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ONE WAY OUT

A MIDDLE-CLASS NEW-ENGLANDEREMIGRATES TO AMERICA

ONE WAY OUT

A MIDDLE-CLASS NEW-ENGLANDEREMIGRATES TO AMERICA

BYWILLIAM CARLETON

BOSTONSMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANYPUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1911

BY SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY(INCORPORATED)

_Entered at Stationers' Hall_

Published January 28, 1911; second printing January

_Presswork by Geo. H. Ellis Co. , Boston, U. S. A. _

TO HERWHO WASN'T AFRAID

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

 I A BORN AND BRED NEW ENGLANDER 1

 II THIRTY DOLLARS A WEEK 18

 III THE MIDDLE CLASS HELL 37

 IV WE EMIGRATE TO AMERICA 53

 V WE PROSPECT 67

 VI I BECOME A DAY LABORER 82

 VII NINE DOLLARS A WEEK 94

 VIII SUNDAY 112

 IX PLANS FOR THE FUTURE 125

 X THE EMIGRANT SPIRIT 146

 XI NEW OPPORTUNITIES 165

 XII OUR FIRST WINTER 183

 XIII I BECOME A CITIZEN 200

 XIV FIFTEEN DOLLARS A WEEK 216

 XV THE GANG 234

 XVI DICK FINDS A WAY OUT, TOO 252

 XVII THE SECOND YEAR 266

XVIII MATURING PLANS 283

 XIX ONCE AGAIN A NEW ENGLANDER 298

ONE WAY OUT

ONE WAY OUT

CHAPTER I

A BORN AND BRED NEW ENGLANDER

My great-grandfather was killed in the Revolution; my grandfatherfought in the War of 1812; my father sacrificed his health in theCivil War; but I, though born in New England, am the first of myfamily to emigrate to this country--the United States of America. Thatsounds like a riddle or a paradox. It isn't; it's a plain statement offact. 

As a matter of convenience let me call myself Carleton. I've no desireto make public my life for the sake of notoriety. My only idea inwriting these personal details is the hope that they may help somepoor devil out of the same hole in which I found myself mired. Theyare of too sacred a nature to share except impersonally. Even behindthe disguise of an assumed name I passed some mighty uncomfortablehours a few months ago when I sketched out for a magazine and saw incold print what I'm now going to give in full. It made me feel asthough I had pulled down the walls of my house and was living my lifeopen to the view of the street. For a man whose home means what itdoes to me, there's nothing pleasant about that. 

However, I received some letters following that brief article whichmade the discomfort seem worth while. My wife and I read them overwith something like awe. They came from Maine and they came fromTexas; they came from the north, they came from the south, until wenumbered our unseen friends by the hundred. Running through theseletters was the racking cry that had once rended our own hearts--"Howto get out!" As we read some of them our throats grew lumpy. 

"God help them, " said my wife over and over again. 

As we read others, we felt very glad that our lives had been in someway an inspiration to them. After talking the whole matter over wedecided that if it helped any to let people know how we ourselvespulled out, why it was our duty to do so. For that purpose, which isthe purpose of this book, Carleton is as good a name as any. 

My people were all honest, plodding, middle-class Americans. Theystuck where they were born, accepted their duties as they came, earneda respectable living and died without having money enough left to makea will worth while. They were all privates in the ranks. But they werethe best type of private--honest, intelligent, and loyal unto death. They were faithful to their families and unswerving in their duty totheir country. The records of their lives aren't interesting, but theyare as open as daylight. 

My father seems to have had at first a bit more ambition stirringwithin him than his ancestors. He started in the lumber business forhimself in a small way but with the first call for troops sold out andenlisted. He did not distinguish himself but he fought in more battlesthan many a man who came out a captain. He didn't quit until the warwas over. Then he crawled back home subdued and sick. He refused everto draw a pension because he felt it was as much a man's duty to fightfor his country as for his wife. He secured a position as head clerkand confidential man with an old established lumber firm and here hestuck the rest of his life. He earned a decent living and in thecourse of time married and occupied a comfortable home. My mother diedwhen I was ten and after that father sold his house and we boarded. Itwas a dreary enough life for both of us. Mother was the sort of motherwho lives her whole life in caring for her men folks so that her goingleft us as helpless as babies. For a long while we didn't even knowwhen to change our stockings. But obeying the family tradition, fatheraccepted his lot stoically and as final. No one in our family evermarried twice. With the death of the wife and mother the home ceasedand that was the end of it. 

I remember my father with some pride. He was a tall, old-fashionedlooking man with a great deal of quiet dignity. I came to know himmuch better in the next few years after mother died than ever beforefor we lived together in one room and had few friends. I can see himnow sitting by a small kerosene lamp after I had gone to bed clumsilytrying to mend some rent in my clothes. I thought it an odd occupationfor a man but I know now what he was about. I think his love for mymother must have been deep for he talked to me a great deal of her andseemed much more concerned about my future on her account than oneither his own or mine. I think it was she--she was a woman of somespirit--who persuaded him to consider sending me to college. Thisaccounted partly for the mending although there was some sentimentabout it too. I think he liked to feel that he was carrying out herwork for me even in such a small matter as this. 

How much he was earning and how much he saved I never knew. I went toschool and had all the common things of the ordinary boy and I don'tremember that I ever asked him for any pocket money but what he gaveit to me. It was towards the end of my senior year in the high schoolthat I began to notice a change in him. He was at times strangelyexcited and at other times strangely blue. He asked me a great manyquestions about my preference in the matter of a college and bade mekeep well up in my studies. He began to skimp a little and I found outafterwards that one reason he grew so thin was because he did awaywith his noon meal. It makes my blood boil now when I remember wherethe fruit of this self-sacrifice went. I wouldn't recall it hereexcept as a humble tribute to his memory. 

One night I came back to the room and though it was not yet dark I wassurprised to see a crack of yellow light creeping out from beneath thesill. Suspecting something was wrong, I pushed open the door and sawmy father seated by the lamp with a pair of trousers I had worn when akid in his hands. His head was bent and he was trying to sew. I wentto his side and asked him what the trouble was. He looked up but hedidn't know me. He never knew me again. He died a few days afterwards. I found then that he had invested all his savings in a wild-cat miningscheme. They had been swept away. 

So at eighteen I was left alone with the only capital that succeedinggenerations of my family ever inherited--a common school education anda big, sound physique. My father's tragic death was a heavy blow butthe mere fact that I was thrown on my own resources did not disheartenme. In fact the prospect rather roused me. I had soaked in the humdrumatmosphere of the boarding house so long that the idea of having toearn my own living came rather as an adventure. While dependent on myfather, I had been chained to this one room and this one city, but nowI felt as though the whole wide world had suddenly been opened up tome. I had no particular ambition beyond earning a comfortable livingand I was sure enough at eighteen of being able to do this. If Ichose, I could go to sea--there wasn't a vessel but what would take sohusky a youngster; if I wished, I could go into railroading--hereagain there was a demand for youth and brawn. I could go into afactory and learn manufacturing or I could go into an office and learna business. I was young, I was strong, I was unfettered. There is noone on earth so free as such a young man. I could settle in New Yorkor work my way west and settle in Seattle or go north into Canada. Mylegs were stout and I could walk if necessary. And wherever I was, Ihad only to stop and offer the use of my back and arms in return forfood and clothes. Most men feel like this only once in their lives. Ina few years they become fettered again--this time for good. 

Having no inclination towards the one thing or the other, I took thefirst opportunity that offered. A chum of mine had entered the employof the United Woollen Company and seeing another vacancy there in theclerical department, he persuaded me to join him. I began at fivedollars a week. I was put at work adding up columns of figures thathad no more meaning to me than the problems in the school arithmetic. But it wasn't hard work and my hours were short and my associatespleasant. After a while I took a certain pride in being part of thisvast enterprise. My chum and I hired a room together and we both feltlike pretty important business men as we bought our paper on the carevery morning and went down town. 

It took close figuring to do anything but live that first year and yetwe pushed our way with the crowd into the nigger heavens and saw mostof the good shows. I had never been to the theatre before and I likedit. 

Next year I received a raise of five dollars and watched the showsfrom the rear of the first balcony. That is the only change the raisemade that I can remember except that I renewed my stock of clothes. The only thing I'm sure of is that at the end of the second year Ididn't have anything left over. 

That is true of the next six years. My salary was advanced steadily totwenty dollars and at that time it took just twenty dollars a weekfor me to live. I wasn't extravagant and I wasn't dissipated but everyraise found a new demand. It seemed to work automatically. You mightalmost say that our salaries were not raised at all but that we werepromoted from a ten dollar plane of life to a fifteen dollar plane andthen to a twenty. And we all went together--that is the men whostarted together. Each advance meant unconsciously the wearing ofbetter clothes, rooming at better houses, eating at betterrestaurants, smoking better tobacco, and more frequent amusements. This left us better satisfied of course but after all it left us justwhere we began. Life didn't mean much to any of us at this time and ifwe were inclined to look ahead why there were the big salaried jobsbefore us to dream about. But even if a man had been forehanded and ofa saving nature, he couldn't have done much without sacrificing theonly friends most of us had--his office associates. For instance--tosave five dollars a week at this time I would have had to drop backinto the fifteen dollars a week crowd and I'd have been as much out ofplace there as a boy dropped into a lower grade at school. I rememberthat when I was finally advanced another five dollars I half-heartedlyresolved to put that amount in the bank weekly. But at this point thecrowd all joined a small country club and I had either to follow ordrop out of their lives. Of course in looking back I can see where Imight have done differently but I wasn't looking back then--nor veryfar ahead either. If it would have prevented my joining the countryclub I'm glad I didn't. 

It was out there that I met the girl who became my wife. My bestreason for remaining anonymous is the opportunity it will give me totell about Ruth. I want to feel free to rave about her if I wish. Sheobjected in the magazine article and she objects even more stronglynow but, as before, I must have an uncramped hand in this. The chancesare that I shall talk more about her than I did the first time. Thewhole scheme of my life, beginning, middle and end, swings around her. Without her inspiration I don't like to think what the end of me mighthave been. And it's just as true to-day as it was in the stress of thefight. 

I was twenty-six when I met Ruth and she was eighteen. She came out tothe club one Saturday afternoon to watch some tennis. It happenedthat I had worked into the finals of the tournament but that day Iwasn't playing very well. I was beaten in the first set, six-two. Whatwas worse I didn't care a hang if I was. I had found myself feelinglike this about a lot of things during those last few months. Then asI made ready to serve the second set I happened to see in the frontrow of the crowd to the right of the court a slight girl with blueeyes. She was leaning forward looking at me with her mouth tense andher fists tight closed. Somehow I had an idea that she wanted me towin. I don't know why, because I was sure I'd never seen her before;but I thought that perhaps she had bet a pair of gloves or a box ofcandy on me. If she had, I made up my mind that she'd get them. Istarted in and they said, afterwards, I never played better tennis inmy life. At any rate I beat my man. 

After the game I found someone to introduce me to her and from thatmoment on there was nothing else of so great consequence in my life. Ilearned all about her in the course of the next few weeks. Her family, too, was distinctly middle-class, in the sense that none of them hadever done anything to distinguish themselves either for good or bad. Her parents lived on a small New Hampshire farm and she had just beengraduated from the village academy and had come to town to visit heraunt. The latter was a tall, lean woman, who, after the death of herhusband had been forced to keep lodgers to eke out a living. Ruthshowed me pictures of her mother and father, and they might have beenrelatives of mine as far as looks went. The father had caught anexpression from the granite hills which most New England farmersget--a rugged, strained look; the mother was lean and kind andworried. I met them later and liked them. 

Ruth was such a woman as my mother would have taken to; clear andlaughing on the surface, but with great depths hidden among the goldenshallows. Her experience had all been among the meadows and mountainsso that she was simple and direct and fearless in her thoughts andacts. You never had to wonder what she meant when she spoke and whenyou came to know her you didn't even have to wonder what she wasdreaming about. And yet she was never the same because she was alwaysgrowing. But the thing that woke me up most of all from the first dayI met her was the interest she took in everyone and everything. Afellow couldn't bore Ruth if he tried. She would have the time of herlife sitting on a bench in the park or walking down the street or juststaring out the window of her aunt's front room. And that streetlooked like Sunday afternoon all the week long. 

I began to do some figuring when I was alone but there wasn't muchsatisfaction in it. I had the clothes in my room, a good collection ofpipes, and ten dollars of my last week's salary. A man couldn't getmarried on that even to a girl like Ruth who wouldn't want much. I cutdown here and there but I naturally wanted to appear well before Ruthand so the savings went into new ties and shoes. In this way I frettedalong for a few months until I screwed my courage up to ask foranother raise. Those were prosperous days for the United Woollen andeveryone from the president to the office boy was in good humor. Iwent to Morse, head of the department, and told him frankly that Iwished to get married and needed more money. That wasn't a businessreason for an increase but those of us who had worked there some yearshad come to feel like one of the family and it wasn't unusual for thecompany to raise a man at such a time. He said he'd see what he coulddo about it and when I opened my pay envelope the next week I found anextra five in it. 

I went direct from the office to Ruth and asked her to marry me. Shedidn't hang her head nor stammer but she looked me straight in theeyes a moment longer than usual and answered:

"All right, Billy. "

"Then let's go out this afternoon and see about getting a house, " Isaid. 

I don't think a Carleton ever boarded when first married. To me itwouldn't have seemed like getting married. I knew a suburb where someof the men I had met at the country club lived and we went out there. It was a beautiful June day and everything looked clean and fresh. Wefound a little house of eight rooms that we knew we wanted as soon aswe saw it. It was one of a group of ten or fifteen that were all verymuch alike. There was a piazza on the front and a little bit of lawnthat looked as though it had been squeezed in afterwards. In the rearthere was another strip of land where we thought we might raise somegarden stuff if we put it in boxes. The house itself had a front hallout of which stairs led to the next floor. To the right there was alarge room separated by folding doors with another good-sized roomnext to it which would naturally be used as a dining room. In the rearof this was the kitchen and besides the door there was a slide throughwhich to pass the food. Upstairs there were four big rooms stretchingthe whole width of the house. Above these there was a servant's room. The whole house was prettily finished and in the two rooms down stairsthere were fireplaces which took my eye, although they weren't biggerthan coal hods. It was heated by a furnace and lighted by electricityand there were stained glass panels either side of the front door. 

The rent was forty dollars a month and I signed a three years' leasebefore I left. The next week was a busy one for us both. We boughtalmost a thousand dollars' worth of furniture on the installment planand even then we didn't seem to get more than the bare necessities. Ihadn't any idea that house furnishings cost so much. But if the billhad come to five times that I wouldn't have cared. The installmentsdidn't amount to very much a week and I already saw Morse promoted andmyself filling his position at twenty-five hundred. I hadn't yet gotover the feeling I had at eighteen that life was a big adventure andthat a man with strong legs and a good back _couldn't_ lose. With Ruthat my side I bought like a king. Though I never liked the idea ofrunning into debt this didn't seem like a debt. I had only to lookinto her dear blue eyes to feel myself safe in buying the storeitself. Ruth herself sometimes hesitated but, as I told her, we mightas well start right and once for all as to go at it half heartedly. 

The following Saturday we were married. My vacation wasn't due foranother month so we decided not to wait. The old folks came down fromthe farm and we just called in a clergyman and were married in thefront parlor of the aunt's house. It was both very simple and verysolemn. For us both the ceremony meant the taking of a sacred oath ofso serious a nature as to forbid much lightheartedness. And yet I didwish that the father and mother and aunt had not dressed in black andcried during it all. Ruth wore a white dress and looked very beautifuland didn't seem afraid. As for me, my knees trembled and I was chalkwhite. I think it was the old people and the room, for when it wasover and we came out into the sunshine again I felt all right except abit light-headed. I remember that the street and the houses and thecars seemed like very small matters. 

CHAPTER II

THIRTY DOLLARS A WEEK

When, with Ruth on my arm, I walked up the steps of the house andunlocked the front door, I entered upon a new life. It was my firsttaste of home since my mother died and added to that was this new lovewhich was finer than anything I had ever dreamed about. It seemed hardto have to leave every morning at half past six and not get back untilafter five at night, but to offset this we used to get up as early asfour o'clock during the long summer days. Many the time even in JuneRuth and I ate our breakfast by lamp-light. It gave us an extra hourand she was bred in the country where getting up in the morning is nogreat hardship. 

We couldn't afford a servant and we didn't want one. Ruth was a finecook and I certainly did justice to her dishes after ten years ofrestaurants and boarding-houses. On rainy days when we couldn't getout, she used to do her cooking early so that I might watch her. Itseemed a lot more like her cooking when I saw her pat out the doughand put it in the oven instead of coming home and finding it all done. I used to fill up my pipe and sit by the kitchen stove until I hadjust time to catch the train by sprinting. 

But when the morning was fine we'd either take a long walk through thebig park reservation which was near the house or we'd fuss over thegarden. We had twenty-two inches of radishes, thirty-eight inches oflettuce, four tomato plants, two hills of corn, three hills of beansand about four yards of early peas. In addition to this Ruth hadsqueezed a geranium into one corner and a fern into another andplanted sweet alyssum around the whole business. Everyone out hereplanned to raise his own vegetables. It was supposed to cut downexpenses but I noticed the market man always did a good business. 

I had met two or three of the men at the country club and theyintroduced me to the others. We were all earning about the samesalaries and living in about the same type of house. Still there weredifferences and you could tell more by the wives than the husbandsthose whose salaries went over two thousand. Two or three of the menwere in banks, one was in a leather firm, one was an agent for aninsurance company, another was with the telegraph company, another waswith the Standard Oil, and two or three others were with firms likemine. Most of them had been settled out here three or four years andhad children. In a general way they looked comfortable and happyenough but you heard a good deal of talk among them about the highcost of living and you couldn't help noticing that those who dressedthe best had the fewest children. One or two of them owned horses buteven they felt obliged to explain that they saved the cost of them incar fares. 

They all called and left their cards but that first year we didn't seemuch of them. There wasn't room in my life for anyone but Ruth at thattime. I didn't see even the old office gang except during businesshours and at lunch. 

The rent scaled my salary down to one thousand and eighty dollars atone swoop. Then we had to save out at least five dollars a week to payon the furniture. This left eight hundred and twenty, or fifteendollars and seventy-five cents a week, to cover running expenses. Wepaid cash for everything and though we never had much left over at theend of the week and never anything at the end of the month, we hadabout everything we wanted. For one thing our tastes were notextravagant and we did no entertaining. Our grocery and meat billamounted to from five to seven dollars a week. Of course I had mylunches in town but I got out of those for twenty cents. My daily carfare was twenty cents more which brought my total weekly expenses upto about three dollars. This left a comfortable margin of from five toseven dollars for light, coal, clothes and amusements. In the summerthe first three items didn't amount to much so some weeks we put mostof this into the furniture. But the city was new to Ruth, especiallyat night, so we were in town a good deal. She used to meet me at theoffice and we'd walk about the city and then take dinner at somelittle French restaurant and then maybe go to a concert or thetheatre. She made everything new to me again. At the theatre she usedto perch on the edge of her seat so breathless, so responsive that Ioften saw the old timers watch her instead of the show. I often didmyself. And sometimes it seemed as though the whole company acted toher alone. 

Those days were perfect. The only incident to mar them was the deathof Ruth's parents. They died suddenly and left an estate of six orseven hundred dollars. Ruth insisted upon putting that into thefurniture. But in our own lives every day was as fair as the first. Mysalary came as regularly as an annuity and there was every prospectfor advancement. The garden did well and Ruth became acquainted withmost of the women in a sociable way. She joined a sewing circle whichmet twice a month chiefly I guess for the purpose of finding out aboutone another's husbands. At any rate she told me more about them than Iwould have learned in ten years. 

Still, during the fall and winter we kept pretty much by ourselves, not deliberately but because neither of us cared particularly aboutwhist parties and such things but preferred to spend together whattime we had. And then I guess Ruth was a little shy about her clothes. She dressed mighty well to my eye but she made most of her thingsherself and didn't care much about style. She didn't notice thedifference at home but when she was out among others, they made herfeel it. However spring came around again and we forgot all aboutthose details. We didn't go in town so much that summer and used tospend more time on our piazza. I saw more of the men in this way andfound them a pleasant, companionable lot. They asked me to join theNeighborhood Club and I did, more to meet them half way than because Iwanted to. There we played billiards and discussed the stock marketand furnaces. All of them had schemes for making fortunes if only theyhad a few thousand dollars capital. Now and then you'd find a group ofthem in one corner discussing a rumor that so and so had lost his job. They spoke of this as they would of a death. But none of thosesubjects interested me especially in view of what I was lookingforward to in my own family. 

