ON the day his month was up Tommy reported to Mr. Thompson. The president of the Tecumseh Motor Company was reading a legal document. He put it down on the desk and looked at Tommy.

“The month is up to-day, Mr. Thompson,” said Tommy.

Mr. Thompson nodded. Then he asked, neither quizzically nor over-seriously, “Do the men in the shop like you?”

Tommy decided to tell the truth, unexplained and unexcused. “Yes, sir.”

Thompson said, slowly: “The reason I wanted such a man as I advertised for in the New York Herald was so that I might ask him the question I am now going to ask you.”

“Yes, sir,” said Tommy, and concentrated on listening.

“What difference do you find between my Tecumseh works and your college?”

Tommy heard the question very plainly; he even saw it in large print before his eyes. He repeated it to himself twice. This was not what he had expected to report upon. He needed to do some new thinking before he could answer.

This delayed the words of the answer so that Tommy presently began to worry. He knew that Mr. Thompson's mind worked with marvelous quickness. He looked at the owner of that mind. It gave him courage. He said, honestly:

“Mr. Thompson, I wasn't expecting that question, and I have to think.”

“Think away,” said Thompson, so cheerfully that Tommy blurted out:

“May I do my thinking aloud?”

“Do, Tommy. And don't be afraid to repeat or to walk back. I'll follow you, and the crystallization also. Think about the differences.” Tommy felt completely at his ease. “Well,” he began, and paused in order to visualize the shop and the men and their daily duties, “you tell your men what they must do to keep their jobs. Their product must always be the same, day after day. At college they tell a man what he must do in order that he himself may become the product of his own work. A man here is a cog in a machine. At college he is both a cog and a complete machine.” Tommy looked doubtfully at Mr. Thompson, who said:

“You are right—and very wrong. In the men themselves, Tommy, what is the difference?”

“I should say,” Tommy spoke cautiously, as if he were feeling his way, “that it was principally one of motives and, therefore, of—of rewards!”

“Yes, yes, so you implied. Don't bother to write a thesis. Give me your impressions both of the human units and of the aggregation.” Tommy remembered the impressions of his first day at the plant. The feeling had grown fainter as he had become better acquainted with his fellow-workmen and they with him.

“It's in the way the men feel. Of course,” he hastily explained, “that's a childish way to put it. At college a man belongs to the college twenty-four hours a day. If he makes one of the teams or the crew, it's fine. But if he doesn't, so long as the college wins he is tickled to death. I suppose at college a fellow has no family cares and—well, it is complicated, isn't it?” And Tommy smiled helplessly at Mr. Thompson.

“Tell me some more, Tommy,” said Mr. Thompson.

Tommy, still thinking of differences, went on, bravely indifferent to whether or not he was talking wisely.

“I rather think here a man's duty is fixed too—too—well, too mathematically. The exact reward of efficiency is fixed for him in advance. It keeps the company and the men apart. The college is equally the undergraduates and the faculty and the alumni and—It's hard to make myself understood. I hadn't thought about this particular—”

“Never mind all that, Tommy. What else can you think of now?”

“I think the men don't belong entirely to the shop because the shop doesn't belong entirely to them.”

“Do you want them to be the owners?”

“No, not the owners of the property, but to feel—”

“Hold on. How can they be owners and not owners?”

“Well, if you could find some way by which the owner also could be a laborer and the laborer also an owner, I think you'd come close to solving the problem.”

“Yes, I would. But how?” Mr. Thompson smiled.

“I don't know. I haven't the brains. But if I were boss I'd study it out. It is pretty hard where so many men are employed. All I know now is that the men, notwithstanding all the schemes to make them anxious to be first-class workmen, are working for money.”

“They can't all be artists or creative geniuses, with their double rewards,” interrupted Thompson.

“No; but here you pay them for the fixed thing. You don't pay them for the unfixed thing, as the college does. That's why we love it.”

“What is this unfixed thing and how can we pay for it?”

“Well, a man gives labor for money; he doesn't give service for anything but love.”

“Don't any of our men love their work?”

“Yes, lots of them. But they don't love the shop as we love the college.”

Thompson nodded thoughtfully. Then he asked, abruptly, “If you owned this plant and were successful financially, what would you do?” Tommy looked straight into his chief's eyes and answered, decisively, “I'd hire Thompson to run it for me, and I'd never interfere with him.” Thompson's face did not change. “What,” he asked, “would you expect Thompson to do?”

“To find out some way by which each man would do as much as he could without thinking of exactly how much he must do to earn so many dollars.”

Thompson laughed. “Some job that, Tommy!”

“That's why I'd hire you.”

“And the dividends for the stockholders?”

“They'd increase.”

“Are you sure of that?”

Tommy stiffened. “I know I've talked like a silly ass, Mr. Thompson. But—”

“That's why I hired you. From to-day on your salary will be thirty dollars a week.” Tommy felt the blood rush to his cheeks. Also he then and there composed a telegram to send to his father. Then it seemed to him it couldn't be true. Then that though it was true, it couldn't last.

“Mr. Thompson, I—I don't know how to thank you,” he stammered.

“Then don't try. And although you are not entitled to it by our rules and regulations, you will get two weeks' vacation, beginning Saturday, on full pay at the new rate. I'm going away today myself. As for your future—” He paused and frowned slightly.

Tommy knew it! It couldn't last!

“Yes, sir?”

“I'm afraid I'm going to keep you.” And Mr. Thompson turned his back on Tommy.