe you figured on sitting at a mahogany desk?”

“I came to do whatever you put me at,” Bonbright said.  “I’ve been fed up on sitting at a mahogany desk.”

“Good—­if you mean it.  I hear a lot of four flush about what men are willing to do.  Heaps of them repeat copybook platitudes. ...You’re going to wear overalls and get your hands dirty.  If you don’t like it you can always quit. ...I know how to do darn nearly everything that’s done in this place.  The man who gets up near me has got to know it, too.”  Here was a hint for Bonbright of the possibilities that Malcolm Lightener opened up to him.  “This morning you’re going into the machine shop to run a lathe, and you’re going to stay there till you know how it’s done.  Then we’ll move you some place else.  Your place is in the office.  But how soon you get there, or whether you ever get there, is up to you.  Like the looks of it?”