The Last Penny by Edwin Lefevre

Name: The Last Penny
Author: Edwin Lefevre

Thomas Leigh graduates from college with no thought beyond a summer of invitations and a casual request to his father for money. At breakfast his father, William R. Leigh, an aging bookkeeper at the Metropolitan National Bank, tells Tommy he is now a man and must hear "man's talk." Mr. Leigh produces a small morocco-bound account book in which he has recorded, to the penny, every dollar spent on Tommy since infancy — including his mother's death in childbirth and the doctor's and funeral bills — totaling over seventeen thousand dollars. He reveals his salary was never more than twenty-five hundred dollars a year, far too little to cover Tommy's schooling, college, and vacations. When Tommy asks how his father managed it, Mr. Leigh forces him to draw the conclusion himself: he embezzled the difference from the bank, in fulfillment of a promise to Tommy's dying mother that their son would have every advantage. Horrified, believing himself the son of a thief and dreading discovery, Tommy resolves to repay every cent. His father gives him a hundred dollars in gold that Tommy's mother had set aside "for Tommy's first scrape," and Tommy leaves for Dayton, Ohio, to answer a help-wanted advertisement. In Dayton, Tommy is hired by Mr. Thompson, president of the Tecumseh Motor Company, after an interview in which Tommy's blunt honesty about having nothing to offer but himself wins Thompson over. Tommy starts as a low-paid clerk running an informal "information bureau," boards with a mechanic named Bill Byrnes at Mrs. Clayton's, and befriends the shop's workers. Thompson subjects him to odd tests of memory, concentration, and character, gradually moving him through departments — the shop floor, the selling department under Mr. Grosvenor — while withholding explanation. Tommy sends small remittances home and refuses further money from his father, treating the debt as sacred. Bill Byrnes, whose own father was an unproductive "mouth-inventor," is secretly developing a kerosene carburetor in a woodshed workshop. Tommy lends him the gold coins from his mother to buy needed equipment, and the two experiment together, eventually consulting Professor Jenkins at the Case School and patent lawyer Hudson G. Kemble in Cleveland, who finds a possibly conflicting prior patent and advises further testing. Thompson, learning of Byrnes's invention, offers generous terms: use of company facilities and interest-free loans against future royalties, without requiring Byrnes to sign away his patents. He also raises Tommy's salary to thirty dollars a week and gives him a new position as an intermediary between workers and management — the men nickname him "Door Opener." Thompson explains his broader philosophy: that the company's goal is not just profit but a democratized, permanent enterprise where labor and capital share fairly. Thompson then sends Tommy to New York to sell shares of a proposed new stock issue to personal friends and their families, as a way of building Tommy's stake and responsibility in the company. Back in the small house on West Twelfth Street, Tommy finds his father visibly aged and anxious. Mr. Leigh studies Thompson's financial statement with an accountant's sharp eye and warns Tommy that the business climate is poor, repeatedly and almost desperately insisting he must help Tommy succeed at raising the money, though Tommy insists on trying alone. Tommy approaches Colonel Willetts, father of his college friends Rivington and Marion Willetts, explaining the company's profit-sharing plans; the colonel is skeptical of mixing altruism with business but agrees to buy two hundred shares for his children as a gesture of friendship, while pressing Tommy to try again for more. That evening, at dinner with the Willetts family, Tommy recounts his Dayton experiences to Marion, who listens with open admiration, and begins describing Thompson's philosophy to her when the excerpt breaks off.

By Edwin Lefevre · First published 1914 · Genre: Finance, Fiction, Drama · 22 chapters · 77,340 words

First lines

THOMAS LEIGH, ex-boy, considered the dozen neckties before him a long time, and finally decided to wait until after breakfast.

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The Last Penny is listed on Textopian as a novel by Edwin Lefevre, dated 1914 CE.

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Work type: Novel
Author: Edwin Lefevre
Date: 1914 CE
Language: English
Genres: Finance, Fiction, Drama, Historical, Psychological
Length: 77,340 words
Structure: 22 chapters, 2,018 paragraphs
Reading fit: Easy (6th Grade)

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Genres

Finance — The plot revolves around financial markets and investments.
Fiction — The narrative is a work of fiction with developed characters and plot.
Drama — The story includes dramatic elements and personal conflicts.
Historical — The setting and context reflect historical financial practices.