yes..!!what you said is right..thanxGood answer! You can make this work on a production line basis if you sort every transistor for gain and only promise a very narrow range of temperature. But that was then. In todays world, sorting transistors like that is no longer considered "production line" behavior.
ps, thanks for the education. I've seen single resistor bias in several devices over the last 40 years and wondered how the designer got away with that. Now I know.