The power was on. At his request I cut on one of the turret lathes and showed him how the turret turned automatically, bringing new tools to bear on the piece held in the jaws. He was intrigued.
“Amazing, isn’t it?”
“Huh?”
“Amazing, I said.”
“It’s a turret lathe. It’s called that because it has a turret. It keeps the guy on the lathe from changing setups all the time. What’s amazing about that?”
“Ladder, you have a restricted viewpoint. You are so close to these wonders of American mechanical genius that you can’t appreciate them. I am astounded.”
He saved the real kicker until we had walked up to the offices. Then he stood, chest inflated, thumbs in his vest pockets, and looked down at the silent and empty shop. It always grieves me to see machines idle.
He said, loudly: “Down there, Ladder, you see virgin fields awaiting our touch. We will transform that into a beehive. And down there will labor men — each intent on some minor operation, unconscious of the overall picture, working through the dull hours, unthinking, like beasts of the field. Somehow, it saddens me.”
“Don’t low-rate those guys, Doc. Some of them can read too, you know.”
“You don’t understand what I’m talking about, Ladder. But that’s okay. Don’t fret about it. Let’s get to work.”
“And just how do you propose to do that?”
He considered the problem without turning. Then he said: “Go over that gibberish that Mr. Murch gave you, and make me out a list of all the things that could be made in this plant.”
“What!”
“Surely that’s the way to approach the problem, old boy. With such a list, we can begin to plan. We have to use this plant for the greatest good for the greatest number.”
“Sure, but there’s just one or two little things maybe you ought to think about.”
“Glad to listen to suggestions, Ladder.”
“This isn’t a suggestion, Doc. It would take me about a year to make such a list. Down there you’ve got metal-working equipment. With that, skilled guys could make any gimmick that’s made out of metal. Our problem is to consider those things they can make down there that will use the maximum amount of the standing equipment. When you use the maximum amount, you get the lowest unit cost. I have a few ideas about the sort of thing we’ll have to investigate. Then, after we pick a couple of items, I make a report of what it’ll cost to start turning each of them out, and Murch picks one of his boys to make a market survey on each one. We combine the two reports and have our answer, provided patent rights don’t screw us up.”
But Doctor Walter S. Hawes, Economist, had stopped listening at the point where I said that the shop could make anything. He stood there in a dream, looking down at the pastel production line. I don’t know what he saw. I saw that the equipment was probably moored on solid concrete and steel, and would be one stinking job to shift around — which would probably have to be done.
I spread the blueprints out on a drafting-table in the next office, and then called: “Hey, Doc! Come on in here while I show you something.”
He walked to the doorway, looked through me and murmured: “You do whatever you’re used to doing, Ladder. I think I’ll wander around for a bit. I’m beginning to get an idea. Something you said—” He floated off.
After I had stood by the windows for a time, orienting the actuality with the blueprints, I did some wandering too. A few times I saw Hawes in the distance, looking as well suited to his environment as a harpsichord in a caboose. Drifting and dreaming.
On the way back to town for lunch, I told him what I was working on. “Some kind of portable spray deal, Doc. Like paint-sprayers, or bug-dusting gimmicks — or maybe even portable metal-spraying outfits. That’s pretty close to what the place was designed for, and it’s always good to stick pretty close to original intent.”
“Sure. Sure,” he mumbled.
After lunch I phoned Sol in New York, and told him to dig me up some blueprints of several kinds of spray apparatus, and send them up as quick as he could make it. That would give me something I could go on. I could list the operations as shown by the prints, and see how they fitted the layout. It had begun to look as though I would have very little trouble with Hawes. How wrong a man can be!
I got my prints the next day, which was a Wednesday, and by Saturday I had a sweet plan. It involved a slight redesigning of a portable spray gun to fit it to the production layout, but it would mean the minimum shifting of the production line, and a utilization of the existing tools that was almost perfect. It would leave me with three surplus milling machines and one surplus drill press, over and above the normal standby equipment. Those four could be sold to acquire the two additional gang drills that would be needed. Sometimes a job works that way; you happen to select the right trial balloon the first time, and your troubles are diminished a hundred times. Hawes stayed out of my hair. He found a typewriter and kept up a continuous rattling in one corner of one of the offices. Also he drew pictures.
We knocked off at five on Saturday afternoon, and I steered him down into the bar o£ the hotel. After the second Martini, I said: “Doc, our troubles are over. I’ve got a gimmick that’ll fit the production line like a glove, and a little bird told me this noon over the phone that the market picture is good and that we can probably get a lease of patent rights.”
He frowned at me. “Gimmick? Don’t tell me that you think you have a report to make?”
“What do you think I’ve been doing out there, Doc? Sharpening my Boy Scout knife? While you’ve been mooning around and writing a thesis, I’ve done the work.”
“Ha!” he said flatly. “What you say merely proves to me that you are stuck tight in your narrow little rut, too limited in mental caliber to see over your shoestrings.”
“And maybe you’ll keep those pretty teeth longer, Doc, if you make your remarks a little less personal.”
“I’m being completely impersonal. My report is ready to turn in. It has a breadth of vision that will undoubtedly alarm you. Here’s one of my carbons of it. Take a look.” He passed it across the table.
After I read the first few paragraphs, I gulped the rest of my drink and ordered a double. When it arrived, I groped for it and lifted it to my lips with shaking hand.
After I had climbed through all sixteen pages, I still didn’t believe it. It was too utterly fantastic — and somehow it was extraordinarily typical.
In brief, he proposed that the Poughkeepsie plant be made the sole production source for an experimental community, and that land be acquired adjoining the plant grounds for the erection of a village to be composed solely of the workers in the plant. Temporary barracks would be supplied, and lots of lumber and pipe and stuff. Then, the workers would build their own houses, using the plant to manufacture the necessary hinges and window catches and heating units and so on — all the hardware that goes into a house. During this period, they would be paid by Contract Electric, who would be the cost-plus-fixed-fee contractor on a Government contract which would be written to provide for the establishment of this experimental community. Phase One would be the building and the equipping of the houses, and he anticipated in his report that it would be easy to recruit skilled workers who were dissatisfied with their living arrangements in nearby cities.
Phase Two would be the stepping out of the picture of Government advisors and the taking over of the management function by the workers. A community council would determine what the plant should make, and requisitions would be placed on Contract Electric by the community for the necessary raw materials. These items manufactured over and above the community needs would be sold in the open market, and the proceeds put into two separate funds. One would be to pay back Contract Electric for the wages during the nonproductive period and the raw materials. The other would be a purchase fund, eventually to increase to the size where the plant could be purchased in the name of the community.