In the afternoons of the early fall the women sent over jellies andsuch stuff to Ruth and dropped in upon her with whispered advice. Sheused to repeat it to me at night with a gay little laugh and her eyessparkling like diamonds. She was happier now than I had ever seen herand so was I myself. When I went in town in the morning I felt veryimportant. 

I thought I had touched the climax of life when I married Ruth butwhen the boy came he lifted me a notch higher. And with him he broughtme a new wife in Ruth, without taking one whit from the old. Sweetheart, wife and mother now, she revealed to me new depths ofwomanhood. 

She taught me, too, what real courage is. I was the coward when thetime came. I had taken a day off but the doctor ordered me out of thehouse. I went down to the club and I felt more one of the neighborhoodthat day than I ever did before or afterwards. It was Saturday andduring the afternoon a number of the men came in and just silentlygripped my hand. 

The women, too, seemed to take a new interest in us. When Ruth wasable to sit up they brought in numberless little things. But you'dhave thought it was their house and not mine, the way they treated me. When any of them came I felt as though I didn't belong there and oughtto tip-toe out. 

We'd been saving up during the summer for this emergency so that wehad enough to pay for the doctor and the nurse but that was only thebeginning of the new expenses. In the first place we had to have aservant now. I secured a girl who knew how to cook after a fashion, for four dollars a week. But that wasn't by any means what she costus. In spite of Ruth's supervision the girl wasted as much as she usedso that our provision bill was nearly doubled. If we hadn't succeededin paying for the furniture before this I don't know what we wouldhave done. As it was I found my salary pretty well strained. I hadn'tany idea that so small a thing as a baby could cost so much. Ruth hadmade most of his things but I know that some of his shirts cost asmuch as mine. 

When the boy was older Ruth insisted upon getting along without a girlagain. I didn't approve of this but I saw that it would make herhappier to try anyway. How in the world she managed to do it I don'tknow but she did. This gave her an excuse for not going out--though itwas an excuse that made me half ashamed of myself--and so we saved inanother way. Even with this we just made both ends meet and that wasall. 

The boy grew like a weed and before I knew it he was five years old. Until he began to walk and talk I didn't think of him as a possibleman. He didn't seem like anything in particular. He was just soft andround and warm. But when he began to wear knickerbockers he set me tothinking hard. He wasn't going to remain always a baby; he was goingto grow into a boy and then a young man and before I knew it he wouldbe facing the very same problem that now confronted me. And thatproblem was how to get enough ahead of the game to give him a fairstart in life. I realized, too, that I wanted him to do somethingbetter than I had done. When I stopped to think of it I hadaccomplished mighty little. I had lived and that was about all. That Ihad lived happily was due to Ruth. But if I was finding difficulty inkeeping even with the game now, what was I going to do when theyoungster would prove a decidedly more serious item of expense?

I talked this over with Ruth and we both decided that somehow, in someway, we must save some money every year. We started in by reducing ourhousehold expenses still further. But it seemed as though fate wereagainst us for prices rose just enough to absorb all our littleeconomies. Flour went up and sugar went up, and though we had doneaway with meat almost wholly now, vegetables went up. So, too, didcoal. Not only that but we had long since found it impossible to keepto ourselves as we had that first year. Little by little we had beendrawn into the social life of the neighborhood. Not a month went bybut what there was a dinner or two or a whist party or a dance. Personally I didn't care about such things but as Ruth had become amatron and in consequence had been thrown more in contact with thewomen, she had lost her shyness and grown more sociable. She oftensuggested declining an invitation but we couldn't decline one withoutdeclining all. I saw clearly enough that I had no right to do this. She did more work than I and did not have the daily change. To havemade a social exile of her would have been to make her little betterthan a slave. But it cost money. It cost a lot of money. We had to doour part in return and though Ruth accomplished this by careful buyingand all sorts of clever devices, the item became a big one in theyear's expenses. 

I began to look forward with some anxiety for the next raise. At theoffice I hunted for extra work with an eye upon the place above; butthough I found the work nothing came of it but extra hours. In fact Ibegan to think myself lucky to hold the job I had for a gradual changeof methods had been slowly going on in the office. Mechanical addingmachines had cost a dozen men their jobs; a card system of bookkeepinghad made it possible to discharge another dozen, while an off year inwoollens sent two or three more flying, among them the man who hadfound me the position in the first place. But he hadn't married and hewent out west somewhere. Occasionally when work picked up again ayoung man was taken on to fill the place of one of the discharged men. The company always saved a few hundred dollars by such a shift for thelad never got the salary of the old employee, and so far as anyonecould see the work went on just as well. 

While these moves were ominous, as I can see now in looking back, theydidn't disturb me very much at the time. I filled a little niche inthe office that was all my own. At every opportunity I hadfamiliarized myself with the work of the man above me and was on verygood terms with him. I waited patiently and confidently for the daywhen Morse should call me in and announce his own advance and leave meto fill his place. I might have to begin on two thousand but it was asure twenty-five hundred eventually to say nothing of what it led to. The president of the company had begun as I had and had moved up thesame steps that now lay ahead of me. 

In the meanwhile the life at home ran smoothly in spite of everything. Neither the wife, the boy nor I was sick a day for we all had soundbodies to start with. Our country-bred ancestors didn't need a will toleave us those. If at times we felt a trifle pinched especially in thematter of clothes, it was wonderful how rich Ruth contrived to make usfeel. She knew how to take care of things and though I didn't spendhalf what some of the men spent on their suits, I went in town everymorning looking better than two-thirds of them. I was inspected fromhead to foot before I started and there wasn't a wrinkle or a spot sosmall that it could last twenty-four hours. I shined my own shoes andpressed my own trousers and Ruth looked to it that this was done well. Moreover she could turn a tie, clean and press it so that it lookedbrand new. I think some of the neighbors even thought I wasextravagant in my dressing. 

She did the same for herself and had caught the knack of seeming todress stylishly without really doing so. She had beautiful hair andthis in itself made her look well dressed. As for the boy he was amodel for them all. 

In the meanwhile the boy had grown into short trousers and before weknew it he was in school. It made it lonesome for her during the daywhen he began to trudge off every morning at nine o'clock. She beganto look forward to Saturdays as eagerly as the boy did. Then the nextthing we knew he'd start off even earlier on that day to join hisplaymates. Sunday was the only day either of us had him to ourselves. 

After he began to go to school, Ruth and I seemed to begin anotherlife. In a way we felt all by ourselves once more. I didn't get homeuntil half past seven now and Dick was then abed. He was abed too whenI left in the morning. Of course he was never off my mind and if hehadn't been asleep upstairs I guess I'd have known a difference. Butat the same time he was, in a small way, living his own life nowwhich left Ruth and me to ourselves once more. She used to go over forme all the details of his day from the time she took him up in themorning until she tucked him away in bed again at night and then therewould come a pause. It seemed as though there ought to be somethingmore, but there wasn't. The next few months it seemed almost as thoughshe was waiting. For what, I didn't know and yet I too felt there wasa lapse in our lives. I never loved her more. There was never a timewhen she was so truly my wife and yet in our combined lives there wassomething lacking. After a while I began to notice a wistfulexpression in her eyes. It always came after she had said, "So Dicky said, 'God bless father and mother, ' and then he went tosleep. "

Then one night it dawned on me. Hers was the same heart hunger thathad been eating at me. Dick was a boy now and there was no baby totake his place. But, good Lord, as it was I hadn't been able to save adollar. I knew that we were simply holding on tight and drifting. Theboat was loaded to the gunwales even now. And yet that expression inher eyes had a right to be answered. But I couldn't answer it. Ididn't dare open my mouth. I didn't dare speak even one night when shesaid, "He's all we have, Billy--just one. "

I gripped her hand and sat staring into the little coal hod fireplacewhich we didn't light more than once a month now. Even as I watchedthe flames I saw them licking up pennies. 

Just one! And I too wanted a houseful like Dick. 

I had to see that look night after night and I had to go to townknowing I was leaving her all alone with the one away at school. Andwhat a mother she was! She ought to have had a baby by her side allthe time. 

As the one grew, his expenses increased. The only way to meet them wasby cutting down our own expenses still more. I cut out smoking andmade my old clothes do an extra year. Ruth spent half her time inbargain hunting and saved still more by taking it out of herself. Poorlittle woman, she worked harder for a quarter than I did and I wasworking harder for that sum than I used to work for a dollar. But wewere not alone in the struggle. As we came to know more about thepeople in that group of snug little houses we knew that the same grimfight was going on in all of them. Some of them were not so lucky aswe and ran into debt while a few of them were luckier and were helpedout with legacies or by well-to-do relatives. We were as much alike aspeas in a pod. We were living on the future and bluffing out thepresent. You'd have thought it would have cast a gloom over theneighborhood--you'd have thought it would have done away with some ofthe parties and dances. But it didn't. In the first place this was, tomost of us, just life. In the second place there didn't seem to be anyalternative. There was no other way of living. The conditions seemedto be fixed; we had to eat, we had to wear a certain type of dress;and unless we wished to exist as exiles we had to meet on a certainplane of social intercourse. The conventions were as iron clad here asamong the nobility of England. No one thought of violating them; noone thought it was possible. You had to live as the others did or dieand be done with it. If anyone of us had thought we might have seenthe foolishness of this but it was all so manifest that no one didthink. The only method of escape was a raise and that meant movinginto another sphere which would cover that. 

A new complication came when the boy grew old enough to have socialfunctions of his own. He had made many new friends and he wanted tojoin a tennis club, a dancing class and contribute towards the supportof the athletic teams of the school. Moreover he was invited toparties and had to give parties himself. Once again I tried to seesome way out of this social business. It seemed such a pitiful wasteof ammunition under the circumstances. I wanted to save the money ifit was possible in any way to eke it out, for his education. But whatcould I do? The boy had to live as his friends lived or give them up. He wasn't asked to do any more than the other boys of the neighborhoodbut he was rightly asked to do as much. If he couldn't it would be atthe sacrifice of his pride that he associated with them at all. And ajust pride in a boy is something you can't safely tamper with. He hadto have the money and we managed it somehow. But it brought home theold grim fact that I hadn't as yet saved a dollar. 

I clung more than ever now to the one ray of hope--the job ahead. Itwas the only comfort Ruth and I had and whenever I felt especiallydownhearted she'd start in and plan how we'd spend it. It took theedge off the immediate thought of danger. In the meanwhile I resignedeven from the Neighborhood Club and let the boy join the tennis club. I noticed at once a change in the attitude of the men towards me. ButI was reaching a point now where I didn't care. 

In this way, then, we lived until I was thirty-eight and Ruth wasthirty, and the boy was eleven. For the last few months I had beendoing night work without extra pay and so was practically exiled fromthe boy except on Sundays. He was not developing the way I wanted. Thelocal grammar school was almost a private school for the neighborhood. I should have preferred to have it more cosmopolitan. The boy wasrubbing up against only his own kind and this was making him soft, both physically and mentally. He was also getting querulous andautocratic. Ruth saw it, but with only one. . . . Well, on Sundays I tookthe boy with me on long cross-country jaunts and did a good deal oftalking to him. But all I said rolled off like water off a duck. Helacked energy and initiative. He was becoming distinctly moremiddle-class than either of us, with some of the faults of theso-called upper class thrown in. He chattered about Harvard, not as anopportunity, but as a class privilege. I didn't like it. But before Ihad time to worry much about this the crash came that I had not beenwise enough to foresee. 

CHAPTER III

THE MIDDLE CLASS HELL

One Saturday afternoon, after we had been paid off, Morse, the head ofthe department, whose job I had been eyeing enviously for five yearsnow, called me into his office. For three minutes I saw all my hopesrealized; for three minutes I walked dizzily with my whole lifejustified. I could hardly catch my breath as I followed him. I didn'trealize until then how big a load I had been carrying. As a drowningman is said to see visions of his whole past life, I saw visions of mywhole future. I saw Ruth's eager face lifted to mine as I told her thegood news; I saw the boy taken from his commonplace surroundings anddoing himself proud in some big preparatory school where he brushed upagainst a variety of other boys; I saw--God pity me for the fool Iwas--other children at home to take his place. I can say that forthree minutes I have lived. 

Morse seated himself in the chair before his desk and, bending overhis papers, talked without looking at me. He was a small fellow. Idon't suppose a beefy man ever quite gets over a certain feeling ofsuperiority before a small man. I could have picked up Morse in onehand. 

"Carleton, " he began, "I've got to cut down your salary five hundreddollars. "

It came like a blow in the face. I don't think I answered. 

"Sorry, " he added, "but Evans says he can double up on your work andoffers to do it for two hundred dollars more. "

I repeated that name Evans over and over. He was the man under me. Then I saw my mistake. While watching the man ahead of me I hadneglected to watch the man behind me. Evans and I had been goodfriends. I liked him. He was about twenty, and a hard worker. 

"Well?" said Morse. 

I recovered my wind. 

"Good God, " I cried; "I can't live on any less than I'm getting now!"

"Then you resign?" he asked quickly. 

For a second I saw red. I wanted to take this pigmy by the throat. Iwanted to shake him. He didn't give me time before exclaiming:

"Very well, Carleton. I'll give you an order for two weeks' pay inadvance. "

The next thing I knew I was in the outer office with the order in myhand. I saw Evans at his desk. I guess I must have looked queer, forat first he shrank away from me. Then he came to my side. 

"Carleton, " he said, "what's the matter?"

"I guess you know, " I answered. 

"You aren't fired?"

I bucked up at this. I tried to speak naturally. 

"Yes, " I said, "I'm fired. "

"But that isn't right, Carleton, " he protested. "I didn't think itwould come to that. I went to Morse and told him I wanted to getmarried and needed more money. He asked me if I thought I could doyour work. I said yes. I'd have said yes if he'd asked me if I coulddo the president's work. But--come back and let me explain it toMorse. "

It was white of him, wasn't it? But I saw clearly enough that he wasonly fighting for his right to love as I was fighting for mine. Idon't know that I should have been as generous as he was--ten yearsbefore. He had started toward the door when I called him back. 

"Don't go in there, " I warned. "The first thing you know you'll bedoing my work without your two hundred. "

"That's so, " he answered. "But what are you going to do now?"

"Get another job, " I answered. 

One of the great blessings of my life is the fact that it has alwaysbeen easy to report bad news to Ruth. I never had to break thingsgently to her. She always took a blow standing up, like a man. So nowI boarded my train and went straight to the house and told her. Shelistened quietly and then took my hand, patting it for a momentwithout saying anything. Finally she smiled at me. 

"Well, Billy, " she said, "it can't be helped, can it? So good luck toEvans and his bride. "

When a woman is as brave as that it stirs up all the fighting blood ina man. Looking into her steady blue eyes I felt that I had exaggeratedmy misfortune. Thirty-eight is not old and I was able-bodied. I mightland something even better than that which I had lost. So instead ofa night of misery I actually felt almost glad. 

I started in town on Monday in high hope. But when I got off the trainI began to wonder just where I was bound. What sort of a job was Igoing to apply for? What was my profession, anyway? I sat down in thestation to think the problem over. 

For twenty years now I had been a cog in the clerical machinery of theUnited Woollen Company. I was known as a United Woollen man. But justwhat else had this experience made of me? I was not a bookkeeper. Iknew no more about keeping a full set of books than my boy. I hadhandled only strings of United Woollen figures; those meant nothingoutside that particular office. I was not a stenographer, or anaccountant, or a secretary. I had been called a clerk in thedirectory. But what did that mean? What the devil was I, after twentyyears of hard work?

The question started the sweat to my forehead. But I pulled myselftogether again. At least I was an able-bodied man. I was willing towork, had a record of honesty and faithfulness, and was intelligent asmen go. I didn't care what I did, so long as it gave me a livingwage. Surely, then, there must be some place for me in this alert, hustling city. 

I bought a paper and turned to "Help Wanted. " I felt encouraged atsight of the long column. I read it through carefully. Half of thepositions demanded technical training; a fourth of them demandedspecial experience; the rest asked for young men. I couldn't answerthe requirements of one of them. Again and again the question wasforced in upon me--what the devil was I?

I didn't know which way to turn. I had no relatives to help me--fromthe days of my great-grandfather no Carleton had ever quit the gamemore than even. My business associates were as badly off as I was andso were my neighbors. 

My relations with the latter were peculiar, now that I came to thinkof it. In these last dozen years I had come to know the details oftheir lives as intimately as my own. In a way we had been like one bigfamily. We knew each other as Frank, and Joe, and Bill, and Josh, andwere familiar with one another's physical ailments when any of us hadany. If any of the children had whooping cough or the measles everyman and woman in the neighborhood watched at the bedside, in a sense, until the youngster was well, again. We knew to a dollar what each manwas earning and what each was spending. We borrowed one another'sgarden tools and the women borrowed from each other's kitchens. On thesurface we were just about as intimate as it's possible for acommunity to be. And yet what did it amount to?

There wasn't a man-son of them to whom I would have dared go andconfess the fact I'd lost my job. They'd know it soon enough, be sureof that; but it mustn't come from me. There wasn't one of them to whomI felt free to go and ask their help to interest their own firms tosecure another position for me. Their respect for me depended upon myability to maintain my social position. They were like steamerfriends. On the voyage they clung to one another closer than bark to atree, but once the gang plank was lowered the intimacy vanished. If Iwished to keep them as friends I must stick to the boat. 

I knew they couldn't do anything if they had wanted to, but at thesame time I felt there was something wrong in a situation that wouldnot allow me to ask even for a letter of introduction without feelinglike a beggar. I felt there was something wrong when they made me feelnot like a brother in hard luck but like a criminal. I began to wonderwhat of sterling worth I had got out of this life during the pastdecade. 

However that was an incidental matter. The only time I did suchthinking as this was towards the early morning after I had lain awakeall night and exhausted all other resources. I tackled the problem inthe only way I could think of and that was to visit the houses withwhom I had learned the United Woollen did business. I remembered thenames of about a dozen of them and made the rounds of these for astarter. It seemed like a poor chance and I myself did not knowexactly what they could do with me but it would keep me busy for awhile. 

With waits and delays this took me two weeks. Without letters it wasalmost impossible to reach the managers but I hung on in every caseuntil I succeeded. Here again I didn't feel like an honest manoffering to do a fair return of work for pay, so much as I did abeggar. This may have been my fault; but after you've sat around inoffices and corridors and been scowled at as an intruder for three orfour hours and then been greeted with a surly "What do you want?" youcan't help having a grouch. There wasn't a man who treated my offer asa business proposition. 

At the end of that time two questions were burned into my brain: "Whatcan you do?" and "How old are you?" The latter question came as arevelation. It seems that from a business point of view I wasconsidered an old man. My good strong body counted for nothing; mywillingness to undertake any task counted for nothing. I was too old. No one wanted to bother with a beginner over eighteen or twenty. Themarket demanded youth--youth with the years ahead that I had alreadysold. Wherever I stumbled by chance upon a vacant position I foundwaiting there half a dozen stalwart youngsters. They looked as I hadlooked when I joined the United Woollen Company. I offered to do thesame work at the same wages as the youngsters, but the managers didn'twant me. They didn't want a man around with wrinkles in his face. Moreover, they were looking to the future. They didn't intend toadjust a man into their machinery only to have him die in a dozenyears. I wasn't a good risk. Moreover, I wouldn't be so easilytrained, and with a wider experience might prove more bothersome. Atthirty-eight I was too old to make a beginning. The verdict wasunanimous. And yet I had a physique like an ox and there wasn't a grayhair in my head. I came out of the last of those offices with my fistsclenched. 

In the meanwhile I had used up my advance salary and was, for thefirst time in my life, running into debt. Having always paid my billsweekly I had no credit whatever. Even at the end of the third week Iknew that the grocery man and butcher were beginning to fidget. Theneighbors had by this time learned of my plight and were gossiping. And yet in the midst of all this I had some of the finest hours withmy wife I had ever known. 

She sent me away every morning with fresh hope and greeted me at nightwith a cheerfulness that was like wine. And she did this without anyshow of false optimism. She was not blind to the seriousness of ourpresent position, but she exhibited a confidence in me that did notadmit of doubt or fear. There was something almost awesomely beautifulabout standing by her side and facing the approaching storm. She usedto place her small hands upon my back and exclaim:

"Why, Billy, there's work for shoulders like those. "

It made me feel like a giant. 

So another month passed. I subscribed to an employment bureau, but theonly offer I received was to act as a sort of bouncer in a barroom. Isuppose my height and weight and reputation for sobriety recommendedme there. There was five dollars a week in it, and as far as I alonewas concerned I would have taken it. That sum would at least buybread, and though it may sound incredible the problem of gettingenough to eat was fast becoming acute. The provision men became dailymore suspicious. We cut down on everything, but I knew it was only aquestion of time when they would refuse to extend our credit for thelittle we _had_ to have. And all around me my neighbors went theircheerful ways and waited for me to work it out. But whenever I thoughtof the barroom job and the money it would bring I could see them shaketheir heads. 

