Chapter 32: The First Industrial Dream

Chapter 32: Chapter 32: The First Industrial Dream

I

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 8 July 1909

The new warehouse was earning its rent by the second week of July, and Ayaan could not stop thinking about what it did not make.

He sat at the back table after the shop had closed, with a blank notebook before him and a pencil that he had not yet used.

Paper comes from Austria and Germany, ink from Trieste, and steel nibs from Birmingham, and the press that prints our registers was cast in Leipzig.

He wrote the four lines, and they looked very small upon the page.

Then he began to write the longer list, the one that he had carried in his memory since the first year of his second life.

Iron and steel, machine tools, flour milling, cement, cotton thread, dyes and acids, and electric current.

Zeynep came down the stair with a shawl about her shoulders, and she stood behind his chair and read the page without a word.

"You have drawn up a catalogue of the whole world," she said.

"I have drawn up a catalogue of what the Empire buys abroad and cannot make for itself."

"They are not the same list?"

"They are the same list, and that is the difficulty." He laid the pencil down. "I know that a modern state needs every one of these things, and I know in what order other states acquired them."

"And you do not know how to make them."

"I know what a lathe is for, Zeynep, and I can draw its shape from memory. I could not tell you what temper the bed must have, or why one casting cracks and another does not."

A memory is not a trade. I can remember the shape of a thing for which I have never held the tools.

He had understood it before, in the abstract, in the matter of firearms and ammunition. He understood it now with the pencil in his hand.

"Then you must not pretend," said Zeynep.

"I do not intend to."

"I did not say that you would. I said that you must not, because there will be a day when someone asks you a question about steel, and you will know the answer and have no way to say how you know it." She rested her hand on the back of his chair. "On that day it would be a great deal better to have an engineer standing beside you."

"I should like to find one before the day arrives."

"Then the first sheet of your notebook is the wrong one." She turned a page for him. "Begin with a list of the men who make things, and not with a list of the things."

He looked at the clean paper, and he smiled a little.

Then he wrote at the top of it Foundry master, machinist, engineer, and someone who has failed and learned from it.

"The last is the most important," said Zeynep.

"It is always the most important."

"Then it will take the longest to find."

II

Constantinople, Kas?mpa?a — 14 July 1909

The workshops of Kas?mpa?a lay along the northern shore of the Golden Horn, where the hills came down to the water and the air smelled of coal smoke and hot iron.

Ayaan walked them for most of the morning with his hat in his hand, and he was surprised by how many there were.

There were smiths who shod horses and smiths who forged anchors, and coppersmiths with their cauldrons set out upon the stones. In a long shed with a tin roof, a dozen men were fitting the boiler of a small steamer under the eye of a British foreman who spoke to them in loud, slow English.

He stopped at the door of the shed and watched for a quarter of an hour.

The foreman gave an instruction, and a Greek apprentice carried it to the Turkish gang, and the Turkish gang did what it had always done. The British foreman frowned at the result, but he did not correct it.

He is paid to supervise and not to teach. And the men have no one to teach them.

At the end of the quay was a yard enclosed by a low wall, and above its gate hung a bell of dark metal with a plain inscription.

Inside, a heavy man of fifty in a leather apron was pouring a brass fitting into a sand mold, and the heat of the furnace reached Ayaan’s face at a distance of ten paces.

"The shop is closed to visitors," said the man, without turning.

"I am not a visitor, Usta. I am a stationer who has come to ask a question."

"Then you are in the wrong yard. Paper is sold in Emin?nü."

"I know it. I sell it there." Ayaan stepped nearer. "I wish to know why the fittings for the steamers in this quarter are cast in Glasgow and shipped here, when you cast them yourself."

The man set down his ladle and wiped his forehead with the back of his wrist.

"What is your name?"

"Ayaan Hassan."

"?smail," said the foundry master. "They call me ?smail Usta, and the foremen call me worse." He studied his visitor. "You are very young to be asking such questions."

"I am young to be asking many things. I find that men answer them nevertheless."

?smail laughed once, shortly, and led him to the bench at the side of the yard, where a cracked casting lay on a cloth.

"This is why," he said. "A shipowner will pay for a Glasgow fitting and wait three months, because a Glasgow fitting does not crack. Mine cracks one time in five, and a shipowner remembers the one."

"Why does it crack?"

"The iron is poor, and the mold is poor, and I cannot say which is worse." He pointed to the grain of the break. "I buy my pig iron from a merchant who buys it from another merchant, and no one has ever tested it. I know from the color of the flame whether the heat is right, but I cannot tell you what is in the metal."

