Production at the Ford plant having been closed down for its usual layoff period that began on the eve of Christmas, and now that festivities were over, the boarders became restless, chafing under the imposed idleness. Their seniority being in trusted positions, their jobs were not in jeopardy, as were so many others’ during these forced, unprotected layoffs without pay, still having no work to go to bothered them. Irritable, house-bound, constantly underfoot, like bored children, they kept getting in Hannah’s way—until finally she’d had enough and, like the mother she was, took her boys to task, telling them in no uncertain terms, to find something constructive to do with their time or else … neither her doughnuts not even her strudel would ever exit her kitchen again!
This shocking threat had immediate results. Zoltan scurried to his room to read Crime and Punishment from the small collection of books he had brought with him from Bulgaria. Jimmy bundled up in rough tweed, took long walks, wishing he had a gundog at his side. Johann wrote letters home, then gave in to the call of his Hollander blood and went skating, coaxing Rudy and Stan to accompany him by reminding them of the many young ladies always to be found on the great pond in need of a man’s steadying arm to cling to. John, always in a foul mood when separated from his passion, stopped brooding, jumped on his bicycle, and rode to the plant to observe the installation of two more automated assembly lines. Fritz, Carl, and Peter tinkered, repaired whatever Hannah pointed to, generally made themselves useful.
The old year was at an end,1914 was ready, impatient to set its benchmark on the history of the world. Nothing would ever be quite the same again.
“Fritz!” Shaking snow off himself like a dog returned home, John called again. Hearing an answer from below, he descended the stairs leading down to the cellar. Concerned by the note of urgency in John’s voice, Fritz looked up from what he was doing.
“Fritz, remember when you said something was going to happen? You had one of your feelings?”
“So?”
“Well, you were right! Something is going on! I don’t know what, but whatever it is, it’s important!”
As though disinterested, Fritz put down his sandpaper, fitted the rung into the back of the kitchen chair he was repairing, checked if it was ready for gluing in place.
“Well Fritz? Aren’t you interested?”
“Sure,” Fritz applied dabs of glue, “but you say you don’t know. So?”
“Fritz, it’s got to be important. An executive meeting held in secret and on New Year’s Day? You think that was only so they could all wish each other Happy New Year?”
“Maybe.” Fritz began to sandpaper another rung.
“There’s a rumor …”
“Rumors … all the time rumors!”
“Just listen! It seems that someone …”
“Ach! Again a someone!” Fritz shook his head.
“Will you listen … !”
“Calm down, my boy. Why so excited?”
“You drive me crazy when you do this!”
“This what?” Fritz’s voice held a tone of exaggerated innocence.
“You know exactly what I mean … you do this every time one of your feelings pays off!”
“Ach! How our baby boy knows me!”
“You … you son of a gun! You know! You already know there was a secret meeting! … How?”
“Hermann. His missus is friendly with one of the nighttime cleaning women, said in the Boss’s office his blackboard was full of scribbles, no chalk left, pencil shavings all over—but the wastepaper baskets? All empty! Not a thing in them! … Interesting?”
“So, it’s not just a rumor! … What else did he tell you?”
“No more.” Fritz fit in the last rung.
“I wish we knew who was there with Ford …”
“Who knows? Had to be Couzens for sure. Willis and Hawkins maybe.”
“I don’t suppose the woman could read what was left on the blackboard?”
“No, I don’t think so. Hermann said she is a simple peasant, just come over from Slovenia.”
“Damn!”
Fritz lifted the repaired chair down from the worktable.
“Only thing she knows real good is the signs for American money.”
“Yeah, first thing we all learned when we got here.” John started up the stairs.
Fritz pulled the string extinguishing the overhead light, followed him.
“Well, she said that the blackboard was covered all over with dollar signs.”
“What? So she did see something!! What do you think? With the new system in place—the assembly plant nearly fully automated … could be just projections for this year’s production?”
Fritz shook his head.
“Don’t think so. On New Year’s Day and in secret? Not like the Boss. Whatever was said in that room was important. More important than usual things.” Putting an arm around John’s shoulders, Fritz walked him down the hall. “Come, supper nearly ready—we go wash up. With other thing, we wait and see. When Henry Ford is ready, he’ll tell us what’s on his mind, like always. I have a feeling …”
Zoltan, at the top of the stairs about to start down, heard, stopped dead in his tracks.
“Feelings?! You got one of your feelings again? What, Fritz? What?”
Fritz held up a hand. “Don’t get excited! It’s only the old one.”
“Oh, that one.” Zoltan, relieved he had nothing new to worry about, hurried past them down the stairs.
They didn’t have long to wait. Just three days later, at noon on the fifth of January, following his own advice printed in his company’s Ford Times—“Early to bed and early to rise, work like hell and advertise”—representatives of Detroit’s press were summoned to Highland Park to be read what would become a historic announcement.
The Ford Motor Company, the greatest and most successful automobile manufacturing company in the world will, on January 12, inaugurate the greatest revolution in the matter of rewards to its workers ever known to the industrial world … at one stroke it will reduce the hours of labor from nine to eight and add to every man’s pay a share of the profits of the house. The smallest amount to be received by a man 22 years old and upwards will be $5.00 per day …
There followed the stipulations, the eligibility required to share in the ten million dollars that the company vowed to distribute over and above the regular wages of its men.
By afternoon, Detroit’s newspapers carried banner headlines, telegrams flashed across the nation, cablegrams proclaimed it to the world. By the sixth of January, Henry Ford was a national hero—by the seventh, an international celebrity.
For men whose wage scale stood at $2.34 or less for a grueling nine-hour day, the effect of the Ford Motor Company’s sweeping announcement was cataclysmic. In one fell stroke because of one man’s generosity, laborers saw themselves as future equals to the rich. Henry Ford had proven the truth of the American Dream—that all things were possible.
The Geiger boardinghouse celebrated. Never in the history of all their lives had anything quite as marvelous, as unexpected, happened. Every one of them was going to be a millionaire!
Fritz, his Santa Claus face flushed by excitement and a little too much Schnapps, danced a jig, singing.
Hooray! Hooray!
Five dollars a day,
So Henry Ford say …
And so it’s even more
Now just eight …
Then home we can go …
Through the big Ford gate!
Grabbing Hannah, he danced her around the kitchen, through the dining room, across the parlor, down the hall and back into the kitchen, the boarders and Jane following in joyous procession. Hannah, hugging him, kept repeating, “I don’t believe it! I don’t believe it! Five whole dollars a day! A fortune!”