It was hell. It was the deepest of all deep hells--the middle-classhell. There was nothing theatrical about it--no fireworks or redlights. It was plain, dull, sodden. Here was my position: work in myown class I couldn't get; work as a young man I was too old to get;work as just plain physical labor these same middle-class neighborsrefused to allow me to undertake. I couldn't black my neighbors' bootswithout social ostracism, though Pasquale, who kept the stand in theUnited Woollen building, once confided to me that he cleared sometwenty-five dollars a week. I couldn't mow my neighbors' front lawnsor deliver milk at their doors, though there was food in it. That washonest work--clean work; but if I attempted it would they play golfwith me? Personally I didn't care. I would have taken a job that day. But there were the wife and boy. They were held in ransom. It's allvery well to talk about scorning the conventions, to philosophizeabout the dignity of honest work, to quote "a man's a man for a'that"; but associates of their own kind mean more to a woman and agrowing boy than they do to a man. At least I thought so at that time. When I saw my wife surrounded by well-bred, well-dressed women, theyseemed to me an essential part of her life. What else did living meanfor her? When my boy brought home with him other boys of his age andkind--though to me they did not represent the highest type--I feltunder obligations to retain those friends for him. I had begot himinto this set. It seemed barbarous to do anything that would allowthem to point the finger at him. 

I felt a yearning for some primeval employment. I hungered to join thearmy or go to sea. But here again were the wife and boy. I felt likegoing into the Northwest and preempting a homestead. That was a saneridea, but it took capital and I didn't have enough. I was tied handand foot. It was like one of those nightmares where in the face ofdanger you are suddenly struck dumb and immovable. 

I was beginning to look wild-eyed. Ruth and I were living on bread, without butter, and canned soup. I sneaked in town with a few booksand sold them for enough to keep the boy supplied with meat. My shoeswere worn out at the bottom and my clothes were getting decidedlyseedy. The men with whom I was in the habit of riding to town in themorning gave me as wide a berth as though I had the leprosy. I guessthey were afraid my hard luck was catching. God pity them, many ofthem were dangerously near the rim of this same hell themselves. 

One morning my wife came to me reluctantly, but with her usualcourage, and said:

"Billy, the grocery man didn't bring our order last night. " It waslike a sword-thrust. It made me desperate. But the worst of themiddle-class hell is that there is nothing to fight back at. There youare. I couldn't say anything. There was no answer. My eyes must havelooked queer, for Ruth came nearer and whispered:

"Don't go in town to-day, Billy. "

I had on my hat and had gathered up two or three more volumes in mygreen bag. I looked at the trim little house that had been my home forso long. The rent would be due next month. I looked at the other trimlittle houses around me. Was it actually possible that a man couldstarve in such a community? It seemed like a satanic joke. Why, everyyear this country was absorbing immigrants by the thousand. They didnot go hungry. They waxed fat and prosperous. There was Pasquale, thebootblack, who was earning nearly as much as I ever did. 

We were standing on the porch. I took Ruth in my arms and kissed her. She drew back with a modest protest that the neighbors might see. Theword neighbors goaded me. I shook my fist at their trim little housesand voiced a passion that had slowly been gathering strength. 

"Damn the neighbors!" I cried. 

Ruth was startled. I don't often swear. 

"Have they been talking about you?" she asked suddenly, her mouthhardening. 

"I don't know. I don't care. But they hold you in ransom like bloodyMoroccan pirates. "

"How do they, Billy?"

"They won't let me work without taking it out of you and the boy. "

Her head dropped for a second at mention of the boy, but it was soonlifted. 

"Let's get away from them, " she gasped. "Let's go where there are noneighbors. "

"Would you?" I asked. 

"I'd go to the ends of the earth with you, Billy, " she answeredquietly. 

How plucky she was! I couldn't help but smile as I answered, more tomyself:

"We haven't even the carfare to go to the ends of the earth, Ruth. Itwill take all we have to pay our bills. "

"All we have?" she asked. 

No, not that. They could get only a little of what she and I had. Theycould take our belongings, that's all. And they hadn't got those yet. 

But I had begun to hate those neighbors with a fierce, unreasoninghatred. In silence they dictated, without assisting. For a dozen yearsI had lived with them, played with them, been an integral part oftheir lives, and now they were worse than useless to me. There wasn'tone of them big enough to receive me into his home for myself alone, apart from the work I did. There wasn't a true brother among them. 

Our lives turn upon little things. They turn swiftly. Within fifteenminutes I had solved my problem in a fashion as unexpected as it wasradical. 

CHAPTER IV

WE EMIGRATE TO AMERICA

Going down the path to town bitterly and blindly, I met Murphy. He wasa man with not a gray hair in his head who was a sort ofman-of-all-work for the neighborhood. He took care of my furnace andfussed about the grounds when I was tied up at the office with nightwork. He stopped me with rather a shamefaced air. 

"Beg pardon, sor, " he began, "but I've got a bill comin' due on thenew house--"

I remembered that I owed him some fifteen dollars. I had in my pocketjust ten cents over my carfare. But what arrested my attention was themention of a new house. 

"You mean to tell me that you're putting up a house?"

"The bit of a rint, sor, in ---- Street. "

The contrast was dramatic. The man who emptied my ashes was erectingtenements and I was looking for work that would bring me in food. Mypeople had lived in this country some two hundred years or more, andMurphy had probably not been here over thirty. There was somethingwrong about this, but I seemed to be getting hold of an idea. 

"How old are you, Murphy?" I asked. 

"Goin' on sixty, sor. "

"You came to America broke?"

"Dead broke, sor. "

"You have a wife and children?"

"A woman and six childer. "

Six! Think of it! And I had one. 

"Children in school?"

I asked it almost in hope that here at least I would hold theadvantage. 

"Two of them in college, sor. "

He spoke it proudly. Well he might. But to me it was confusing. 

"And you have enough left over to put up a house?" I stammered. 

"It's better than the bank, " Murphy said apologetically. 

"And you aren't an old man yet, " I murmured. 

"Old, sor?"

"Why you're young and strong and independent, Murphy. You're----" ButI guess I talked a bit wild. I don't know what I said. I wasbreathless--lightheaded. I wanted to get back to Ruth. 

"Pat, " I said, seizing his hand--"Pat, you shall have the money withina week. I'm going to sell out and emigrate. "

"Emigrate?" he gasped. "Where to?"

I laughed. The solution now seemed so easy. 

"Why, to America, Pat. To America where you came thirty years ago. " Ileft him staring at me. I hurried into the house with my heart in mythroat. 

I found Ruth in the sitting-room with her chin in her hands and herwhite forehead knotted in a frown. She didn't hear me come in, butwhen I touched her arm she jumped up, ashamed to think I had caughther looking even puzzled. But at sight of my face her expressionchanged in a flash. 

"Oh, Billy, " she cried, "it's good news?"

"It's a way out--if you approve, " I answered. 

"I do, Billy, " she answered, without waiting to hear. 

"Then listen, " I said. "If we were living in England or Ireland orFrance or Germany and found life as hard as this and some one left usfive hundred dollars what would you advise doing?"

"Why, we'd emigrate, Billy, " she said instantly. 

"Exactly. Where to?"

"To America. "

"Right, " I cried. "And we'd be one out of a thousand if we didn't makegood, wouldn't we?"

"Why, every one succeeds who comes here from somewhere else, " sheexclaimed. 

"And why do they?" I demanded, getting excited with my idea. "Why dothey? There are a dozen reasons. One is because they come aspioneers--with all the enthusiasm and eagerness of adventurers. Lifeis fresh and romantic to them over here. Hardships only add zest tothe game. Another reason is that it is all a fine big gamble to them. They have everything to gain and nothing to lose. It's the same spiritthat drives young New Englanders out west to try their luck, topreëmpt homesteads in the Northwest, to till the prairies. Anotherreason is that they come over here free--unbound by conventions. Theycan work as they please, live as they please. They haven't any casteto hamper them. Another reason is that, being on the same greatadventure, they are all brothers. They pull together. Still anotherreason is that as emigrants the whole United States stands ready tohelp them with schools and playgrounds and hospitals and parks. "

I paused for breath. She cut in excitedly:

"Then we're going out west?"

"No; we haven't the capital for that. By selling all our things we canpay our debts and have a few dollars over, but that wouldn't take usto Chicago. I'm not going ten miles from home. "

"Where then, Billy?"

"You've seen the big ships come in along the water-front? They arebringing over hundreds of emigrants every year and landing them righton those docks. These people have had to cross the ocean to reach thatpoint, but our ancestors made the voyage for you and me two hundredyears ago. We're within ten miles of the wharf now. "

She couldn't make out what I meant. 

"Why, wife o' mine, " I ran on, "all we need to do is to pack up, godown to the dock and start from there. We must join the emigrants andfollow them into the city. These are the only people who are findingAmerica to-day. We must take up life among them; work as they work;live as they live. Why, I feel my back muscles straining even now; Ifeel the tingle of coming down the gangplank with our fortunes yet tomake in this land of opportunity. Pasquale has done it; Murphy hasdone it. Don't you think I can do it?"

She looked up at me. I had never seen her face more beautiful. It wasflushed and eager. She clutched my arm. Then she whispered:

"My man--my wonderful, good man!"

The primitive appellation was in itself like a whiff of salt air. Itbore me back to the days when a husband's chief function was justthat--being a man to his own good woman. We looked for a moment intoeach other's eyes. Then the same question was born to both of us in amoment. 

"What of the boy?"

It was a more serious question to her, I think, than it was to me. Iknew that the sons of other fathers and mothers had wrestled with thatlife and come out strong. There were Murphy's boys, for instance. Ofcourse the life would be new to my boy, but the keen competitionought to drive him to his best. His present life was not doing that. As for the coarser details from which he had been so sheltered--well, a man has to learn sooner or later, and I wasn't sure but that it wasbetter for him to learn at an age when such things would offer no realtemptations. With Ruth back of him I didn't worry much about that. Besides, the boy had let drop a phrase or two that made me suspectthat even among his present associates that same ground was beingexplored. 

"Ruth, " I said, "I'm not worrying about Dick. "

"He has been kept so fresh, " she murmured. 

"It isn't the fresh things that keep longest, " I said. 

"That's true, Billy, " she answered. 

Then she thought a moment, and as though with new inspiration answeredme using again that same tender, primitive expression:

"I don't fear for my man-child. "

When the boy came home from school that night I had a long talk withhim. I told him frankly how I had been forced out of my position, howI had tried for another, how at length I had resolved to go pioneeringjust as his great-grandfather had done among the Indians. As Ithought, the naked adventure of it appealed to him. That was all Iwished; it was enough to work on. 

The next day I brought out a second-hand furniture dealer and made asgood a bargain as I could with him for the contents of the house. Wesaved nothing but the sheer essentials for light housekeeping. Theseconsisted of most of the cooking utensils, a half dozen plates, cupsand saucers and about a dozen other pieces for the table, fourtablecloths, all the bed linen, all our clothes, including some oldclothes we had been upon the point of throwing away, a few personalgimcracks, and for furniture the following articles: the foldingwooden kitchen table, a half dozen chairs, the cot bed in the boy'sroom, the iron bed in our room, the long mirror I gave Ruth on herbirthday, and a sort of china closet that stood in the dining-room. Tothis we added bowls, pitchers, and lamps. All the rest, which includeda full dining-room set, a full dinner set of china, the furnishings ofthe front room, including books and book case, chairs, rugs, picturesand two or three good chairs, a full bed-room set in our room and acheaper one in the boy's room, piazza furnishings, garden tools, andforty odds and ends all of which had cost me first and last somethinglike two thousand dollars, I told the dealer to lump together. Helooked it over and bid six hundred dollars. I saw Ruth swallow hard, for she had taken good care of everything so that to us it was worthas much to-day as we had paid for it. But I accepted the offer withoutdickering, for it was large enough to serve my ends. It would pay offall our debts and leave us a hundred dollars to the good. It was thefirst time since I married that I had been that much ahead. 

That afternoon I saw Murphy and hired of him the top tenement of hisnew house. It was in the Italian quarter of the city and my flatconsisted of four rooms. The rent was three dollars a week. Murphylooked surprised enough at the change in my affairs and I made himpromise not to gossip to the neighbors about where I'd gone. 

"Faith, sor, " he said, "and they wouldn't believe it if I told them. "

This wasn't all I accomplished that day. I bought a pair of overallsand presented myself at the office of a contractor's agent. I didn'thave any trouble in getting in there and I didn't feel like a beggaras I took my place in line with about a dozen foreigners. I lookedthem over with a certain amount of self-confidence. Most of them wereundersized men with sagging shoulders and primitive faces. With theirbig eyes they made me think of shaggy Shetland ponies. Lined up manfor man with my late associates they certainly looked like an inferiorlot. I studied them with curiosity; there must be more in them thanshowed on the surface to bring them over here--there must be somethingthat wasn't in the rest of us for them to make good the way they did. In the next six months I meant to find out what that was. In themeantime just sitting there among them I felt as though I had moreelbow room than I had had since I was eighteen. Before me as beforethem a continent stretched its great length and breadth. They laughedand joked among themselves and stared about at everything with eager, curious eyes. They were ready for anything, and everything was readyfor them--the ditch, the mines, the railroads, the wheat fields. Wherever things were growing and needed men to help them grow, theywould play their part. They say there's plenty of room at the top, but there's plenty of room at the bottom, too. It's in the middle thatmen get pinched. 

I worked my way up to the window where a sallow, pale-faced clerk satin front of a big book. He gave me a start, he was such a contrast tothe others. In my new enthusiasm I wanted to ask him why he didn'tcome out and get in line the other side of the window. He yawned as hewrote down my name. I didn't have to answer more than half a dozenquestions before he told me to report for work Monday at such and sucha place. I asked him what the work was and he looked up. 

"Subway, " he answered. 

I asked him how much the pay was. He looked me over at this. I don'tknow what he thought I was. 

"Dollar and a half--nine hours. "

"All right, " I answered. 

He gave me a slip of paper and I hurried out. It hadn't taken tenminutes. And a dollar and a half a day was nine dollars a week! It wasalmost twice as much as I had started on with the United; it was overa third of what I had been getting after my first ten years of hardwork with them. It seemed too good to be true. Taking out the rent, this left me six dollars for food. That was as much as it had costRuth and me the first year we were married. There was no need of goinghungry on that. 

I came back home jubilant. Ruth at first took the prospect of mydigging in a ditch a bit hard, but that was only because shecontrasted it with my former genteel employment. 

"Why, girl, " I explained, "it's no more than I would have to do if wetook a homestead out west. I'd as soon dig in Massachusetts asMontana. "

She felt of my arm. It's a big arm. Then she smiled. It was the lasttime she mentioned the subject. 

We didn't say anything to the neighbors until the furniture began togo out. Then the women flocked in and Ruth was hard pressed to keepour secret. I sat upstairs and chuckled as I heard her replies. Shesays it's the only time I ever failed to stand by her, but it didn'tseem to me like anything but a joke. 

"We shall want to keep track of you, " said little Mrs. Grover. "Whereshall we address you?"

"Oh, I can't tell, " answered Ruth, truthfully enough. 

"Are you going far?"

"Yes. Oh--a long, long way. "

That was true enough too. We couldn't have gone farther out of theirlives if we'd sailed for Australia. 

And so they kept it up. That night we made a round of the houses andeveryone was very much surprised and very much grieved and verycurious. To all their inquiries, I made the same reply; that I wasgoing to emigrate. Some of them looked wistful. 

"Jove, " said Brown, who was with the insurance company, "but I wish Ihad the nerve to do that. I suppose you're going west?"

"We're going west first, " I answered. 

The road to the station was almost due west. 

"They say there are great chances out in that country, " he said. "Itisn't so overcrowded as here. "

"I don't know about that, " I answered, "but there are chances enough. "

Some of the women cried and all the men shook hands cordially andwished us good luck. But it didn't mean much to me. The time I neededtheir handshakes was gone. I learned later that as a result of oursecrecy I was variously credited with having lost my reason with myjob; with having inherited a fortune, with having gambled in themarket, with, thrown in for good measure, a darker hint about havingmisappropriated funds of the United Woollen. But somehow theirnastiest gossip did not disturb me. It had no power to harm either meor mine. I was already beyond their reach. Before I left I wished themall Godspeed on the dainty journey they were making in theircockleshell. Then so far as they were concerned I dropped off into thesea with my wife and boy. 

CHAPTER V

WE PROSPECT

We were lucky in getting into a new tenement and lucky in securing thetop floor. This gave us easy access to the flat roof five storiesabove the street. From here we not only had a magnificent view of theharbor, but even on the hottest days felt something of a sea breeze. Coming down here in June we appreciated that before the summer wasover. 

The street was located half a dozen blocks from the waterfront and wasinhabited almost wholly by Italians, save for a Frenchman on thecorner who ran a bake-shop. The street itself was narrow and dirtyenough, but it opened into a public square which was decidedlypicturesque. This was surrounded by tiny shops and foreign banks, andwas always alive with color and incident. The vegetables displayed onthe sidewalk stands, the gay hues of the women's gowns, the gaudykerchiefs of the men, gave it a kaleidoscopic effect that made it asfascinating to us as a trip abroad. The section was known as LittleItaly, and so far as we were concerned was as interesting as Italyitself. 

There were four other families in the house, but the only things weused in common were the narrow iron stairway leading upstairs and theroof. The other tenants, however, seldom used the latter at all exceptto hang out their occasional washings. For the first month or so wesaw little of these people. We were far too busy to make overtures, and as for them they let us severely alone. They were not noisy, andexcept for a sick baby on the first floor we heard little of themabove the clamor of the street below. We had four rooms. The frontroom we gave to the boy, the next room we ourselves occupied, thethird room we used for a sitting-and dining-room, while the fourth wasa small kitchen with running water. As compared with our house thequarters at first seemed cramped, but we had cut down our furniture towhat was absolutely essential, and as soon as our eyes ceased makingthe comparison we were surprised to find how comfortable we were. Inthe dining-room, for instance, we had nothing but three chairs, afolding table and a closet for the dishes. Lounging chairs and soforth we did away with altogether. Nor was there any need of makingprovision for possible guests. Here throughout the whole house was thegreatest saving. I took a fierce pleasure at first in thus caring formy own alone. 

The boy's room contained a cot, a chair, a rug and a few of hispersonal treasures; our own room contained just the bed, chair andwashstand. Ruth added a few touches with pictures and odds and endsthat took off the bare aspect without cluttering up. In two weeksthese scant quarters were every whit as much home as our tidy littlehouse had been. That was Ruth's part in it. She'd make a home out of aprison. 

On the second day we were fairly settled, and that night after the boyhad gone to bed Ruth sat down at my side with a pad and pencil in herhand. 

"Billy, " she said, "there's one thing we're going to do in this newbeginning: we're going to save--if it's only ten cents a week. "

I shook my head doubtfully. 

"I'm afraid you can't until I get a raise, " I said. 

"We tried waiting for raises before, " she answered. 

"I know, but--"

"There aren't going to be any buts, " she answered decidedly. 

"But six dollars a week--"

"Is six dollars a week, " she broke in. "We must live on five-fifty, that's all. "

"With steak thirty cents a pound?"

"We won't have steak. That's the point. Our neighbors around heredon't look starved, and they have larger families than ours. And theydon't even buy intelligently. "

"How do you know that?"

"I've been watching them at the little stores in the square. They paythere as much for half-decayed stuff as they'd have to pay for freshodds and ends at the big market. "

She rested her pad upon her knee. 

"Now in the first place, Billy, we're going to live much more simply. "

"We've never been extravagant, " I said. 

"Not in a way, " she answered slowly, "but in another way we have. I'vebeen doing a lot of thinking in the last few days and I see now wherewe've had a great many unnecessary things. "

"Not for the last few weeks, anyhow, " I said. 

"Those don't count. But before that I mean. For instance there'scoffee. It's a luxury. Why we spent almost thirty cents a week on thatalone. "

"I know but--"

"There's another but. There's no nourishment in coffee and we can'tafford it. We'll spend that money for milk. We must have good milk andyou must get it for me somewhere up town. I don't like the looks ofthe milk around here. That will be eight cents a day. "

"Better have two quarts, " I suggested. 

She thought a moment. 

"Yes, " she agreed, "two quarts, because that's going to be the basisof our food. That's a dollar twelve cents a week. "

She made up a little face at this. I smiled grandly. 

"Now for breakfast we must have oatmeal every morning. And we'll getit in bulk. I've priced it and it's only a little over three cents apound at some of the stores. "

"And the kind we've always had?"