"If someone could test the iron before you poured it?"

"Then I would pour only the good, and the fifth casting would not crack." The foundry master looked at him sharply. "That is a great deal of ifs for a boy who sells pens."

"It is a great many ifs, and I do not know the answer to any of them," said Ayaan. "I have come to learn which ifs are worth the trouble of answering."

?smail was silent, and then he reached into the pocket of his apron.

"Come on Friday after the noon prayer, when the furnace is cold," he said. "I will show you what I cannot do, and you may decide whether it is worth anything."

On Friday the furnace was cold, and ?smail kept his word.

He showed Ayaan the cracked castings in their rows along the wall, each one marked in chalk with the date and the reason that its maker believed it had failed.

There were forty-one of them, and in the corner of the yard a heap of broken molds.

"This is what I cannot do," said ?smail, and he did not look ashamed. "I have never shown it to a customer, because a customer wants to see only the fifth casting that held."

"I want to see all of them," said Ayaan. "The ones that held teach me nothing about what to pay for."

III

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 22 July 1909

Mustafa Efendi spread the customs returns upon his desk with the air of a man displaying a map of a country that he knows well and dislikes.

"I will tell you what comes through this port, and you may draw your own conclusions," he said. "I have kept these sheets for eleven years, for my own purposes, and you are the first person who has asked to read them."

Ayaan read in silence.

Iron bars, rails and sheets filled the first column, and below them came machinery, boilers and pumps, and then flour, cement and thread. The totals grew from year to year, and the proportion that came from abroad grew with them.

"It is the same in every port from Salonica to Basra," said Mustafa. "The Empire buys what it needs from the people who sell it, and the people who sell it set the price."

"And in a war?"

"In a war the price is whatever the seller wishes, and the ships do not always come."

Ayaan said nothing of what he knew of the years ahead. He asked a different question.

"Which of these could be made here, Baba Mustafa, with the means that exist today, and not with means that must be invented?"

The old merchant took up a pencil and, after a time, began to mark the columns.

"Flour, certainly. We grind a great deal of grain in old mills that waste a fifth of it, and a steam mill with proper rollers would pay for itself in four years." He made a second mark. "Cement is imported, but the limestone is on our own shores, and there is no reason that a kiln should not be built at Eskihisar."

"And the machinery?"

"That is the hardest, and the one that matters most." Mustafa laid down the pencil. "A man who can make a machine can make every other thing. A man who must buy his machines will always be a customer."

"Then the first object is not a flour mill," said Ayaan slowly. "It is the men who can make the parts of a flour mill."

"You are beginning to speak of the Empire’s affairs with some authority."

"I am a stationer who has read the customs returns."

"The two are not so very different." Mustafa lifted the sheets and squared them upon the desk. "I will tell you what I have never told a minister, because he would not have believed me. The Empire does not lack men of talent, and it lacks only the place where a man of talent may be employed at a proper wage."

"I know a foundry master who would agree."

"Then I advise you to hire him before a foreigner does." He placed the sheets in Ayaan’s hands. "Take these, and bring them back when you have copied the figures."

"I have already copied them, Baba Mustafa."

The old merchant looked at him for a moment, and his eyebrows moved.

"Then keep them anyway," he said. "I find that I am glad to have given them to someone."

IV

Constantinople, Beyaz?t — 3 August 1909

The Imperial School of Engineering stood in a grey building near the Ministry of War, and its corridors were crowded with young men in dark coats who carried rolled drawings under their arms.

Ayaan had written ahead to a professor of mechanics, whose name Mustafa Efendi had obtained from an importer of instruments, and the professor received him in a room of drafting tables and brass compasses.

"A stationer," said Professor Nuri Bey, with a trace of amusement. "I confess that I did not expect a stationer."

"I do not need your own time, Efendi, and I should not ask for it. I should like the name of a graduate who is capable, and who has not yet found a position equal to his ability."

"That is a particular request."

"It is a particular need."

The professor looked at him thoughtfully and then walked to the window.

"There is a young man who finished last June, near the head of his class, and who has since been drawing plans for a contractor who does not pay him." He turned. "His name is Halil R?fat. He is proud, and he is not tactful, and he is the best draughtsman that I have taught in ten years."

"Where may I find him?"

"In the reading room of the library, I should think, because he cannot afford to be anywhere else."

