Abner Shutt continues to supervise the spindle-nut screwing in the factory. He no longer works with his hands except in order to demonstrate the proper technique or in case of emergency. Though he does his best in this new position, “in his secret heart he never ceased to be afraid of it” (36). Abner finds that supervising men demands more thinking and requires more responsibility. An easy-going person, Abner dislikes scolding the workers and finds that “when they were rebuked, they would blame their boss instead of themselves” (37).

In 1907, there is another Wall Street panic, which reduces sales slightly. However, the Ford Company continues to produce cars more and more efficiently: “In the year after the panic he produced 6,181 cars, a little over three per worker; but within three years he was managing to get thirty-five thousand cars out of six thousand workers” (37). Abner, who has learned to make twice as many cars per year, receives a 15% raise each year and considers himself lucky because he doesn’t have to stand in Detroit’s long breadlines.

Over the years, poverty and childbearing have taken their toll on Milly, who “ha[s] many pains, the cause of which [is] obscure” (38) and is exhausted by having so many children to bring up. Her and Abner’s fifth and sixth children die, and the doctor advises her not to give birth again. Milly begins to avoid her husband and concentrate on the children. Her daily housekeeping work is grueling.

Meanwhile, Abner works six days a week, showing up early to work every day, insisting that his team work steadily, reliably, and safely. For Abner the factory is not “an immense and glorified sweatshop; he [thinks] of it as a place of both duty and opportunity, where he [does] what he [is] told and [gets] his living in return” (40). Abner thinks the factory a “wonderful place” (40) and dreams of having enough money to buy one of the cars it makes at second hand so that he can take Milly and the children into the country on weekends and buy vegetables cheaper than in the city.