"About twelve when it's done up in packages. That's about theproportion by which I expect to cut down everything. But you'll haveto eat milk on it instead of cream. Then we'll use a lot of potatoes. They are very good baked for breakfast. And with them you may havesalt fish--oh, there are a dozen nice ways of fixing that. And you mayhave griddle cakes and--you wait and see the things I'll give you forbreakfast. You'll have to have a good luncheon of course, but we'llhave our principal meal when you get back from work at night. But youwon't get steak. When we do get meat we'll buy soup bones and meat wecan boil. And instead of pies and cakes we'll have nourishing puddingsof cornstarch and rice. There's another good point--rice. It's cheapand we'll have a lot of it. Look at how the Japanese live on it dayafter day and keep fat and strong. Then there's cheap fish; rock codand such to make good chowders of or to fry in pork fat like the bassand trout I used to have back home. Then there's baked beans. We oughtto have them at least twice a week in the winter. But this summerwe'll live mostly on fish and vegetables. I can get them fresh at themarket. "

"It sounds good, " I said. 

"Just you wait, " she cried excitedly. "I'll fatten up both you and theboy. "

"And yourself, little woman, " I reminded her. "I'm not going to takethe saving out of you. "

"Don't you worry about me, " she answered. "This will be easier thanthe other life. I shan't have to worry about clothes or dinners orparties for the boy. And it isn't going to take any time at all tokeep these four rooms clean and sweet. "

I took the rest of the week as a sort of vacation and used it to getacquainted with my new surroundings. It's a fact that this section ofthe city which for twenty years had been within a short walk of myoffice was as foreign to me as Europe. I had never before been downhere and all I knew about it was through the occasional head-lines inthe papers in connection with stabbing affrays. For the first day ortwo I felt as though I ought to carry a revolver. Whenever I wasforced to leave Ruth alone in the house I instructed her upon nocircumstances to open the door. The boy and I arranged a secretrap--an idea that pleased him mightily--and until she heard the singleknock followed by two quick sharp ones, she was not to answer. But inwandering around among these people it was difficult to think of themas vicious. The Italian element was a laughing, indolent-appearinggroup; the scattered Jewish folk were almost timid and kept very muchto themselves. I didn't find a really tough face until I came to thewater front where they spoke English. 

On the third morning after a breakfast of oatmeal and hotbiscuit--and, by the way, Ruth effected a fifty per cent. Saving righthere by using the old-fashioned formula of soda and cream of tartarinstead of baking powder--and baked potatoes, Ruth and the boy andmyself started on an exploring trip. Our idea was to get a line onjust what our opportunities were down here and to nose out the bestand cheapest places to buy. The thing that impressed us right off wasthe big advantage we had in being within easy access of the bigprovision centres. We were within ten minutes' walk of the market, within fifteen of the water front, within three of the square andwithin twenty of the department stores. At all of these places wefound special bargains for the day made to attract in town those froma distance. If one rose early and reached them about as soon as theywere opened one could often buy things almost at cost and sometimesbelow cost. For instance, we went up town to one of the largest butcheaper grade department stores--we had heard its name for years buthad never been inside the building--and we found that in their grocerydepartment they had special mark-downs every day in the week for alimited supply of goods. We bought sugar this day at a cent a poundless than the market price and good beans for two cents a quart less. It sounds at first like rather picayune saving but it counts up at theend of the year. Then every stall in the market had its bargain ofmeats--wholesome bits but unattractive to the careless buyer. Webought here for fifty cents enough round steak for several good mealsof hash. We couldn't have bought it for less than a dollar in thesuburbs and even at that we wouldn't have known anything about it forthe store was too far for Ruth to make a personal visit and thebutcher himself would never have mentioned such an odd end to a memberof our neighborhood. 

We enjoyed wandering around this big market which in itself was like atrip to another land. Later one of our favorite amusements was tocome down here at night and watch the hustling crowds and the lightsand the pretty colors and confusion. It reminded Ruth, she said, of acountry fair. She always carried a pad and pencil and made notes ofgood places to buy. I still have those and am referring to them now asI write this. 

"Blanks, " she writes (I omit the name), "nice clean store withpleasant salesman. Has good soup bones. "

Again, "Blank and Blank--good place to buy sausage. "

Here too the market gardeners gathered as early as four o'clock withtheir vegetables fresh from the suburbs. They did mostly a wholesalebusiness but if one knew how it was always possible to buy of them acabbage or a head of lettuce or a few apples or a peck of potatoes. They were a genial, ruddy-cheeked lot and after a while they came toknow Ruth. Often I'd go up there with her before work and she with abasket on her arm would buy for the day. It was always, "Good morning, miss, " in answer to her smile. They were respectful whether I wasalong or not. But for that matter I never knew anyone who wasn'trespectful to Ruth. They used to like to see her come, I think, forshe stood out in rather marked contrast to the bowed figures of theother women. Later on they used to save out for her any particularlychoice vegetable they might have. She insisted however in paying theman extra penny for such things. 

From the market we went down a series of narrow streets which led tothe water front. Here the vessels from the Banks come in to unload. The air was salty and though to us at first the wharves seemed dirtywe got used to them, after a while, and enjoyed the smell of the fishfresh from the water. 

Seeing whole push carts full of fish and watching them handled with apitch fork as a man tosses hay didn't whet our appetites any, but whenwe remembered that it was these same fish--a day or two older, --forwhich we had been paying double the price charged for them here thedifference overcame our scruples. The men here interested me. I foundthat while the crew of every schooner numbered a goodly per cent. Offoreigners, still the greater part were American born. The new comersas a rule bought small launches of their own and went into businessfor themselves. The English speaking portion of the crews were alsoas a rule the rougher element. The loafers and hangers-on about thewharves were also English speaking. This was a fact that later on Ifound to be rather significant and to hold true in a general way inall branches of the lower class of labor. 

The barrooms about here--always a pretty sure index of the men of anycommunity--were more numerous and of decidedly a rougher characterthan those about the square. A man would be a good deal betterjustified in carrying a revolver on this street than he would inLittle Italy. I never allowed Ruth to come down here alone. 

From here we wandered back and I found a public playground andbathhouse by the water's edge. This attracted me at once. Iinvestigated this and found it offered a fine opportunity for bathing. Little dressing-rooms were provided and for a penny a man could get aclean towel and for five cents a bathing suit. There was no reasonthat I could see, however, why we shouldn't provide our own. It waswithin an easy ten minutes of the flat and I saw right then where Iwould get a dip every day. It would be a great thing for the boy, too. I had always wanted him to learn to swim. 

On the way home we passed through the Jewish quarter and I made a noteof the clothing offered for sale here. The street was lined withsecond hand stores with coats and trousers swinging over the sidewalk, and the windows were filled with odd lots of shoes. Then too therewere the pawnshops. I'd always thought of a pawnshop as not beingexactly respectable and had the feeling that anyone who securedanything from one of them was in a way a receiver of stolen goods. Butas I passed them now, I received a new impression. They seemed, downhere, as legitimate a business as the second hand stores. The windowsoffered an assortment of everything from watches to banjoes and gunsbut among them I also noticed many carpenter's tools and so forth. That might be a useful thing to remember. 

It was odd how in a day our point of view had changed. If I hadbrought Ruth and the boy down through here a month before, we wouldall, I think, have been more impressed by the congestion and thepicturesque details of the squalor than anything else. We would havepicked our way gingerly and Ruth would have sighed often in pity and, comparing the lives of these people with our own, would probably havemade an extra generous contribution to the Salvation Army the nexttime they came round. I'm not saying now that there isn't miseryenough there and in every like section of every city, but I'll saythat in a great many cases the same people who grovel in the filthhere would grovel in a different kind of filth if they had tenthousand a year. At that you can't blame them greatly for they don'tknow any better. But when you learn, as I learned later, that some ofthe proprietors of these second hand stores and fly-blown butchershops have sons in Harvard and daughters in Wellesley, it makes youthink. But I'm running ahead. 

The point was that now that we felt ourselves in a way one of thesepeople and viewed the street not from the superior height ofnative-born Americans but just as emigrants, neither the soiledclothes of the inhabitants nor the cluttered street swarming withlaughing youngsters impressed us unfavorably at all. The impassive mensmoking cigarettes at their doors looked contented enough, the womenwere not such as to excite pity, and if you noticed, there were asmany children around the local soda water fountains as you'd find in asuburban drug store. They all had clothes enough and appeared well fedand if some of them looked pasty, the sweet stuff in the stores wasenough to account for that. 

At any rate we came back to our flat that day neither depressed nordiscouraged but decidedly in better spirits. Of course we had seenonly the surface and I suspected that when we really got into theselives we'd find a bad condition of things. It must be so, for that wasthe burden of all we read. But we would have time enough to worryabout that when we discovered it for ourselves. 

CHAPTER VI

I BECOME A DAY LABORER

That night Ruth and I had a talk about the boy. We both came back fromour walk, with him more on our minds than anything else. He had beeninterested in everything and had asked about a thousand questions andgone to bed eager to be out on the street again the next day. We knewwe couldn't keep him cooped up in the flat all the time and of courseboth Ruth and I were going to be too busy to go out with him everytime he went. As for letting him run loose around these streets withnothing to do, that would be sheer foolhardiness. It was too late inthe season to enroll him in the public schools and even that wouldhave left him idle during the long summer months. 

We talked some at first of sending him off into the country to a farm. There were two or three families back where Ruth had lived who mightbe willing to take him for three or four dollars a week and we hadthe money left over from the sale of our household goods to coverthat. But this would mean the sacrifice of our emergency fund which wewished to preserve more for the boy's sake than our own and it wouldmean leaving Ruth very much alone. 

"I'll do it, Billy, " she said bravely, "but can't we wait a day or twobefore deciding? And I think I can _make_ time to get out with him. I'll get up earlier in the morning and I'll leave my work at nightuntil after he's gone to bed. "

So she would. She'd have worked all night to keep him at home and thengone out with him all day if it had been possible. I saw it would bedragging the heart out of her to send the boy away and made up my mindright then and there that some other solution must be found for theproblem. Good Lord, after I'd led her down here the least I could dowas to let her keep the one. And to tell the truth I found my ownheart sink at the suggestion. 

"What do the boys round here do in the summer?" she asked. 

I didn't know and I made up my mind to find out. The next day I wentdown to a settlement house which I remembered passing at some time orother. I didn't know what it was but it sounded like some sort ofphilanthropic enterprise for the neighborhood and if so they ought tobe able to answer my questions there. The outside of the building wasnot particularly attractive but upon entering I was pleasantlysurprised at the air of cleanliness and comfort which prevailed. Therewere a number of small boys around and in one room I saw them readingand playing checkers. I sought out the secretary and found him apleasant young fellow though with something of the professionalpleasantness which men in this work seem to acquire. He smiled toomuch and held my hand a bit too long to suit me. He took me into hisoffice and offered me a chair. I told him briefly that I had justmoved down here and had a boy of ten whom I wished to keep off thestreets and keep occupied. I asked him what the boys around here didduring the summer. 

"Most of them work, " he answered. 

I hadn't thought of this. 

"What do they do?"

"A good many sell papers, some of them serve as errand boys and othershelp their parents. "

Dick was certainly too inexperienced for the first two jobs and therewas nothing in my work he could do to help. Then the man began to askme questions. He was evidently struck by the fact that I didn't seemto be in place here. I answered briefly that I had been a clerk all mylife, had lost my position and was now a common day laborer. The boy, I explained, was not yet used to his life down here and I wanted tokeep him occupied until he got his strength. 

"You're right, " he answered. "Why don't you bring him in here?"

"What would he do here?"

"It's a good loafing place for him and we have some evening classes. "

"I want him at home nights, " I answered. 

"The Y. M. C. A. Has summer classes which begin a little later on. Whydon't you put him into some of those?"

I had always heard of the Y. M. C. A. , but I had never got into touchwith it, for I thought it was purely a religious organization. Butthat proposition sounded good. I'd passed the building a thousandtimes but had never been inside. I thanked him and started to leave. 

"I hope this won't be your last visit, " he said cordially. "Come downand see what we're doing. You'll find a lot of boys here at night. "

"Thanks, " I answered. 

I went direct to the Y. M. C. A. Building. Here again I was surprised tofind a most attractive interior. It looked like the inside of aprosperous club house. I don't know what I expected but I wouldn'thave been startled if I'd found a hall filled with wooden settees anda prayer meeting going on. I had a lot of such preconceived notionsknocked out of my head in the next few years. 

In response to my questions I received replies that made me feel I'dstrayed by mistake into some university. For that matter it _was_ auniversity. There was nothing from the primary class in English to aprofessional education in the law that a man couldn't acquire here fora sum that was astonishingly small. The most of the classes costnothing after payment of the membership fee of ten dollars. Theinstructors were, many of them, the same men who gave similar coursesat a neighboring college. Not only that, but the hours were soarranged as to accommodate workers of all classes. If you couldn'tattend in the daytime, you could at night. I was astonished to thinkthat this opportunity had always been at my hand and I had neversuspected it. In the ten years before I was married I could havequalified as a lawyer or almost anything else. 

This was not all; a young man took me over the building and showed methe library, the reading-room, rooms where the young men gathered forgames, and then down stairs to the well equipped gymnasium with itsshower baths. Here a boy could take a regular course in gymnasium workunder a skilled instructor or if he showed any skill devote himself tosuch sports as basketball, running, baseball or swimming. In additionto these advantages amusements were provided through the year in theform of lectures, amateur shows and music. In the summer, specialopportunities were offered for out-door sports. Moreover theAssociation managed summer camps where for a nominal fee the boyscould enjoy the life of the woods. A boy must be poor indeed who couldnot afford most of these opportunities. And if he was out of work theemployment bureau conducted here would help him to a position. I cameback to the main office wondering still more how in the world I'dever missed such chances all these years. It was a question I askedmyself many times during the next few months. And the answer seemed tolie in the dead level of that other life. We never lifted our eyes; wenever looked around us. If we were hard pressed either we accepted ourlot resignedly or cursed our luck, and let it go at that. Theseopportunities were for a class which had no lot and didn't know themeaning of luck. The others could have had them, too--can havethem--for the taking, but neither by education nor temperament arethey qualified to do so. There's a good field for missionary workthere for someone. 

Before I came out of the building I had enrolled Dick as a member andpicked out for him a summer course in English in which he was a bitbackward. I also determined to start him in some regular gymnasiumwork. He needed hardening up. 

I came home and announced my success to Ruth and she was delighted. Isuspected by the look in her eyes that she had been worrying all dayfor fear there would be no alternative but to send the boy off. 

"I knew you would find a way, " she said excitedly. 

"I wish I'd found it twenty years ago, " I said regretfully. "Thenyou'd have a lawyer for a husband instead of a--. "

"Hush, " she answered putting her hand over my mouth. "I've a man for ahusband and that's all I care about. "

The way she said it made me feel that after all being a man was whatcounted and that if I could live up to that day by day, no matter whathappened, then I could be well satisfied. I guess the city directorywas right when before now it couldn't define me any more definitelythan, "clerk. " And there is about as much man in a clerk as in avalet. They are both shadows. 

The boy fell in with my plans eagerly, for the gymnasium work made himforget the study part of the programme. The next day I took him upthere and saw him introduced to the various department heads. I paidhis membership fee and they gave him a card which made him feel like areal club man. I tell you it took a weight off my mind. 

On the Monday following our arrival in our new quarters, I rose atfive-thirty, put on my overalls and had breakfast. I ate a large bowlof oatmeal, a generous supply of flapjacks, made of some milk that hadsoured, sprinkled with molasses, and a cup of hot black coffee--thelast of a can we had brought down with us among the left-over kitchensupplies. 

For lunch Ruth had packed my box with cold cream-of-tartar biscuit, well buttered, a bit of cheese, a little bowl of rice pudding, twohard-boiled eggs and a pint bottle of cold coffee. I kissed her goodbyand started out on foot for the street where I was to take up my work. The foreman demanded my name, registered me, told me where to find ashovel and assigned me to a gang under another foreman. At seveno'clock I took my place with a dozen Italians and began to shovel. Mymuscles were decidedly flabby, and by noon I began to find it hardwork. I was glad to stop and eat my lunch. I couldn't remember a mealin five years that tasted as good as that did. My companions watchedme curiously--perhaps a bit suspiciously--but they chattered in aforeign tongue among themselves and rather shied away from me. On thatfirst day I made up my mind to one thing--I would learn Italian beforethe year was done, and know something more about these people andtheir ways. They were the key to the contractor's problem and it wouldpay a man to know how to handle them. As I watched the boss over usthat day it did not seem to me that he understood very well. 

From one to five the work became an increasing strain. Even with myathletic training I wasn't used to such a prolonged test of one set ofmuscles. My legs became heavy, my back ached, and my shoulders finallyrefused to obey me except under the sheer command of my will. I knew, however, that time would remedy this. I might be sore and lame for aday or two, but I had twice the natural strength of these short, close-knit foreigners. The excitement and novelty of the employmenthelped me through those first few days. I felt the joy of thepioneer--felt the sweet sense of delving in the mother earth. Ittouched in me some responsive chord that harked back to my ancestorswho broke the rocky soil of New England. Of the life of my fellowsbustling by on the earth-crust overhead--those fellows of whom solately I had been one--I was not at all conscious. I might have beenat work on some new planet for all they touched my new life. I couldsee them peering over the wooden rail around our excavation as theystopped to stare down at us, but I did not connect them with myself. And yet I felt closer to this old city than ever before. I thrilledwith the joy of the constructor, the builder, even in this humblecapacity. I felt superior to those for whom I was building. In acoarse way I suppose it was a reflection of some artisticsense--something akin to the creative impulse. I can say truthfullythat at the end of that first day I came home--begrimed and sore as Iwas--with a sense of fuller life than so far I had ever experienced. 

I found Ruth waiting for me with some anxiety. She came into mysoil-stained arms as eagerly as a bride. It was good. It took all thesoreness out of me. Before supper I took the boy and we went down tothe public baths on the waterfront and there I dived and splashed andswam like a young whale. The sting of the cold salt water was all thefurther balm I needed. I came out tingling and fit right then foranother nine-hour day. But when I came back I threatened our firstweek's savings at the supper-table. Ruth had made more hotgriddle-cakes and I kept her at the stove until I was ashamed to do itlonger. The boy, too, after his plunge, showed a better appetite thanfor weeks. 

CHAPTER VII

NINE DOLLARS A WEEK

The second day, I woke up lame and stiff but I gave myself a goodbrisk rub down and kneaded my arm and leg muscles until they werepretty well limbered up. The thing that pleased me was the way I felttowards my new work that second morning. I'd been a bit afraid of areaction--of waking up with all the romance gone. That, I knew, wouldbe deadly. Once let me dwell on the naked material facts of mycondition and I'd be lost. That's true of course in any occupation. The man who works without an inspiration of some sort is not onlydiscontented but a poor workman. I remember distinctly that when Iopened my eyes and realized my surroundings and traced back theincidents of yesterday to the ditch, I was concerned principally withthe problem of a stone in our path upon which we had been working. Iwanted to get back to it. We had worked upon it for an hour withoutfully uncovering it and I was as eager as the foreman to learn whetherit was a ledge rock or just a fragment. This interest was notassociated with the elevated road for whom the work was being done, nor the contractor who had undertaken the job, nor the foreman who wassupervising it. It was a question which concerned only me and MotherEarth who seemed to be doing her best to balk us at every turn. Iforgot the sticky, wet clay in which I had floundered for nine hours, forgot the noisome stench which at times we were forced to breathe, forgot my lame hands and back. I recalled only the problem itself andthe skill with which the man they called Anton' handled his crow bar. He was a master of it. In removing the smaller slabs which lay aroundthe big one he astonished me with his knowledge of how to place thebar. He'd come to my side where I was prying with all my strength andwith a wave of his hand for me to stand back, would adjust two orthree smaller rocks as a fulcrum and then, with the gentlest ofmovements, work the half-ton weight inch by inch to where he wantedit. He could swing the rock to the right or left, raise or lower it, at will, and always he made the weight of the rock, against which Ihad striven so vainly, do the work. That was something worth learning. I wanted to get back and study him. I wanted to get back and finishuncovering that rock. I wanted to get back and bring the job as awhole to a finish so as to have a new one to tackle. Even at the endof that first day I felt I had learned enough to make myself a man ofgreater power than I was the day before. And always in the backgroundwas the unknown goal to which this toil was to lead. I hadn't yetstopped to figure out what the goal was but that it was worth while Ihad no doubt for I was no longer stationary. I was a constructor. Iwas in touch with a big enterprise of development. 

I don't know that I've made myself clear. I wasn't very clear in myown mind then but I know that I had a very conscious impression of thesort which I've tried to put into words. And I know that it filled mewith a great big joy. I never woke up with any such feeling when withthe United Woollen. My only thought in the morning then was how muchtime I must give myself to catch the six-thirty. When I reached theoffice I hung up my hat and coat and sat down to the impersonalfigures like an automaton. There was nothing of me in the work; therecouldn't be. How petty it seemed now! I suppose the company, as anindustrial enterprise, was in the line of development, but that ideanever penetrated as far as the clerical department. We didn't feel itany more than the adding machines do. 