Halil R?fat was twenty-three, narrow in the shoulders, with ink on his cuffs and a drawing board propped against his knees. He listened to Ayaan’s proposal with a face that revealed nothing, and when it was finished he laid down his pencil.

"You are a stationer, and you are nineteen years old," he said. "You wish to employ an engineer."

"I wish to commission a single piece of work and to pay for it at the price that you name."

"Then name the work."

"In my warehouse, the registers that we sell are ruled by hand, one line at a time, by boys with straight edges." Ayaan took a sheet from his pocket. "We sell several hundred a month, and the boys cannot keep pace. The lines are not even, and the customers say so."

"A ruling machine," said Halil, and for the first time his expression changed. "A frame, a set of pens upon a bar, and a roller to feed the sheet."

"I do not know how it is built. I know only what it must do."

"You do not wish to tell me how to build it?"

"No." Ayaan said it plainly. "I have seen a drawing of such a machine, and I could sketch it for you. I would sooner you built the one that you believe in, and tell me where my sketch is wrong."

Halil studied him for some moments.

"Nobody has said that to me," he said. "In two years, no one has asked what I would build."

"Then I am asking."

"It will take three weeks, and it will cost twelve liras in iron and wood." The engineer lifted his chin. "And I will not alter the design to please you."

"I should be disappointed if you did."

"Then we have an agreement, Efendi, provided that you pay me in advance."

"Half in advance and half upon delivery," said Ayaan. "My wife keeps the accounts, and she will not agree to more."

V

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 20 August 1909

Zeynep read the proposal twice, and then she placed it upon the table between the three small ledgers.

"You wish to take a Kas?mpa?a foundry master and a young engineer into an enterprise that has no name and no product," she said.

"I wish to take them into an experiment."

"An experiment is an enterprise that has not yet decided to be honest." She said it mildly. "I should like to hear the sum."

"Forty liras, from the venture account, over six months." He had written the figures in advance. "Twelve for Halil’s ruling machine, which will pay its own cost in the warehouse within a year. Eight for ?smail Usta’s furnace tests, so that he may learn what is in his iron. The remainder for materials, a bench, and a small room in the yard that ?smail has offered."

"And the aim?"

"To learn whether two men who have never worked together can make something that neither could make alone, and what it would cost to employ them properly."

"That is a better answer than I expected." She did not smile. "Which of my rules does it threaten?"

"The second, if I am careless. The venture account holds ninety-eight liras, and forty is a good part of it."

"It is two-fifths of what we have decided we may lose." She touched the page. "If it is lost entirely, shall we be sorry?"

He considered it honestly.

"I shall be sorry, and I shall not be ruined, and neither shall you."

"Then it is a venture and not a hope." Zeynep took up the pen. "I will add a condition, and I wish you to hear it before you answer."

"Please."

"Each man shall sign a paper that states what he is to be paid, what he is to do, and who owns what he makes." She looked at him steadily. "I will not have either of them wake in a year and find that he has given away his work for the price of a bench."

She is thinking of Halil, and of the men who drew plans for a contractor who did not pay.

"I should have proposed it myself," said Ayaan.

"You would have proposed it a week from now, after the first quarrel." She wrote a line upon the page. "Their work shall remain theirs, and the House shall hold the right to produce it and sell it. If they leave, they take the knowledge of their own hands, and we keep the right that we have bought."

"It is fair."

"It is better than fair. It is the only arrangement that will make men of talent stay." She blew upon the ink. "A man who is held by a contract may leave on the day it ends, and a man who is held by his own interest will stay."

"You should have been a minister."

"Ministers do not read the second page of a contract," said Zeynep. "I do."

VI

Constantinople, üsküdar — 28 August 1909

Fehmi brought his page to the library door on a Saturday morning, and he held it out with the care of a clerk who has learned that his master reads the margins.

"The stationer has been three times to Kas?mpa?a, Efendi, and once to the School of Engineering at Beyaz?t."

"For what purpose?"

"To engage a foundry master and a young engineer. The first is a man named ?smail, who casts fittings, and the second a graduate named Halil R?fat, who has been without a post since June."

Cevdet took the page and read it through, and then he read it a second time.

"Did he speak with any officer of the Ministry of War, or with any deputy, or with any person connected to the Palace?"

"None, Efendi. He spoke with the foundry master about the cracking of castings, and with the engineer about a machine for ruling paper."

"A machine for ruling paper."

"I am told that it is to be used in his own warehouse." Fehmi hesitated. "A British foreman at the shipyard asked the foundry master afterwards who the young man was, and was told that he was a stationer."

"And did the foreman believe it?"

