Dwarves are more interested in gold

"... the player must make an offer to tempt the desired character type into his service. As a rule of thumb, a minimum offer of 100 Gold Pieces would be required to tempt a human into service, dwarves are more interested in gold, Magic-Users and elves desire magical items, and Clerics want some assurance of having a place of worship in which to house themselves."

- Men & Magic, p. 12

This line from Volume 1 of the original little brown books stands out to me. "Dwarves are more interested in gold."

Apparently the common consensus is that this means dwarves want more gold than other races to be hired. This makes sense, as dwarves have advantages that make them extra useful as a hireling.

On the other hand, my first reading of this was that dwarves would be more pleased with gold than other races. If you were to offer 100gp to a human and to a dwarf, the dwarf would be more interested. Which is to say, you could actually get away with paying them less.

Just one of many cases in OD&D where the conversational, example-driven text leads to massive ambiguity about what the actual rule is supposed to be, though one I hadn't seen anyone talk about specifically. In this case, complete opposite interpretations can both adhere to the text, "rules as written".