Ruth had a good breakfast for me and when I came into the kitchen shewas trying to brush the dried clay off my overalls. 

"Good Heavens!" I said, "don't waste your strength doing that. "

She looked up from her task with a smile. 

"I'm not going to let you get slack down here" she said. 

"But those things will look just as bad again five minutes after I'vegone down the ladder. "

"But I don't intend they shall look like this on your way to theladder, " she answered. 

"All right, " I said "then let me have them. I'll do it myself. "

"Have you shaved?" she asked. 

I rubbed my hand over my chin. It wasn't very bad and I'd made up mymind I wouldn't shave every day now. 

"No, " I said. "But twice or three times a week--"

"Billy!" she broke in, "that will never do. You're going down to yournew business looking just as ship-shape as you went to the old. Youdon't belong to that contractor; you belong to me. "

In the meanwhile the boy came in with my heavy boots which he hadbrushed clean and oiled. There was nothing left for me to do but toshave and I'll admit I felt better for it. 

"Do you want me to put on a high collar?" I asked. 

"Didn't you find the things I laid out for you?"

I hadn't looked about. I'd put on the things I took off. She led meback into the bed room, and over a chair I saw a clean change ofunderclothing and a new grey flannel shirt. 

"Where did you get this?" I asked. 

"I bought it for a dollar, " she answered. "It's too much to pay. I canmake one for fifty cents as soon as I get time to sew. "

That's the way Ruth was. Every day after this she made me change, after I came back from my swim, into the business suit I wore when Icame down here, and which now by contrast looked almost new. She evenmade me wear a tie with my flannel shirt. Every morning I started outclean shaven and with my work clothes as fresh as though I were acontractor myself. I objected at first because it seemed too much forher to do to wash the things every day, but she said it was a gooddeal easier than washing them once a week. Incidentally that was oneof her own little schemes for saving trouble and it seemed to me agood one; instead of collecting her soiled clothes for seven days andthen tearing herself all to pieces with a whole hard forenoon's work, she washed a little every day. By this plan it took her only about anhour each morning to keep all the linen in the house clean and sweet. We had the roof to dry it on and she never ironed anything exceptperhaps the tablecloths and handkerchiefs. We had no company to caterto and as long as we knew things were clean that's all we cared. 

We got around the rock all right. It proved not to be a ledge afterall. I myself, however, didn't accomplish as much as I did the firstday, for I was slower in my movements. On the other hand, I think Iimproved a little in my handling of the crowbar. At the noon hour Itried to start a conversation with Anton', but he understood littleEnglish and I knew no Italian, so we didn't get far. As he sat in agroup of his fellow countrymen laughing and jabbering he made me feeldistinctly like an outsider. There were one or two English-speakingworkmen besides myself, but somehow they didn't interest me as much asthese Italians. It may have been my imagination but they seemed to mea decidedly inferior lot. As a rule they were men who took the jobonly to keep themselves from starving and quit at the end of a week ortwo only to come back when they needed more money. 

I must make an exception of an Irishman I will call Dan Rafferty. Hewas a big blue-eyed fellow, full of fun and fight, with a good naturedcontempt of the Dagoes, and was a born leader. I noticed, the firstday, that he came nearer being the boss of the gang than the foreman, and I suspect the latter himself noticed it, for he seemed to have itin for Dan. There never was an especially dirty job to be done butwhat Dan was sent. He always obeyed but he used to slouch off with hisbig red fist doubled up, muttering curses that brought out his brogueat its best. Later on he confided in me what he was going to do tothat boss. If he had carried out his threats he would long since havebeen electrocuted and I would have lost a good friend. Several times Ithought the two men were coming to blows but though Dan would havedearly loved a fight and could have handled a dozen men like theforeman, he always managed to control himself in time to avoid it. 

"I don't wanter be after losin' me job for the dirthy spalpeen, " hegrowled to me. 

But he came near it in a way he wasn't looking for later in the week. It was Friday and half a dozen of us had been sent down to work on thesecond level. It was damp and suffocating down there, fifty feet belowthe street. I felt as though I had gone into the mines. I didn't likeit but I knew that there was just as much to learn here as above andthat it must all be learned eventually. The sides were braced withheavy timbers like a mine shaft to prevent the dirt from falling inand there was the constant danger that in spite of this it might cavein. We went down by rough ladders made by nailing strips of boardacross two pieces of joist and the work down there was back-breakingand monotonous. We heaved the dirt into a big iron bucket lowered bythe hoisting engine above. It was heavy, wet soil that weighed likelead. 

From the beginning the men complained of headaches and one by one theycrawled up the ladder again for fresh air. Others were sent down butat the end of an hour they too retreated. Dan and I stuck it out for awhile. Then I began to get dizzy myself. I didn't know what thetrouble was but when I began to wobble a bit Dan placed his hand on myshoulder. 

"Betther climb out o' here, " he said. "I'm thinkin' it's gas. "

At that time I didn't know what sewer gas was. I couldn't smellanything and thought he must be mistaken. 

"You'd better come too, " I answered, making for the ladder. 

He wasn't coming but I couldn't get up very well without him so hefollowed along behind. At the top we found the foreman fighting madand trying to spur on another gang to go down. They wouldn't move. When he saw us come up he turned upon Dan. 

"Who ordered you out of there?" he growled. 

"The gas, " answered Dan. 

"Gas be damned, " shouted the foreman. "You're a bunch of white liveredcowards--all of you. "

I saw Dan double up his fists and start towards the man. The latterchecked him with a command. 

"Go back down there or you're fired, " he said to him. 

Dan turned red. Then I saw his jaws come together. 

"Begod!" he answered. "_You_ shan't fire me, anyhow. "

Without another word he started down the ladder again. I saw theItalians crowd together and watch him. By that time my head wasclearer but my legs were weak. I sat down a moment uncertain what todo. Then I heard someone shout:

"By God, he's right! He's lying there at the bottom. "

I started towards the ladder but some one shoved me back. Then Ithought of the bucket. It was above ground and I staggered towards itgaining strength at each step. I jumped in and shouted to the engineerto lower me. He obeyed from instinct. I went down, down, down to whatseemed like the center of the earth. When the bucket struck the groundI was dizzy again but I managed to get out, heave the unconscious Danin and pile on top of him myself. When I came to, I was in anambulance on my way to the hospital but by the time I had reached theemergency room I had taken a grip on myself. I knew that if ever Ruthheard of this she would never again be comfortable. When they took usout I was able to walk a little. The doctors wanted to put me to bedbut I refused to go. I sat there for about an hour while they workedover Dan. When I found that he would be all right by morning Iinsisted upon going out. I had a bad headache, but I knew the freshair would drive this away and so it did, though it left me weak. 

One of the hardest day's work I ever did in my life was killing timefrom then until five o'clock. Of course the papers got hold of it andthat gave me another scare but luckily the nearest they came to myname was Darlinton, so no harm was done. And they didn't come within amile of getting the real story. When in a later edition one of thempublished my photograph I felt absolutely safe for they had me in afull beard and thinner than I've ever been in my life. 

When I came home at my usual time looking a bit white perhaps butotherwise normal enough, the first question Ruth asked me was:

"What have you done with your dinner pail, Billy?"

Isn't a man always sure to do some such fool thing as that, when he'strying to keep something quiet from the wife? I had to explain that Ihad forgotten it and that was enough to excite suspicion at any time. She kept me uneasy for ten minutes and the best I could do was toadmit finally that I wasn't feeling very well. Whereupon she made mego to bed and fussed over me all the evening and worried all the nextday. 

I reported for work as usual in the morning and found we had a newforeman. It was a relief because I guess if Dan hadn't knocked downthe other one, someone else would have done it sooner or later. Atthat the man had taught me something about sewer gas and that is whenyou begin to feel dizzy fifty feet below the street, it's time to goup the ladder about as fast as your wobbly legs will let you, even ifyou don't smell anything. 

Rafferty didn't turn up for two or three days. When he did appear itwas with a simple:

"Mawnin, mon. "

It wasn't until several days later I learned that the late foreman hadleft town nursing a black eye and a cut on one cheek such as mighthave been made by a set of red knuckles backed by an arm the size of asmall ham. 

On Saturday night of that first week I came home with nine dollars inmy pocket. I'll never be prouder again than I was when I handed themover to Ruth. And Ruth will never again be prouder than she was when, after she had laid aside three of them for the rent and five forcurrent expenses, she picked out a one-dollar bill and, crossing theroom, placed it in the ginger jar. This was a little blue affair inwhich we had always dropped what pennies and nickels we could spare. 

"There's our nest-egg, " she announced. 

"You don't mean to tell me you're that much ahead of the game thefirst week?"

"Look here, Billy, " she answered. 

She brought out an itemized list of everything she had bought fromlast Monday, including Sunday's dinner. I've kept that list. Many ofthe things she had bought were not yet used up but she had computedthe cost of the amount actually used. Here it is as I copied it off:

 Flour, . 25 Lard, . 15 Cream of tartar and soda, . 05 Oat meal, . 04 Molasses, . 05 Sugar, . 12 Potatoes, . 20 Rice, . 06 Milk, 1. 12 Eggs, . 24 Rye bread, . 10 Sausages, . 22 Lettuce, . 03 Beans, . 12 Salt pork, . 15 Corn meal, . 06 Graham meal, . 05 Butter, . 45 Cheese, . 06 Shin of beef, . 39 Fish, . 22 Oil, . 28 Soap, . 09 Vinegar, salt and pepper, about . 05 Can of corn, . 07 Onions, . 06 Total $4. 68

In this account, too, Ruth was liberal in her margins. She did betterthan this later on. A fairer estimate could have been made at the endof the month and a still fairer even than that, at the end of theyear. It sounded almost too good to be true but it was a fact. We hadlived, and lived well on this amount and as yet Ruth wasinexperienced. She hadn't learned all she learned later. For thebenefit of those who may think we went hungry I have asked Ruth towrite out the bill of fare for this week as nearly as she can rememberit. One thing you must keep in mind is that of everything we had, wehad enough. Neither Ruth, the boy, nor myself ever left the table ordinner pail unsatisfied. Here's what we had and it was better eventhan it sounds for whatever Ruth made, she made well. I copy it as shewrote it out. 

 Monday. 

 Breakfast: oatmeal, griddle-cakes with molasses, cream of tartar biscuits, milk. 

 Luncheon: for Billy: cold biscuits, two hard-boiled eggs, bowl of rice, cold coffee; for Dick and me: cold biscuits, milk, rice. 

 Dinner: baked potatoes, griddle-cakes, milk. 

 Tuesday. 

 Breakfast: baked potatoes, graham muffins, oatmeal, milk. 

 Luncheon: for Billy: cold muffins, two hard-boiled eggs, rice, milk; for Dick and me: cold muffins, rice and milk. 

 Dinner: boiled potatoes, pork scraps, hot biscuits, milk. 

 Wednesday. 

 Breakfast: oatmeal, fried potatoes, warmed over biscuits. 

 Luncheon: for Billy: cold biscuits, two hard-boiled eggs, bread pudding; for Dick and me: baked potatoes, cold biscuits, bread pudding. 

 Dinner: beef stew with dumplings, hot biscuits, milk. 

 Thursday. 

 Breakfast: fried sausages, baked potatoes, graham muffins, milk. 

 Luncheon: for Billy: cold muffins, cold sausage and rice; for Dick and me: the same. 

 Dinner: warmed over stew, lettuce, hot biscuits, milk. 

 Friday. 

 Breakfast: oatmeal, fried rock cod, baked potatoes, rye bread, milk. 

 Luncheon: for Billy: rye bread, potato salad, rice; for Dick and me: the same. 

 Dinner: soup made from stock of beef, left over fish, boiled potatoes, rice, milk. 

 Saturday. 

 Breakfast: oatmeal, fried corn mush with molasses, milk. 

 Luncheon: for Billy: cold biscuits, two hard-boiled eggs, cheese, rice; for Dick and me: German toast. 

 Dinner: baked beans, hot biscuits. 

 Sunday. 

 Breakfast: baked beans, graham muffins. 

 Dinner: boiled potatoes, pork scraps, canned corn, corn cake, bread pudding. 

A word about that bread pudding. Ruth tells me she puts in an extraquart of milk and then bakes it all day when she bakes her beans, stirring it every now and then. I never knew before how the trick wasdone but it comes out a rich brown and tastes like plum puddingwithout the raisins. She says that if you put in raisins it tastesexactly like a plum pudding. 

So at the end of the first week I found myself with eighty dollarsleft over from the old home, one dollar saved in the new, all my billspaid, and Ruth, Dick and myself all fit as a fiddle. 

CHAPTER VIII

SUNDAY

That first dollar saved was the germ of a new idea. 

It is a further confession of a middle-class mind that in coming downhere I had not looked forward beyond the immediate present. With thehorror of that last week still on me I had considered only theopportunity I had for earning a livelihood. To be sure I had seen noreason why an intelligent man should not in time be advanced toforeman, and why he should not then be able to save enough to ward offthe poorhouse before old age came on. But now--with that first dollartucked away in the ginger jar--I felt within me the stirring of a newambition, an ambition born of this quick young country into which Ihad plunged. Why, in time, should I not become the employer? Whyshould I not take the initiative in some of these progressiveenterprises? Why should I not learn this business of contracting andbuilding and some day contract and build for myself? With that firstdollar saved I was already at heart a capitalist. 

I said nothing of this to Ruth. For six months I let the idea grow. Ifit did nothing else it added zest to my new work. I shoveled as thoughI were digging for diamonds. It made me a young man again. It made mea young American again. It brought me out of bed every morning withvisions; it sent me to sleep at night with dreams. 

But I'm running ahead of my story. 

I thought I had appreciated Sunday when it meant a release for one dayfrom the office of the United Woollen, but as with all the otherthings I felt as though it had been but the shadow and that only nowhad I found the substance. In the first place I had not been ablecompletely to shake the office in the last few years. I brought ithome with me and on Sundays it furnished half the subject ofconversation. Every little incident, every bit of conversation, everyexpression on Morse's face was analyzed in the attempt to see what itcounted, for or against, the possible future raise. Even when outwalking with the boy the latter was a constant reminder. It was asthough he were merely a ward of the United Woollen Company. 

But when I put away my shovel at five o'clock on Saturday that was theend of my ditch digging. I came home after that and I was at homeuntil I reported for work on Monday morning. There was neither worknor worry left hanging over. It meant complete relaxation--completerest. And the body, I found, rests better than the mind. 

Later in my work I didn't experience this so perfectly as I now didbecause then I accepted new responsibilities, but for the first fewmonths I lived in lazy content on this one day. For the most partthose who lived around me did all the time. On fair summer days halfthe population of the little square basked in the sun with eyes halfclosed from morning until night. Those who didn't, went to theneighboring beaches many of which they could reach for a nickel orvisited such public buildings as were open. But wherever they went orwhatever they did, they loafed about it. And a man can't truly loafuntil he's done a hard week's work which ends with the week. 

As for us we had our choice of any number of pleasant occupations. Iinsisted that Ruth should make the meals as simple as possible on thatday and both the boy and myself helped her about them. We alwayswashed the dishes and swept the floor. First of all there was theroof. I early saw the possibility of this much neglected spot. It wasflat and had a fence around it for it was meant to be used for thehanging out of clothes. Being a new building it had been built a storyhigher than its older neighbors so that we overlooked the other roofs. There was a generous space through which we saw the harbor. I pickedup a strip of old canvas for a trifle in one of the shore-frontjunk-shops which deal in second-hand ship supplies and arranged itover one corner like a canopy. Then I brought home with me some bitsof board that were left over from the wood construction at the ditchand nailed these together to make a rude sort of window box. It washarder to get dirt than it was wood but little by little I broughthome enough finally to fill the boxes. In these we planted radishesand lettuce and a few flower seeds. We had almost as good a garden aswe used to have in our back yard. At any rate it was just as much funto watch the things grow, and though the lettuce never amounted tomuch we actually raised some very good radishes. The flowers did well, too. 

We brought up an old blanket and spread it out beneath the canopy andthat, with a chair or two, made our roof garden. A local branch of thePublic Library was not far distant so that we had all the readingmatter we wanted and here we used to sit all day Sunday when we didn'tfeel like doing anything else. Here, too, we used to sit evenings. Onseveral hot nights Ruth, the boy and I brought up our blankets andslept out. The boy liked it so well that finally he came to sleep uphere most of the summer. It was fine for him. The harbor breeze sweptthe air clean of smoke so that it was as good for him as being at thesea-shore. 

To us the sights from this roof were marvelous. They appealed stronglybecause they were unlike anything we had ever seen or for that matterunlike anything our friends had ever seen. I think that a man'sfriends often take away the freshness from sights that otherwise mightmove him. I've never been to Europe but what with magazine picturesand snap shots and Mrs. Grover, who never forgot that before shemarried Grover she had travelled for a whole year, I haven't anyspecial desire to visit London or Paris. I suppose it would bedifferent if I ever went but even then I don't think there would bethe novelty to it we found from our roof. And it was just that noveltyand the ability to appreciate it that made our whole emigrant lifepossible. It was for us the Great Adventure again. I suppose there aremen who will growl that it's all bosh to say there is any real romancein living in four rooms in a tenement district, eating what we ate, digging in a ditch and mooning over a view from a roof top. I want tosay right here that for such men there wouldn't be any romance orbeauty in such a life. They'd be miserable. There are plenty of menliving down there now and they never miss a chance to air theiropinions. Some of them have big bodies but I wouldn't give them fiftycents a day to work for me. Luckily however, there are not many ofthem in proportion to the others, even though they make more noise. 

But when you stop to think about it what else is it but romance thatleads men to spend their lives fishing off the Banks when they couldremain safely ashore and get better pay driving a team? Or what drivesthem into the army or to work on railroads when they neither expectnor hope to be advanced? The men themselves can't tell you. They takeup the work unthinkingly but there is something in the very hardshipsthey suffer which lends a sting to the life and holds them. The onlything I know of that will do this and turn the grind into aninspiration is romance. It's what the new-comers have and it's whatour ancestors had and it's what a lot of us who have stayed over heretoo long out of the current have lost. 

On the lazy summer mornings we could hear the church bells and now andthen a set of chimes. Because we were above the street and next to thesky they sounded as drowsily musical as in a country village. Theymade me a bit conscience-stricken to think that for the boy's sake Ididn't make an effort and go to some church. But for a while it waschurch enough to devote the seventh day to what the Bible says it wasmade for. Ruth used to read out loud to us and we planned to make ourbook suit the day after a fashion. Sometimes it was Emerson, sometimesTennyson--I was very fond of the Idylls--and sometimes a book ofsermons. Later on we had a call from a young minister who had a littlemission chapel not far from our flat and who looked in upon us at thesuggestion of the secretary of the settlement house. We went to aservice at his chapel one Sunday and before we ourselves realized itwe were attending regularly with a zest and interest which we hadnever felt in our suburban church-going. Later still we each of usfound a share in the work ourselves and came to have a greatsatisfaction and contentment in it. But I am running ahead of mystory. 

We'd have dinner this first summer at about half past one and thenperhaps we'd go for a walk. There wasn't a street in the city thatdidn't interest us but as a rule we'd plan to visit one of the parks. I didn't know there were so many of them or that they were sodifferent. We had our choice of the ocean or a river or the woods. Ifwe had wished to spend say thirty cents in car fare we could have hada further choice of the beach, the mountains, or a taste of thecountry which in places had not changed in the last hundred years. This would have given us a two hours' ride. Occasionally we did thisbut at present there was too much to see within walking distance. 

For one thing it suddenly occurred to me that though I had lived inthis city over thirty years I had not yet seen such places of interestas always attracted visitors from out of town. My attention wasbrought to this first by the need of limiting ourselves to amusementsthat didn't cost anything, but chiefly by learning where the betterelement down here spent their Sundays. You have only to follow thiscrowd to find out where the objects of national pride are located. Anold battle flag will attract twenty foreigners to one American. Andincidentally I wish to confess it was they who made me ashamed of myignorance of the country's history. Beyond a memory of the Revolution, the Civil War and a few names of men and battles connected therewith, I'd forgotten all I ever learned at school on this subject. But herethe many patriotic celebrations arranged by the local schools in theendeavor to instill patriotism and the frequent visits of the boys tothe museums, kept the subject fresh. Not only Dick but Ruth and myselfsoon turned to it as a vital part of our education. Inspired by theold trophies that ought to stand for so much to us of to-day we tookfrom the library the first volume of Fiske's fine series and in thecourse of time read them all. As we traced the fortunes of those earlyadventurers who dreamed and sailed towards an unknown continent, pictured to ourselves the lives of the tribes who wandered about inthe big tangle of forest growth between the Atlantic and the Pacific, as we landed on the bleak New England shores with the early Pilgrims, then fought with Washington, then studied the perilous internalstruggle culminating with Lincoln and the Civil War, then thedangerous period of reconstruction with the breathless progressfollowing--why it left us all better Americans than we had ever beenin our lives. It gave new meaning to my present surroundings andhelped me better to understand the new-comers. Somehow all thosethings of the past didn't seem to concern Grover and the rest of themin the trim little houses. They had no history and they were a part ofno history. Perhaps that's because they were making no historythemselves. As for myself, I know that I was just beginning to getacquainted with my ancestors--that for the first time in my life, Iwas really conscious of being a citizen of the United States ofAmerica. 