"I could not say, Efendi. He wrote something in a notebook."

Cevdet laid the page upon the desk and looked out at the pasha’s garden, where an old gardener was cutting the late roses.

He has gone to the workshops, and not to the Palace. He wishes to find men who can make things, and not men who can give orders.

It was the opposite of what he had expected from a young man of ambition. In his own experience, ambition went toward the nearest source of authority and attached itself there, and it was seldom interested in a foundry yard.

"Have a watch kept upon the yard in Kas?mpa?a," he said. "I do not mean upon the stationer, but upon any stranger who takes an interest in it."

"For what reason, Efendi?"

"Because a foreign foreman who writes in a notebook is a man who may be a customer, and may be something else." He paused. "If the stationer is building what I believe he is building, someone will wish to know of it before the Empire does."

"Shall I inform him?"

"No." Cevdet took up the pen. "I am forbidden to tell him of the reports, and I shall keep to that. But I may see that no one reaches the yard without being noticed, and that costs him nothing."

Fehmi bowed and went out, and the old gardener’s shears clicked in the garden below.

Cevdet opened the folder and found the sheet that bore a single name. Beneath the pencilled line that he had written in April, he added a second.

He has begun to build. I do not yet know what, and I do not think that he does.

He considered for a moment whether to strike out the second sentence, and he left it.

VII

Constantinople, Kas?mpa?a — 9 September 1909

The room in ?smail’s yard had been a store for charcoal, and it smelled of it still, though Halil had swept the floor and scrubbed the walls with lye.

On the long bench stood the ruling machine, finished a week early. It was a wooden frame with a row of fine steel pens upon an iron bar, and a roller turned by a brass crank.

Ayaan fed in a sheet and turned the handle, and thirty-two lines appeared upon the page in a single pass, each as straight as the edge of a rule.

"It is faster by twenty times," said Halil, and he did not trouble to hide the pleasure in his voice. "A boy could rule a ream in an afternoon."

"It is better than the drawing I showed you," said Ayaan.

"It is better than your drawing in two places. The pens were set too close, and the feed would have slipped on damp paper." The engineer folded his arms. "I told you that I would not alter it to please you."

"And I told you that I should be disappointed if you did."

?smail Usta stood at the end of the bench with his thick arms crossed, and he had not yet spoken.

"It is a clever frame," he said at last. "The bar is cast iron, and it will warp in a year."

"It will not warp if it is cast properly," said Halil. "I specified a seasoned casting, and it was not what I received."

"Then you received it from a foundry that does not know its metal."

"I received it from a foundry that does not test it."

The two men looked at one another across the bench, and Ayaan kept silent.

He had known that this moment would come. He had known that a foundry master of fifty and an engineer of twenty-three would not meet without a quarrel, and he had decided, on the walk from Emin?nü, that he would not stand between them.

"You are both right," said ?smail slowly. "I cannot test my metal, and he cannot tell me what the test should be."

"I can tell you," said Halil. "I have read how it is done in Sheffield, and I do not have the apparatus."

"I can tell you how to read a break by eye, and I do not have the words to write it." The foundry master uncrossed his arms. "If you wrote down what I say, we might build the apparatus together."

"I should require a month, and a small furnace of my own."

"You may have the corner of the yard behind the kiln."

They turned away from Ayaan and bent over the cracked casting that ?smail had kept upon the bench, and in a few moments they were speaking in a language of grain and temper and weight that he could not follow.

He did not try.

He stood in the doorway and listened to them argue, and he understood for the first time that the thing which he had been seeking was not a machine or a factory or a list. It was this.

Two men who know more than I do, in a room that I have paid for, disagreeing about the truth.

Zeynep had come in behind him, with a basket upon her arm and her shawl loosened in the heat of the day.

"They have begun," she said quietly.

"They began a minute ago. They have not asked me anything since."

"That is how you know that it is working." She set down the basket and took out a cloth bundle, from which came the smell of his mother’s bread. "Your mother sent a loaf for the engineer, who she says is too thin."

"She has not met him."

"She has met every young man who has ever looked hungry, and she has decided in advance." She smiled. "Shall we write the contracts tonight?"

"We shall write them tonight, in your hand."

"And the notebook?"

"I have a second page of it to fill." Ayaan watched the two men at the bench. "It will not be a list of machines, but a list of the things that I do not know, and of the men who do."

"It will be a longer list."

"It will be a good deal longer, and it will be worth more." He took the loaf from her hand and broke it. "Let us begin with the iron."