But I soon discovered that not only the historic but the beautifulattracted these people. They introduced me to the Art Museum. In thewinter following our first summer here, when the out of doorattractions were considerably narrowed down, Ruth and I used to gothere about every other Sunday with the boy. We came to feel asfamiliar with our favorite pictures as though they hung in our ownhouse. The Museum ceased to be a public building; it was our own. Wewent in with a nod to the old doorkeeper who came to know us and feltas unconstrained there as at home. We had our favorite nooks, ourfavorite seats and we lounged about in the soft lights of the roomsfor hours at a time. The more we looked at the beautiful paintings, the old tapestries, the treasures of stone and china, the more weenjoyed them. We were sure to meet some of our neighbors there and ayoung artist who lived on the second floor of our house and whomlater I came to know very well, pointed out to us new beauties in theold masters. He was selling plaster casts at that time and studyingart in the night school. 

In the old life, an art museum had meant nothing to me more than thatit seemed a necessary institution in every city. It was a mark of goodbreeding in a town, like the library in a good many homes. But it hadnever occurred to me to visit it and I know it hadn't to any of myformer associates. The women occasionally went to a special exhibitionthat was likely to be discussed at the little dinners, but a weeklater they couldn't have told you what they had seen. Perhaps ourneighborhood was the exception and a bit more ignorant than theaverage about such things, but I'll venture to say there isn't amiddle-class community in this country where the paintings play thepart in the lives of the people that they do among the foreign-born. Aclass better than they does the work; a class lower enjoys it. Wherethe middle-class comes in, I don't know. 

After being gone all the afternoon we'd be glad to get home again andmaybe we'd have a lunch of cold beans and biscuits or some of thepudding that was left over. Then during the summer months we'd go backto the roof for a restful evening. At night the view was as differentfrom the day as you could imagine. Behind us the city proper was in abluish haze made by the electric lights. Then we could see the yellowlights of the upper windows in all the neighboring houses and beyondthese, over the roof tops which seemed now to huddle closer together, we saw the passing red and green lights of moving vessels. Overheadwere the same clean stars which were at the same time shining downupon the woods and the mountain tops. There was something about itthat made me feel a man and a free man. There was twenty years ofslavery back of me to make me appreciate this. 

And Ruth reading my thoughts in my eyes used to nestle closer to meand the boy with his chin in his hands would stare out at sea anddream his own dreams. 

CHAPTER IX

PLANS FOR THE FUTURE

As I said, with that first dollar in the ginger jar representing thefirst actual saving I had ever effected in my whole life, myimagination became fired with new plans. I saw no reason why I myselfshould not become an employer. As in the next few weeks I enlarged mycircle of acquaintances and pushed my inquiries in every possibledirection I found this idea was in the air down here. The ambition ofall these people was towards complete independence. Either they hopedto set up in business for themselves in this country or they lookedforward to saving enough to return to the land of their birth and livethere as small land owners. I speak more especially of the Italiansbecause just now I was thrown more in contact with them than theothers. In my city they, with the Irish, seemed peculiarly of realemigrant stuff. The Jews were so clannish that they were a problem inthemselves; the Germans assimilated a little better and yet they toowere like one large family. They did not get into the city life verymuch and even in their business stuck pretty closely to one line. Fora good many years they remained essentially Germans. But the Irishwere citizens from the time they landed and the Italians eventuallybecame such if by a slower process. 

The former went into everything. They are a tremendously adaptablepeople. But whatever they tackled they looked forward to independenceand generally won it. Even a man of so humble an ambition as Murphyhad accomplished this. The Italians either went into the fruitbusiness for which they seem to have a knack or served as day laborersand saved. There was a man down here who was always ready to stakethem to a cart and a supply of fruit, at an exorbitant price to besure, but they pushed their carts patiently mile upon mile until inthe end they saved enough to buy one of their own. The next step was asmall fruit store. The laborers, once they had acquired a workingcapital, took up many things--a lot of them going into the country andbuying deserted farms. It was wonderful what they did with this landupon which the old stock New Englander had not been able to live. Butof course in part explanation of this, you must remember that theseNew England villages have long been drained of their best. In manycases only the maim, the halt, and the blind are left and these standno more chance against the modern pioneer than they would against oneof their own sturdy forefathers. 

Another occupation which the Italians seemed to preëmpt was theboot-blacking business. It may seem odd to dignify so menial anemployment as a business but there is many a head of such anestablishment who could show a fatter bank account than two-thirds ofhis clients. The next time you go into a little nook containing sayfifteen chairs, figure out for yourself how many nickels are leftthere in a day. The rent is often high--it is some proof of a businessworth thought when you consider that they are able to pay forpositions on the leading business streets--but the labor is cheap andthe furnishings and cost of raw material slight. Pasquale had set meto thinking long before, when I learned that he was earning almost asmuch a week as I. It is no unusual thing for a man who owns his"emporium" to draw ten dollars a day in profits and not show himselfuntil he empties the cash register at night. 

But the fact that impressed me in these people--and this holdspeculiarly true of the Jews--was that they all shied away from thesalaried jobs. In making such generalizations I may be running a riskbecause I'm only giving the results of my own limited observation andexperience. But I want it understood that from the beginning to theend of these recollections I'm trying to do nothing more. I'm not astudent. I'm not a sociologist. The conditions which I observed maynot hold elsewhere for all I know. From a different point of view, they might not to another seem to hold even in my own city. I won'targue with anyone about it. I set down what I myself saw and let it goat that. 

Going back to the small group among whom I lived when I was with theUnited Woollen, it seems to me that every man clung to a salary asthough it were his only possible hope. I know men among them who evenrefused to work on a commission basis although they were practicallysure of earning in this way double what they were being paid by theyear. They considered a salary as a form of insurance and once in thegrip of this idea they had nothing to look forward to except anincrease. I was no better myself. I didn't really expect to be head ofthe firm. Nor did the other men. We weren't working and holding onwith any notion of winning independence along that line. The most wehoped for was a bigger salary. Some men didn't anticipate more thantwenty-five hundred like me, and others--the younger men--talked aboutfive thousand and even ten thousand. I didn't hear them discuss whatthey were going to do when they were general managers orvice-presidents but always what they could enjoy when they drew thelarger annuity. And save those who saw in professional work a way out, this was the career they were choosing for their sons. They wanted toget them into banks and the big companies where the assurance of lazyroutine advancement up to a certain point was the reward for industry, sobriety and honesty. A salary with an old, strongly establishedcompany seemed to them about as big a stroke of luck for a young manas a legacy. I myself had hoped to find a place for Dick with one ofthe big trust companies. 

Of course down here these people did not have the same opportunities. Most of the old firms preferred the "bright young American" and Iguess they secured most of them. I pity the "bright young American"but I can't help congratulating the bright young Italians and thebright young Irishmen. They are forced as a result to make businessfor themselves and they are given every opportunity in the world fordoing it. And they _are_ doing it. And I, breathing in thisatmosphere, made up my mind that I would do it, too. 

With this in mind I outlined for myself a systematic course ofprocedure. It was evident that in this as in any other business I mustmaster thoroughly the details before taking up the larger problems. The details of this as of any other business lay at the bottom and sofor these at least I was at present in the best possible position. Thetwo most important factors to the success of a contractor seemed to meto be, roughly speaking, the securing and handling of men and thepurchase and use of materials. Of the two, the former appeared to bethe more important. Even in the few weeks I had been at work here Ihad observed a big difference in the amount of labor accomplished bydifferent men individually. I could have picked out a half dozen thatwere worth more than all the others put together. And in the twoforemen I had noticed another big difference in the varying capacityof a boss to get work out of the men collectively. In work where laborcounted for so much in the final cost as here, it appeared as thoughthis involved almost the whole question of profit and loss. With ahundred men employed at a dollar and a half a day, the saving of asingle hour meant the saving of a good many dollars. 

It may seem odd that so obvious a fact was not taken advantage of bythe present contractors. Doubtless it was realized but my laterexperience showed me that the obvious is very often neglected. In thisbusiness as in many others, the details fall into a rut and often anewcomer with a fresh point of view will detect waste that has beengoing on unnoticed for years. I was almost forty years old, fairlyintelligent, and I had everything at stake. So I was distinctly morealert than those who retained their positions merely by lettingthings run along as well as they always had been going. But howeveryou may explain it, I knew that the foreman didn't get as much workout of me as he might have done. In spite of all the control Iexercised over myself I often quit work realizing that half mystrength during the day had gone for nothing. And though it may soundlike boasting to say it, I think I worked both more conscientiouslyand intelligently than most of the men. 

In the first place the foreman was a bully. He believed in driving hismen. He swore at them and goaded them as an ignorant countryman oftentries to drive oxen. The result was a good deal the same as it is withoxen--the men worked excitedly when under the sting and loafed therest of the time. In a crisis the boss was able to spur them on totheir best--though even then they wasted strength in franticendeavor--but he could not keep them up to a consistent level ofsteady work. And that's what counts. As in a Marathon race the men whomaintain a steady plugging pace from start to finish are the ones whoaccomplish. 

The question may be asked how such a boss could keep his job. I myselfdid not understand that at first but later as I worked with differentmen and under different bosses I saw that it was because their methodswere much alike and that the results were much alike. A certainstandard had been established as to the amount of work that should bedone by a hundred men and this was maintained. The boss had figuredout loosely how much the men would work and the men had figured out toa minute how much they could loaf. Neither man nor boss took anyspecial interest in the work itself. The men were allowed to wastejust so much time in getting water, in filling their pipes, inspitting on their hands, in resting on their shovels, in lazy chatter, and so long as they did not exceed this nothing was said. 

The trouble was that the standard was low and this was because the menhad nothing to gain by steady conscientious work and also because theboss did not understand them nor distinguish between them. Forinstance the foreman ought to have got the work of two men out of mebut he wouldn't have, if I hadn't chosen to give it. That held truealso of Rafferty and one or two others. 

Now my idea was this: that if a man made a study of these men who, inthis city at any rate, were the key to the contractor's problem, andlearned their little peculiarities, their standards of justice, theirambitions, their weakness and their strength, he ought to be able toincrease their working capacity. Certainly an intelligent teamsterdoes this with horses and it seemed as though it ought to be possibleto accomplish still finer results with men. To go a little farther inmy ambition, it also seemed possible to pick and select the best ofthese men instead of taking them at random. For instance in thepresent gang there were at least a half dozen who stood out as moreintelligent and stronger physically than all the others. Why couldn'ta man in time gather about him say a hundred such men and by bettertreatment, possibly better pay, possibly a guarantee of continuouswork, make of them a loyal, hard working machine with a capacity fordouble the work of the ordinary gang? Such organization as this wasgoing on in other lines of business, why not in this? With such amachine at his command, a man ought to make himself a formidablecompetitor with even the long established firms. 

At any rate this was my theory and it gave a fresh inspiration to mywork. Whether anything came of it or not it was something to hope for, something to toil for, something which raised this digging to theplane of the pioneer who joyfully clears his field of stumps androcks. It swung me from the present into the future. It was adifferent future from that which had weighed me down when with theUnited Woollen. This was no waiting game. Neither your pioneer noryour true emigrant sits down and waits. Here was something whichdepended solely upon my own efforts for its success or failure. And Iknew that it wasn't possible to fail so dismally but what the joy ofthe struggle would always be mine. 

In the meanwhile I carried with me to my work a note book and duringthe noon hour I set down everything which I thought might be of anypossible use to me. I missed no opportunity for learning even the mosttrivial details. A great deal of the information was superficial and agreat deal of it was incorrect but down it went in the note book to berevised later when I became better informed. 

I watched my fellow workmen as much as possible and plied them withquestions. I wanted to know where the cement came from and in whatproportion it was mixed with sand and gravel and stone for differentwork. I wanted to know where the sand and gravel and stone came fromand how it was graded. Wherever it was possible I secured rough pricesfor different materials. I wanted to know where the lumber was boughtand I wanted to know how the staging was built and why it was built. Understand that I did not flatter myself that I was fast becoming amason, a carpenter, an engineer and a contractor all in one and all atonce. I knew that the most of my information was vague and loose. Halfthe men who were doing the work didn't know why they were doing it anda lot of them didn't know how they were doing it. They worked byinstinct and habit. Then, too, they were a clannish lot and a jealouslot. They resented my questioning however delicately I might do it andoften refused to answer me. But in spite of this I found myselfsurprised later with the fund of really valuable knowledge I acquired. 

In addition to this I acquired _sources_ of information. I found outwhere to go for the real facts. I learned for instance who for thisparticular job was supplying for the contractor his cement and graveland crushed stone--though as it happened this contractor himselfeither owned or controlled his own plant for the production of most ofhis material. However I learned something when I learned that. For aman who had apparently been in business all his life, I was denselyignorant of even the fundamentals of business. This idea of runningthe business back to the sources of the raw material was a new idea tome. I had not thought of the contractor as owning his own quarries andgravel pits, obvious as the advantage was. I wanted to know where thetools were bought and how much they cost--from the engines andhoisting cranes and carrying system down to pick-axes, crowbars andshovels. I made a note of the fact that many of the smaller implementswere not cared for properly and even tried to estimate how with properattention the life of a pick-axe could be prolonged. I joyedparticularly in every such opportunity as this no matter how trivialit appeared later. It was just such details as these which gavereality to my dream. 

I figured out how many cubic feet of earth per day per man was beinghandled here and how this varied under different bosses. I pried andlistened and questioned and figured even when digging. I worked withmy eyes and ears wide open. It was wonderful how quickly in this waythe hours flew. A day now didn't seem more than four hours long. Manythe time I've felt actually sorry when the signal to quit work wasgiven at night and have hung around for half an hour while theengineer fixed his boiler for the night and the old man lighted hislanterns to string along the excavation. I don't know what they allthought of me, but I know some of them set me down for a college mandoing the work for experience. This to say the least was flattering tomy years. 

As I say, a lot of this work was wasted energy in the sense that Iacquired anything worth while, but none of it was wasted when I recallthe joy of it. If I had actually been a college boy in the first flushof youthful enthusiasm I could not have gone at my work moreenthusiastically or dreamed wilder or bigger dreams. Even after manyof these bubbles were pricked and had vanished, the mood which madethem did not vanish. I have never forgotten and never can forget thesheer delight of those months. I was eighteen again with a lot besidesthat I didn't have at eighteen. 

My work along another line was more practical and more successful. What I learned about the men and the best way to handle them wasgenuine capital. In the first place I lost no opportunity to makemyself as solid as possible with Dan Rafferty. This was not altogetherfrom a purely selfish motive either. I liked the man. In a way I thinkhe was the most lovable man I ever met, although that seems alady-like term to apply to so rugged a fellow. But below his beef andbrawn, below his aggressiveness, below his coarseness, below even apeculiar moral bluntness about a good many things, there was a strainof something fine about Dan Rafferty. I had a glimpse of it when hepreferred going back to the sewer gas rather than let a man like theold foreman force him into a position where the latter could fire him. But that was only one side of him. He had a heart as big as a woman'sand one as keen to respond to sympathy. This in its turn inspired inothers a feeling towards him that to save my life I can only describeas love--love in its big sense. He'd swear like a pirate at theDagoes and they'd only grin back at him where'd they'd feel likeknifing any other man. And when Dan learned that Anton' had lost hisboy he sent down to the house a wreath of flowers half as big as acart wheel. There was scarcely a day when some old lady didn't manageto see Dan at the noon hour and draw him aside with a mumbled pleathat always made him dig into his pockets. He caught me watching himone day and said in explanation, "She's me grandmither. "

After I'd seen at least a dozen different ones approach him I askedhim if they were all his grandmothers. 

"Sure, " he said. "Ivery ould woman in the ward is me grandmither. "

Those same grandmothers stood him in good stead later in his life, forevery single grandmother had some forty grandchildren and half ofthese had votes. But Dan wasn't looking that far ahead then. Two factsrather distinguished him at the start; he didn't either drink orsmoke. He didn't have any opinions upon the subject but he was one ofthe rare Irishmen born that way. Now and then you'll find one and aslikely as not he'll prove one of the good fellows you'd expect to seein the other crowd. However, beyond exciting my interest and leadingme to score him some fifty points in my estimate of him as a goodworkman, I was indifferent to this side of his character. The thingthat impressed me most was a quality of leadership he seemed topossess. There was nothing masterful about it. You didn't look to seehim lead in any especially good or great cause, but you could seereadily enough that whatever cause he chose, it would be possible forhim to gather about him a large personal following. I was attracted tothis side of him in considering him as having about all the good rawmaterial for a great boss. Put twenty men on a rope with Dan at thehead of them and just let him say, "Now, biys--altogither, " and you'dsee every man's neck grow taut with the strain. I know because I'vebeen one of the twenty and felt as though I wanted to drag everymuscle out of my body. And when it was over I'd ask myself why in thedevil I pulled that way. When I told myself that it was because I waspulling with Dan Rafferty I said all I knew about it. 

It seemed to me that any man who secured Dan as a boss would alreadyhave the backbone of his gang. I didn't ever expect to use him in thisway but I wanted the man for a friend and I wanted to learn the secretof his power if I could. But I may as well confess right now that Inever fully fathomed that. 

In the meanwhile I had not neglected the other men. At everyopportunity I talked with them. At the beginning I made it a point tolearn their names and addresses which I jotted down in my book. Ilearned something from them of the padrone system and the unfaircontracts into which they were trapped. I learned their likes anddislikes, their ambitions, and as much as possible about theirfamilies. It all came hard at first but little by little as I workedwith them I found them trusting me more with their confidences. 

In this way then the first summer passed. Both Ruth and the boy in themeanwhile were just as busy about their respective tasks as I was. Thelatter took to the gymnasium work like a duck to water and in hisenthusiasm for this tackled his lessons with renewed interest. He puton five pounds of weight and what with the daily ocean swim which weboth enjoyed, his cheeks took on color and he became as brown as anIndian. If he had passed the summer at the White Mountains he couldnot have looked any hardier. He made many friends at the Y. M. C. A. Theywere all ambitious boys and they woke him up wonderfully. I wascareful to follow him closely in this new life and made it a point tosee the boys myself and to make him tell me at the end of each dayjust what he had been about. Dick was a boy I could trust to tell meevery detail. He was absolutely truthful and he wasn't afraid to openhis heart to me with whatever new questions might be bothering him. Asfar as possible I tried to point out to him what to me seemed the goodpoints in his new friends and to warn him against any littleweaknesses among them which from time to time I might detect. Ruth didthe rest. A father, however much a comrade he may be with his boy, cango only so far. There is always plenty left which belongs to themother--if she is such a mother as Ruth. 

As for Ruth herself I watched her anxiously in fear lest the new lifemight wear her down but honestly as far as the house was concerned shedidn't seem to have as much to bother her as she had before. She wasslowly getting the buying and the cooking down to a science. Many aweek now our food bill went as low as a little over three dollars. Webought in larger quantities and this always effected a saving. Webought a barrel of flour and half a barrel of sugar for one thing. Then as the new potatoes came into the market we bought half a barrelof those and half a barrel of apples. She did wonders with thoseapples and they added a big variety to our menus. Another saving waseffected by buying suet which cost but a few cents a pound, tryingthis out and mixing it with the lard for shortening. As the weatherbecame cooler we had baked beans twice a week instead of once. Thesemade for us four and sometimes five or six meals. We figured out thatwe could bake a quart pot of beans, using half a pound of pork to apot, for less than twenty cents. This gave the three of us two mealswith some left over for lunch, making the cost per man about threecents. And they made a hearty meal, too. That was a trick she hadlearned in the country where baked beans are a staple article of diet. I liked them cold for my lunch. 

As for clothes neither Ruth nor myself needed much more than we had. Ibought nothing but one pair of heavy boots which Ruth picked up at abankrupt sale for two dollars. On herself she didn't spend a cent. Shebrought down here with her a winter and a summer street suit, severalhouse dresses and three or four petticoats and a goodly supply ofunder things. She knew how to care for them and they lasted her. Ibrought down, in addition to my business suit, a Sunday suit of blueserge and a dress suit and a Prince Albert. I sold the last two to asecond hand dealer for eleven dollars and this helped towards theboy's outfit in the fall. She bought for him a pair of three dollarshoes for a dollar and a half at this same "Sold Out" sale, a dollar'sworth of stockings and about a dollar's worth of underclothes. He hada winter overcoat and hat, though I could have picked up these ineither a pawnshop or second hand store for a couple of dollars. It waswonderful what you could get at these places, especially if anyone hadthe knack which Ruth had of making over things. 

CHAPTER X

THE EMIGRANT SPIRIT

That fall the boy passed his entrance examinations and entered thefinest school in the state--the city high school. If he had been wortha million he couldn't have had better advantages. I was told that thegraduates of this school entered college with a higher average thanthe graduates of most of the big preparatory schools. Certainly theyhad just as good instruction and if anything better discipline. Therewas more competition here and a real competition. Many of the pupilswere foreign born and a much larger per cent of them children offoreign born. Their parents had been over here long enough to realizewhat an advantage an education was and the children went at their workwith the feeling that their future depended upon their applicationhere. 

The boy's associates might have been more carefully selected at somefashionable school but I was already beginning to realize thatselected associates aren't always select associates and that even ifthey are this is more of a disadvantage than an advantage. The factthat the boy's fellows were all of a kind was what had disturbed meeven in the little suburban grammar school. For that matter I can seenow that even for Ruth and me this sameness was a handicap for both usand our neighbors. There was no clash. There was a dead level. I don'tbelieve that's good for either boys or men or for women. 

Supposing this open door policy did admit a few worthless youngstersinto the school and supposing again that the private school didn'tadmit such of a different order (which I very much doubt)--along withthese Dick was going to find here the men--the past had proved thisand the present was proving it--who eventually would become ourstatesmen, our progressive business men, our lawyers and doctors--ifnot our conservative bankers. For one graduate of such a school as myformer surroundings had made me think essential for the boy, I couldcount now a dozen graduates of this very high school who weredistinguishing themselves in the city. The boy was going to meet herethe same spirit I was getting in touch with among my emigrantfriends--a zeal for life, a belief in the possibilities of life, anoptimistic determination to use these possibilities, which somehow theblue-blooded Americans were losing. It seemed to me that life wasgetting stale for the fourth and fifth generation. I tried to make theboy see this point of view. I went back again with him to the pioneeridea. 

"Dick, " I said in substance, "your great-great-grandfather pulled upstakes and came over to this country when there was nothing here buttrees, rocks and Indians. It was a hard fight but a good fight and heleft a son to carry on the fight. So generation after generation theyfought but somehow they grew a bit weaker as they fought. Now, " Isaid, "you and I are going to try to recover that lost ground. Let'sthink of ourselves as like our great-great-grandfathers. We've justcome over here. So have about a million others. The fight is adifferent fight to-day but it's no less a fight and we're going towin. We have a good many advantages that these newcomers haven't. Yousee them making good on every side of you but I'll bet they can't licka good American--when he isn't asleep. You and I are going to makegood too. "

"You bet we are, Dad, " he said, with his eyes grown bright. 

"Then, " I said, "you must work the way the newcomers work. I don'twant you to think you're any better than they are. You aren't. Butyou're just as good and these two hundred years we've lived here oughtto count for something. "

The boy lifted his head at this. 

"You make me feel as though we'd just landed with the Pilgrims, " hesaid. 

"So we have, " I said. "June seventh of this very year we landed onPlymouth Rock just as our ancestors did two centuries ago. They'vebeen all this time paving the way for you and me. They've built roadsand schools and factories and it's up to us now to use them. You and Ihave just landed from England. Let's see what we can do as pioneers. "

I wanted to get at the young American in him. I wanted him to realizethat he was something more than the son of his parents; something morethan just an average English-speaking boy. I wanted him to feel theimpetus of the big history back of him and the big history yet to bemade ahead of him. He had known nothing of that before. The wordAmerican had no meaning to him except when a regiment of soldiers wasmarching by. I wanted him to feel all the time as he did when histhroat grew lumpy with the band playing and the stars and stripesflying on Fourth of July or Decoration Day. 

I urged him to study hard as the first essential towards success but Ialso told him to get into the school life. I didn't want him to standback as his tendency was and watch the other fellows. I didn't wanthim to sit in the bleachers--at least not until he had proved thatthis was the place for him. Even then I wanted him to lead thecheering. I wanted him to test himself in the literary societies, thedramatic clubs, on the athletic field. In other words, instead ofremaining passive I wanted him to take an aggressive attitude towardslife. In still other words instead of being a middle-classer I wantedhim to get something of the emigrant spirit. And I had thesatisfaction of seeing him begin his work with the germ of that ideain his brain. 

In the meanwhile with the approach of cold weather I saw a new item ofexpense loom up in the form of coal. We had used kerosene all summerbut now it became necessary for the sake of heat to get a stove. For aweek I took what time I could spare and wandered around among the junkshops looking for a second hand stove and finally found just what Iwanted. I paid three dollars for it and it cost me another dollar tohave some small repairs made. I set it up myself in the living roomwhich we decided to use as a kitchen for the winter. But when I cameto look into the matter of getting coal down here I found I was facinga pretty serious problem. Coal had been a big item in the suburbs butthe way people around me were buying it, made it a still bigger one. No cellar accommodations came with the tenement and so each one wasforced to buy his coal by the basket or bag. A basket of anthracitewas costing them at this time about forty cents. This was for abouteighty pounds of coal, which made the total cost per ton elevendollars--at least three dollars and a half over the regular price. Even with economy a person would use at least a bag a week. This, toleave a liberal margin, would amount to about a ton and a half of coalduring the winter months. I didn't like the idea of absorbing thehalf dollar or so a week that Ruth was squeezing out towards what fewclothes we had to buy, in this way--at least the over-charge part ofit. With the first basket I brought home, I said, "I see where you'llhave to dig down into the ginger jar this winter, little woman. "

She looked as startled as though I had told her someone had stolen thesavings. 

"What do you mean?" she asked. 

I pointed to the basket. 

"Coal costs about eleven dollars a ton, down here. "

When she found out that this was all that caused my remark, she didn'tseem to be disturbed. 

"Billy, " she said, "before we touch the ginger jar it will have tocost twenty dollars a ton. We'll live on pea soup and rice three timesa day before I touch that. "

"All right, " I said, "but it does seem a pity that the burden of suchprices as these should fall on the poor. "

"Why do they?" she asked. 

"Because in this case, " I said, "the dealers seem to have us where thewool is short. "

"How have they?" she insisted. 

"We can't buy coal by the ton because we haven't any place to put it. "She thought a moment and then she said:

"We could take care of a fifth of a ton, Billy. That's only fivebaskets. "

"They won't sell five any cheaper than one. "

"And every family in this house could take care of five, " she went on. "That would make a ton. "

I began to see what she meant and as I thought of it I didn't see whyit wasn't a practical scheme. 

"I believe that's a good idea, " I said. "And if there were more womenlike you in the world I don't believe there'd be any trusts at all. "

"Nonsense, " she said. "You leave it to me now and I'll see the otherwomen in the house. They are the ones who'll appreciate a good savinglike that. "

She saw them and after a good deal of talk they agreed, so I told Ruthto tell them to save out of next Saturday night's pay a dollar and ahalf apiece. I was a bit afraid that if I didn't get the cash when thecoal was delivered I might get stuck on the deal. The next Monday Iordered the coal and asked to have it delivered late in the day. WhenI came home I found the wagon waiting and it created about as muchexcitement on the street as an ambulance. I guess it was the firsttime in the history of Little Italy that a coal team had ever stoppedbefore a tenement. The driver had brought baskets with him and Ifilled up one and took it to a store nearby and weighed into it eightypounds of coal. With that for my guide I gathered the other men of thefamilies about me and made them carry the coal in while I measured itout. The driver who at first was inclined to object to the wholeproceeding was content to let things go on when he found himselfrelieved of all the carrying. We emptied the wagon in no time and theother men insisted upon carrying up my coal for me. I collected everycent of my money and incidentally established myself on a firm footingwith every family in the house. Several other tenements later adoptedthe plan but the idea didn't take hold the way you'd have thought itwould. I guess it was because there weren't any more Ruths aroundthere to oversee the job. Then, too, while these people arefar-sighted in a good many ways, they are short-sighted in others. Neither the wholesale nor co-operative plans appeal to them. For onething they are suspicious and for another they don't like to spend anymore than they have to day by day. Later on through Ruth's influencewe carried our scheme a little farther with just the people in thehouse and bought flour and sugar that way but it was made possibleonly through their absolute trust in her. We always insisted oncarrying out every such little operation on a cash basis and theynever failed us. 

Ruth's influence had been gradually spreading through theneighborhood. She had found time to meet the other families in thehouse and through them had met a dozen more. The first floor wasoccupied by Michele, an Italian laborer, his wife, his wife's sisterand two children. On the second floor there was Giuseppe, the youngsculptor, and his father and mother. The father was an invalid and thelad supported the three. On the third floor lived a fruit peddler, hiswife and his wife's mother--rather a commonplace family, while thefourth floor was occupied by Pietro, a young fellow who sold cutflowers on the street and hoped some day to have a garden of his own. He had two children and a grandmother to care for. 

It certainly afforded a contrast to visit those other flats and thenRuth's. Right here is where her superior intelligence came in, ofcourse. The foreign-born women do not so quickly adapt themselves tothe standards of this country as the men do. Most of them as Ilearned, come from the country districts of Italy where they live veryrudely. Once here they make their new quarters little better thantheir old. The younger ones however who are going to school are doingbetter. But taken by and large it was difficult to persuade them thatcleanliness offered any especial advantages. It wasn't as though theyminded the dirt and were chained to it by circumstances from whichthey couldn't escape--as I used to think. They simply didn't object toit. So long as they were warm and had food enough they were content. They didn't suffer in any way that they themselves could see. 

But when Ruth first went into their quarters she was horrified. Shethought that at length she was face to face with all the misery andsqualor of the slums of which she had read. I remember her chalk-whiteface as she met me at the door upon my return home one night. Shenearly drove the color out of my own cheeks for I thought surely thatsomething had happened to the boy. But it wasn't that; she had heardthat the baby on the first floor was ill and had gone down there tosee if there was anything she might do for it. Until then she had seennothing but the outside of the other doors from the hall and theylooked no different from our own. But once inside--well I guess that'swhere the two hundred years if not the four hundred years back of usnative Americans counts. 

"Why, Billy, " she cried, "it was awful. I'll never get that pictureout of mind if I live to be a hundred. "

"What's the matter?" I asked. 

"Why the poor little thing--"

"What poor little thing?" I interrupted. 

"Michele's baby. It lay there in dirty rags with its pinched whiteface staring up at me as though just begging for a clean bed. "

"What's the matter with it?"

"Matter with it? It's a wonder it isn't dead and buried. The districtnurse came in while I was there and told me, "--she shuddered--"thatthey'd been feeding it on macaroni cooked in greasy gravy. And itisn't six months old yet. "

"No wonder it looked white, " I said, remembering how we had discussedfor a week the wisdom of giving Dick the coddled white of an egg atthat age. 

"Why the conditions down there are terrible, " cried Ruth. "Michelemust be very, very poor. The floor wasn't washed, you couldn't see outof the windows, and the clothes--"

She held up her hands unable to find words. 

"That _does_ sound bad, " I said. 

"It's criminal. Billy--we can't allow a family in the same house withus to suffer like that, can we?"

I shook my head. 

"Then go down and see what you can do. I guess we can squeeze outfifty cents for them, can't we, Billy?"

"I guess you could squeeze fifty cents out of a stone for a sickbaby, " I said. 

The upshot of it was that I went down and saw Michele. As Ruth hadsaid his quarters were anything but clean but they didn't impress meas being in so bad a condition as she had described them. Perhaps mywork in the ditch had made me a little more used to dirt. I foundMichele a healthy, temperate, able-bodied man and I learned that hewas earning as much as I. Not only that but the women took ingarments to finish and picked up the matter of two or three dollars aweek extra. There were five in the family but they were far from beingin want. In fact Michele had a good bank account. They had all theywanted to eat, were warm and really prosperous. There was absolutelyno need of the dirt. It was there because they didn't mind it. A fivecent cake of soap would have made the rooms clean as a whistle andthere were two women to do the scrubbing. I didn't leave my fiftycents but I came back upstairs with a better appreciation, if thatwere possible, of what such a woman as Ruth means to a man. Even thebaby began to get better as soon as the district nurse drove into theparent's head a few facts about sensible infant feeding. 

I don't want to make out that life is all beer and skittles for thetenement dwellers. It isn't. But I ran across any number of such casesas this where conditions were not nearly so bad as they appeared onthe surface. Taking into account the number of people who weregathered together here in a small area I didn't see among thetemperate and able-bodied any worse examples of hard luck than I sawamong my former associates. In fact of sheer abstract hard luck Ididn't see as much. In seventy-five per cent of the cases theconditions were of their own making--either the man was a drunkard orthe women slovenly or the whole family was just naturally vicious. Ignorance may excuse some of this but not all of it. Perhaps I'm notwhat you'd call sympathetic but I've heard a lot of men talk aboutthese people in a way that sounds to me like twaddle. I never ranacross a family down here in such misery as that which SteveBonnington's wife endured for years without a whimper. 

Bonnington was a clerk with a big insurance company. He lived fourhouses below us on our street. I suppose he was earning about eighteenhundred dollars a year when he died. He left five children and henever had money enough even to insure in his own company. He didn'tleave a cent. When Helen Bonnington came back from the grave it was toface the problem of supporting unaided, either by experience orrelatives, five children ranging from twelve to one. She was a shy, retiring little body who had sapped her strength in just bringing thechildren into the world and caring for them in the privacy of herhome. She had neither the temperament nor the training to face theworld. But she bucked up to it. She sold out of the house what thingsshe could spare, secured cheap rooms on the outskirts of theneighborhood and announced that she would do sewing. What it cost herto come back among her old friends and do that is a particularlychoice type of agony that it would be impossible for a tenement widowto appreciate. And this same self-respect which both Helen's educationand her environment forced her to maintain, handicapped her in otherways. You couldn't give Mrs. Bonnington scraps from your table; youcouldn't give her old clothes or old shoes or money. It wasn't herfault because this was so; it wasn't your fault. 

When her children were sick she couldn't send them off to the publicwards of the hospitals. In the first place half the hospitals wouldn'ttake them as charity patients simply because she maintained a certaindignity, and in the second place the idea, by education, was sorepugnant to her that it never entered her head to try. So she stayedat home and sewed from daylight until she couldn't hold open her eyesat night. That's where you get your true "Song of the Shirt. " She notonly sewed her fingers to the bone but while doing it she suffered avery fine kind of torture wondering what would happen to the five ifshe broke down. Asylums and homes and hospitals don't imply any greatdisgrace to most of the tenement dwellers but to a woman of that typethey mean Hell. God knows how she did it but she kept the five aliveand clothed and in school until the boy was about fifteen and went towork. When I hear of the lone widows of the tenements, who are apt tobe very husky, and who work out with no great mental struggle and whohave clothes and food given them and who set the children to work assoon as they are able to walk, I feel like getting up in my seat andtelling about Helen Bonnington--a plain middle-classer. And she was noexception either. 

I seem to have rambled off a bit here but this was only one of manycontrasts which I made in these years which seemed to me to be all infavor of my new neighbors. The point is that at the bottom you notonly see advantages you didn't see before but you're in a position touse them. You aren't shackled by conventions; you aren't cramped bycaste. The world stands ready to help the under dog but before it willlift a finger it wants to see the dog stretched out on its back withall four legs sticking up in prayer. Of the middle-class dog whofights on and on, even after he's wobbly and can't see, it doesn'tseem to take much notice. 

However Ruth started in with a few reforms of her own. She made it apoint to go down and see young Michele every day and watch that hedidn't get any more macaroni and gravy. The youngster himself resentedthis interference but the parents took it in good part. Then in timeshe ventured further and suggested that the baby would be better offif the windows were washed to let in the sunshine and the floorscrubbed a bit. Finally she became bold enough to hint that it mightbe well to wash some of the bed clothing. 

The district nurse appreciated the change, if Michele himself didn'tand I found that it wasn't long before Miss Colver was making use ofthis new influence in the house. She made a call on Ruth and discussedher cases with her until in the end she made of her a sort of firstassistant. This was the beginning of a new field of activity for Ruthwhich finally won for her the name of Little Mother. It was wonderfulhow quickly these people discovered the sweet qualities in Ruth thathad passed all unnoticed in the old life. 

It made me very proud. 

CHAPTER XI

NEW OPPORTUNITIES

I had found that I was badly handicapped in all intercourse with myItalian fellow workers by the fact that I knew nothing of theirlanguage and that they knew but little English. The handicap did notlie so much in the fact that we couldn't make ourselves understood--wecould after a rough fashion--as it did in the fact that this made abarrier which kept our two nationalities sharply defined. I was alwaysan American talking to an Italian. The boss was always an Americantalking to a Dago. This seemed to me a great disadvantage. It ought tobe just a foreman to his man or one man to another. 

The chance to acquire a new language I thought had passed with my highschool days, but down here everyone was learning English and so Iresolved to study Italian. I made a bargain with Giuseppe, the youngsculptor, who was now a frequent visitor at our flat, to teach me hislanguage in return for instruction in mine. He agreed though he hadlong been getting good instruction at the night school. But the ladhad found an appreciative friend in Ruth who not only sincerelyadmired the work he was doing but who admired his enthusiasm and hisknowledge of art. I liked him myself for he was dreaming bigger thingsthan I. To watch his thin cheeks grow red and his big brown eyes flashas he talked of some old painting gave me a realization that there wassomething else to be thought of even down here than mere moneysuccess. It was good for me. 

The poor fellow was driven almost mad by having to offer for sale someof the casts which his master made him carry. He would have liked tosell only busts of Michael Angelo and Dante and worthy reproductionsof the old masters. 

"There are so many beautiful things, " he used to exclaim excitedly inbroken English; "why should they want to make anything that is notbeautiful?"

He sputtered time and time again over the pity of gilding the casts. You'd have thought it was a crime which ought to be punished byhanging. 

"Even Dante, " he groaned one night, "that wonderful, white sad face ofDante covered all over with gilt!"

"It has to look like gold before an American will buy it, " Isuggested. 

"Yes, " he nodded. "They would even gild the Christ. "

Ruth said she wanted to learn Italian with me, and so the three of usused to get together every night right after dinner. I bought agrammar at a second hand bookstore but we used to spend most of ourtime in memorizing the common every day things a man would be likelyto use in ordinary conversation. Giuseppe would say, "Ha Ella il miocappello?"

And I would say, "Si, Signore, ho il di Lei cappello. "

"Ha Ella il di Lei pane?"

"Si, Signore, ho il mio pane. "

"Ha Ella il mio zucchero?"

"Si, Signore, ho il di Lei zucchero. "

There wasn't much use in going over such simple things in English forGiuseppe and so instead of this Ruth would read aloud something fromTennyson. After explaining to him just what every new word meant, shewould let him read aloud to her the same passage. He soon became veryenthusiastic over the text itself and would often stop her with theexclamation, "Ah, there is a study!"

Then he would tell us just how he would model whatever the picturehappened to be that he saw in his mind. It was wonderful how clearlyhe saw these pictures. He could tell you even down to how the folds ofthe women's dresses should fall just as though he were actuallylooking at living people. 

After a week or two when we had learned some of the simpler phrasesRuth and I used to practise them as much as possible every day. Wefelt quite proud when we could ask one another for "quel libro" or"quell' abito" or "il cotello" or "il cucchiaio. " I was surprised athow soon we were able to carry on quite a long talk. 

This new idea--that even though I was approaching forty I wasn't tooold to resume my studies--took root in another direction. As I hadbecome accustomed to the daily physical exercise and no longerreturned home exhausted I felt as though I had no right to loafthrough my evenings, much as the privilege of spending them with Ruthmeant to me. My muscles had become as hard and tireless as those of awell-trained athlete so that at night I was as alert mentally as inthe morning. It made me feel lazy to sit around the house after anhour's lesson in Italian and watch Ruth busy with her sewing and seethe boy bending over his books. Still I couldn't think of anythingthat was practicable until I heard Giuseppe talk one evening about thenight school. I had thought this was a sort of grammar school withclay modeling thrown in for amusement. 

"No, Signore, " he said. "You can learn anything there. And there isanother school where you can learn other things. "

I went out that very evening and found that the school he attendedtaught among other subjects, book keeping and stenography--two thingswhich appealed to me strongly. But in talking to the principal hesuggested that before I decided I look into the night trade schoolwhich was run in connection with a manual training school. I took hisadvice and there I found so many things I wanted that I didn't knowwhat to choose. I was amazed at the opportunity. A man could learnhere about any trade he cared to take up. Both tools and materialwere furnished him. And all this was within ten minutes' walk of thehouse. I could still have my early evenings with Ruth and the boy evenon the three nights I would be in school until a quarter past seven, spend two hours at learning my trade, and get back to the house againbefore ten. I don't see how a man could ask for anything better thanthis. Even then I wouldn't be away from home as much as I often was inmy old life. There were many dreary stretches towards the end of myservice with the United Woollen when I didn't get home until midnight. And the only extra pay we salaried men received for that was abrighter hope for the job ahead. This was always dangled before oureyes by Morse as a bait when he wished to drive us harder than usual. 

I had my choice of a course in carpentry, bricklaying, sheet metalwork, plumbing, electricity, drawing and pattern draughting. The workcovered from one to three years and assured a man at the end of thistime of a position among the skilled workmen who make in wages as muchas many a professional man. Not only this but a man with such trainingas this and with ambition could look forward without any greatstretch of the imagination to becoming a foreman in his trade andeventually winning independence. All this he could accomplish whileearning his daily wages as an apprentice or a common laborer. 

The class in masonry seemed to be more in line with my present plansthan any of the other subjects. It ought to prove of value, I thought, to a man in the general contracting business and certainly to a man whoundertook the contracting of building construction. At any rate it wasa trade in which I was told there was a steady demand for good men andat which many men were earning from three to five dollars a day. I mustadmit that at first I didn't understand how brick-laying could betaught for I thought it merely a matter of practice but a glance at theoutline of the course showed me my error. It looked as complicated asmany of the university courses. The work included first the laying of abrick to line. A man was given actual practice with bricks and mortarunder an expert mason. From this a man was advanced, when he hadacquired sufficient skill, to the laying out of the American bond; thenthe building of square piers of different sizes; then the building ofsquare and pigeon hole corners, then the laying out of brick footings. The second year included rowlock and bonded segmental arches; blocking, toothing, and corbeling; building and bonding of vaulted walls;polygonal and circular walls, piers and chimneys; fire-places andflues. The third year advanced a man to the nice points of the tradesuch as the foreign bonds--Flemish, Dutch, Roman and Old English;cutting and turning of arches of all kinds, --straight, cambered, semi-circular, three centred elliptical, and many forms of Gothic andMoorish arches; also brick panels and cornices. Finally it gavepractice in the laying out of plans and work from these plans. Whatevertime was left was devoted to speed in all these things as far as it wasconsistent with accurate and careful workmanship. 

I enrolled at once and also entered a class in architectural drawingwhich was given in connection with this. 

I came back and told Ruth and though of course she was afraid it mightbe too hard work for me she admitted that in the end it might save memany months of still harder work. If it hadn't been for the boy Ithink she would have liked to follow me even in these studies. Whatever new thing I took up, she wanted to take up too. But as I toldher, it was she who was making the whole business possible and thatwas enough for one woman to do. 

The school didn't open for a week and during that time I saw somethingof Rafferty. He surprised me by coming around to the flat onenight--for what I couldn't imagine. I was glad to see him but Isuspected that he had some purpose in making such an effort. Iintroduced him to Ruth and we all sat down in the kitchen and I toldhim what I was planning to do this winter and asked him why he didn'tjoin me. I was rather surprised that the idea didn't appeal to him butI soon found out that he had another interest which took all his sparetime. This interest was nothing else than politics. And Raffertyhadn't been over here long enough yet to qualify as a voter. In spiteof this he was already on speaking terms with the state representativefrom our district, the local alderman, and was an active lieutenant ofSweeney's--the ward boss. At present he was interesting himself inthe candidacy of this same Sweeney who was the Democratic machinecandidate for Congress. Owing to some local row he was in danger ofbeing knifed. Dan had come round to make sure I was registered and toswing me over if possible to the ranks of the faithful. 

The names of which he spoke so familiarly meant nothing to me. I hadheard a few of them from reading the papers but I hadn't read a paperfor three months now and knew nothing at all about the presentcampaign. As a matter of fact I never voted except for the regularRepublican candidate for governor and the regular Republican candidatefor president. And I did that much only from habit. My father had beena Republican and I was a Republican after him and I felt that in ageneral way this party stood for honesty as against Tammanyism. Butwith councillors, and senators and aldermen, or even with congressmenI never bothered my head. Their election seemed to be all prearrangedand I figured that one vote more or less wouldn't make muchdifference. I don't know as I even thought that much about it; Iignored the whole matter. What was true of me was true largely of theother men in our old neighborhood. Politics, except perhaps for anabstract discussion of the tariff, was not a vital issue with any ofus. 

Now here I found an emigrant who couldn't as yet qualify as a citizenknowing all the local politicians by their first names and spendinghis nights working for a candidate for congress. Evidently my arrivaldown here had been noted by those keen eyes which look after everysingle vote as a miser does his pennies. A man had been found who hadat least a speaking acquaintance with me, and plans already set onfoot to round me up. 

I was inclined at first to treat this new development as a joke. Butas Rafferty talked on he set me to thinking. I didn't know anythingabout the merits of the two present candidates but was stronglyprejudiced to believe that the Democratic candidate, on generalprinciples, was the worst one. However quite apart from this, wasn'tRafferty to-day a better citizen than I? Even admitting for the sakeof argument that Sweeney was a crook, wasn't Rafferty who was tryinghis humble best to get him elected a better American than I who waswilling to sit down passively and allow him to be elected? Rafferty atany rate was getting into the fight. His motive may have been selfishbut I think his interest really sprang first from an instinctivedesire to get into the game. Here he had come to a new country whereevery man had not only the chance to mix with the affairs of the ward, the city, the state, the nation, but also a good chance to makehimself a leader in them. Sweeney himself was an example. 

For twenty-five years or more Rafferty's countrymen had appreciatedthis opportunity for power and gone after it. The result everyoneknows. Their victory in city politics at least had been so decisiveyear after year that the native born had practically laid down hisarms as I had. And the reason for this perennial victory lay in justthis fact that men like Rafferty were busy from the time they landedand men like me were lazily indifferent. 

Three months before, a dozen speakers couldn't have made me see this. I had no American spirit back of me then to make me appreciate it. Youmight better have talked to a sleepy Russian Jew a week off thesteamer. He at least would have sensed the sacred power for libertywhich the voting privilege bestows. 

I began to ask questions of Rafferty about the two men. He didn't knowmuch about the other fellow except that he was "agin honest labor anda tool of the thrusts. " But on Sweeney he grew eloquent. 

"Sure, " he said. "There's a mon after ye own heart, me biy. Faith he'sdug in ditches himself an he knows wot a full dinner pail manes. "

"What's his business?" I asked. 

"A contracthor, " he said. "He does big jobs for the city. "

He let himself loose on what Sweeney proposed to do for the ward ifelected. He would have the government undertake the dredging of theharbor thereby giving hundreds of jobs to the local men. He would dothis thing and that--all of which had for their object apparently justthat one goal. It was a direct personal appeal to every man toiler. Inaddition to this, Rafferty let drop a hint or two that Sweeney hadjobs in his own business which he filled discreetly from the ranks ofthe wavering. It wasn't more than a month later, by the way, thatRafferty himself was appointed a foreman in the firm of SweeneyBrothers. 

But apart from the merits of the question, the thing that impressed mewas Rafferty's earnestness, the delight he took in the contest itself, and his activity. He was very much disappointed when I told him Iwasn't even registered in the ward but he made me promise to lookafter that as soon as the lists were again opened and made anappointment for the next evening to take me round to a rally to meetthe boys. 

I went and was escorted to the home of the Sweeney Club. It was a goodsized hall up a long flight of stairs. Through the heavy blue smokewhich filled the room I saw the walls decorated with American flagsand the framed crayon portraits of Sweeney and other localpoliticians. Large duck banners proclaimed in black ink the currentcatch lines of the campaign. At one end there was a raised platform, the rest of the room was filled with wooden settees. My firstimpression of it all was anything but favorable. It looked rathertawdry and cheap. The men themselves who filled the room were prettytough-looking specimens. I noticed a few Italians of the fat class andone or two sharp-faced Jews, but for the most part these men were thecheaper element of the second and third generation. They were theloafers--the ward heelers. I certainly felt out of place among themand to me even Rafferty looked out of place. There was a freshness, abulk about him, that his fellows here didn't have. 

As he shoved his big body through the crowd, they greeted him by hisfirst name with an oath or a joke and he beamed back at them all witha broad wave of his hand. It was evident that he was a man of someimportance here. He worked a passage for me to the front of the halland didn't stop until he reached a group of about a dozen men who wereall puffing away at cigars. In the midst of them stood a man of aboutRafferty's size in frame but fully fifty pounds heavier. He had aquiet, good-natured face. On the whole it was a strong face though abit heavy. His eyes were everywhere. He was the first to noticeRafferty. He nodded with a familiar, "Hello, Dan. "

Dan seized my arm and dragged me forward:

"I want ye to meet me frind, Mister Carleton, " he said. 

Sweeney rested his grey eyes on me a second, saw that I was astranger here, and stepped forward instantly with his big handoutstretched. He spoke without a trace of brogue. 

"I'm very glad to meet you, Mr. Carleton, " he said. 

I don't know that I'm easily impressed and I flattered myself that Icould recognize a politician when I saw one, but I want to confessthat there was something in the way he grasped my hand that instantlygave me a distinctly friendly feeling towards Sweeney. I should havesaid right then and there that the man wasn't as black as he waspainted. He was neither oily nor sleek in his manner. We chatted aminute and I think he was a bit surprised in me. He wanted to knowwhere I lived, where I was working, and how much of a family I had. Heput these questions in so frank and fatherly a fashion that theydidn't seem so impertinent to me at the time as they did later. Someone called him and as he turned away, he said to Rafferty, "See me before you go, Dan. "

Then he said to me, "I hope I'll see you down here often, Carleton. "

With that Dan took me around and introduced me to Tom, Dick and Harryor rather to Tim, Denny and Larry. This crowd came nearer to thenotion I had of ward politicians. They were a noisy, husky-throatedlot, but they didn't leave you in doubt for a minute but what everymother's son of them was working for Sweeney as though they were onebig family with Daddy Sweeney at the head. You could overhear bits ofplots and counter plots on every side. I was offered a dozen cigars inas many minutes and though some of the men rather shied away from meat first a whispered endorsement from Dan was all that was needed tobring them back. 

There was something contagious about it and when later the meetingitself opened and Sweeney rose to speak I cheered him as heartily asanyone. By this time a hundred or more other men had come in wholooked more outside the inner circle. Sweeney spoke simply anddirectly. It was a personal appeal he made, based on promises. Ilistened with interest and though it seemed to me that many of hispledges were extravagant he showed such a good spirit back of themthat his speech on a whole produced a favorable effect. 

At any rate I came away from the meeting with a stronger personalinterest in politics than I had ever felt in my life. Instead ofseeming like an abstruse or vague issue it seemed to me prettyconcrete and pretty vital. It concerned me and my immediate neighbors. Here was a man who was going to Congress not as a figurehead of hisparty but to make laws for Rafferty and for me. He was to be mycongressman if I chose to help make him such. He knew my name, knew myoccupation, knew that I had a wife and one child, knew my address. AndI want to say that he didn't forget them either. 

As I walked back through the brightly lighted streets which were stillas much alive as at high noon, I felt that after all this was my wardand my city. I wasn't a mere dummy, I was a member of a vastcorporation. I had been to a rally and had shaken hands with Sweeney. 

Ruth's only comment was a disgusted grunt as she smelled the ranktobacco in my clothes. She kept them out on the roof all the nextday. 

CHAPTER XII

OUR FIRST WINTER

This first winter was filled with just about as much interest as itwas possible for three people to crowd into six or seven months. Andeven then there was so much left over which we wanted to do that wefairly groaned as we saw opportunity after opportunity slip by whichwe simply didn't have the time to improve. 

To begin with the boy, he went at his studies with a zest that placedhim among the first ten of his class. Dick wasn't a quick boy at hisbooks and so this stood for sheer hard plugging. To me this made hissuccess all the more noteworthy. Furthermore it wasn't the result ofgoading either from Ruth or myself. I kept after him about the detailsof his school life and about the boys he met, but I let him go his owngait in his studies. I wanted to see just how the new point of viewwould work out in him. The result as I saw it was that every nightafter supper he went at his problems not as a mere school boy butman-fashion. He sailed in to learn. He had to. There was no prestigein that school coming from what the fathers did. No one knew what thefathers did. It didn't matter. With half a dozen nationalities in therace the school was too cosmopolitan to admit such local issues. A fewboys might chum together feeling they were better than the others, butthe school as a whole didn't recognize them. Each boy counted for whathe did--what he was. 

Of the other nine boys in the first ten, four were of Jewish origin, three were Irish, one was Italian, and the other was American born butof Irish descent. Half of them hoped to go through college onscholarships and the others had equally ambitious plans for business. The Jews were easily the most brilliant students but they didn'tattempt anything else. The Italian showed some literary ability andwrote a little for the school paper. The American born Irish boy wasmade manager of the Freshman football team. The other four werenatural athletes--two of them played on the school eleven and theothers were just built for track athletics and basket ball. Dicktried for the eleven but he wasn't heavy enough for one thing and sodidn't make anything but a substitute's position with the freshmen. Iwas just as well satisfied. I didn't mind the preliminary training butI felt I would as soon he added a couple more years to his age beforehe really played football, even if it was in him to play. My point hadbeen won when he went out and tried. 

At the end of the first four months in the school I thought I saw ageneral improvement in him. He held himself better for one thing--withhis head higher and his shoulders well back. This wasn't due to hisphysical training either. It meant a changed mental attitude. Ruthsays she didn't notice any difference and she thinks this is nothingbut my imagination. But she's wrong. I was looking for something shecouldn't see that the boy lacked before. Dick to her was always allright. Of course I knew myself that the boy couldn't go far wrongwhatever his training, but I knew also that his former indifferentattitude was going to make his path just so much harder for him. Dick, when he read over this manuscript, said he thought the whole businesswas foolish and that even if I wanted to tell the story of my ownlife, the least I could do was to leave out him. But his life was morelargely my life than he realizes even now. And his case was in manyways a better example of the true emigrant spirit than my own. 

He joined the indoor track squad this winter, too, but here again hedidn't distinguish himself. He fought his way into the finals at theinterscholastic meet but that was all. However this, too, was goodtraining for him. I saw that race myself and I watched his mouthinstead of his legs. I liked the way his jaws came together on thelast lap though it hurt to see the look in his eyes when he fell sofar behind after trying so hard. But he crossed the finish line. 

In the meanwhile Ruth was just about the busiest little woman in thecity. And yet strangely enough this instead of dragging her down, built her up. She took on weight, her cheeks grew rosier than I hadseen them for five years and she seemed altogether happier. I watchedher closely because I made up my mind that ginger jar or no ginger jarthe moment I saw a trace of heaviness in her eyes, she would have toquit some of her bargain hunting. I didn't mean to barter her goodhealth for a few hundred dollars even if I had to remain a day laborerthe rest of my life. 

That possibility didn't seem to me now half so terrifying as did theold bogey of not getting a raise. I suppose for one thing this wasbecause we neither of us felt so keenly the responsibility of the boy. In the old days we had both thought that he was doomed if we didn'tsave enough to send him through college and give him, at the end ofhis course, capital enough to start in business for himself. In otherwords, Dick seemed then utterly dependent upon us. It was as terriblea thought to think of leaving him penniless at twenty-one as leavinghim an orphan at five months. The burden of his whole career rested onour shoulders. 

But now as I saw him take his place among fellows who were borndependent upon themselves, as I learned about youngsters at the schoolwho at ten earned their own living selling newspapers and even wentthrough college on their earnings, as I watched him grow strongphysically and tackle his work aggressively, I realized that even ifanything should happen to either Ruth or myself the boy would be ableto stand on his own feet. He had the whole world before him down here. If worst came to worst he could easily support himself daytimes, andat night learn either a trade or a profession. This was not a dream onmy part; I saw men who were actually doing it. I was doing it myselffor that matter. Personally I felt as easy about Dick's future by themiddle of that first winter as though I had established an annuity forhim which would assure him all the advantages I had ever hoped hemight receive. So did Ruth. 

I remember some horrible hours I passed in that little suburban housetowards the end of my life there. Ruth would sit huddled up in a chairand try to turn my thoughts to other things but I could only pace thefloor when I thought what would happen to her and the boy if anythingshould happen to me; or what would happen to the boy alone if anythingshould happen to the both of us. The case of Mrs. Bonnington hung overme like a nightmare and the other possibility was even worse. Why, when Cummings came down with pneumonia and it looked for a while asthough he might die, I guess I suffered, by applying his case tomine, as much as ever he himself did on his sick bed. I used toinquire for his temperature every night as though it were my own. Sodid every man in the neighborhood. 

Sickness was a wicked misfortune to that little crowd. When death didpick one of us, the whole structure of that family came tumbling downlike a house of cards. If by the grace of God the man escaped, he wasleft hopelessly in debt by doctor's bills if in the meanwhile hehadn't lost his job. Sickness meant disaster, swift and terriblewhatever its outcome. We ourselves escaped it, to be sure, but I'vesweat blood over the mere thought of it. 

Now if our thoughts ever took so grim a turn, we could speak quitecalmly about it. It was impossible for me ever to think of Ruth assick. My mind couldn't grasp that. But occasionally when I have comehome wet and Ruth has said something about my getting pneumonia if Ididn't look out, I've asked myself what this would mean. In the firstplace I now could secure admission to the best hospitals in thecountry free of cost. I had only to report my case to the cityphysician and if I were sick enough to warrant it, he would notifythe hospital and they would send down an ambulance for me. I would becarried to a clean bed in a clean room and would receive such medicalattention as before I could have had only as a millionaire. Physiciansof national reputation would attend me, medicines would be suppliedme, and I'd have a night and day nurse for whom outside I would havehad to pay some forty dollars a week. Not only this but if I recoveredI would be supplied the most nourishing foods in the market and afterthat sent out of town to one of the quiet convalescent hospitals if mycondition warranted it. I don't suppose a thousand dollars would coverwhat here would be given me for nothing. And I wouldn't either beconsidered or treated like a charity patient. This was all my due as acitizen--as a toiler. Of course this would be done also for Dick aswell as for Ruth. 

I don't mean to say that such thoughts took up much of my time. I'mnot morbid and we never did have any sickness--we lived too sanely forthat. But just as our new viewpoint on Dick relieved us of a tensionwhich before had sapped our strength, so it was a great relief to havesuch insurance as this in the background of our minds. It took allthe curse off sickness that it's possible to take off. In three orfour such ways as these a load of responsibility was removed from usand we were left free to apply all our energy to the task ofupbuilding which we had in hand. 

This may account somewhat for the reserve strength which Ruth as wellas myself seemed to tap. Then of course the situation as a whole wassuch as to make any woman with imagination buoyant. Ruth had an activepart in making a big rosy dream come true. She was now not merely apassive agent. She wasn't economizing merely to make the salary coverthe current expenses. Her task was really the vital one of the wholeundertaking; she was accumulating capital. When you stop to think ofit she was the brains of the business; I was only the machine. I dugthe money out of the ground but that wouldn't have amounted to much ifit had all gone for nothing except to keep the machine moving from dayto day. The dollar she saved was worth more than a hundred dollarsearned and spent again. It was the only dollar which counted. They saya penny saved is a penny earned. To my mind a penny saved was worthto us at this time every cent of a dollar. 

So Ruth was not only an active partner but there was another side tothe game that appealed to her. 

"The thing I like about our life down here, " she said to me one night, "is the chance it gives me to get something of myself into everysingle detail of the home. "

I didn't know what she meant because it seemed to me that was justwhat she had always done. But she shook her head when I said so. 

"No, " she said. "Not the way I can now. "

"Well, you didn't have a servant and must have done whatever wasdone, " I said. 

"I didn't have time to pick out the food for the table, " she said. "Ihad to order it of the grocery man. I didn't have time to make as manyof your clothes as I wanted. Why I didn't even have time to plan. "

"If anyone had told me that a woman could do any more than you thenwere doing, I should have laughed at them, " I said. 

"You and the boy weren't all my own then, " she said. "I had to waste agreat deal of time on things outside the house. Sometimes it used tomake me feel as though you were just one of the neighbors, Billy. "

I began to see what she meant. But she certainly found now just asmuch time if not more to spare on the women and babies all around us. 

"They aren't neighbors, " she said. "They are friends. "

I suppose she felt like that because what she did for them wasn't justwasted energy like an evening at cards. 

But she went back again and again, as though it were a song, to thisnotion that our new home was all her own. 

"You may think me a pig, Billy, " she said. "But I like it. I like topick out all myself, every single potato you and the boy eat; I liketo pick out every leaf of lettuce, every apple. It makes me feel asthough I was doing something for you. "

"Good land--" I said. 

But she wouldn't let me finish. 

"No, Billy, " she said. "You don't understand what all that means tome--how it makes me a part of you and Dick as I never was before. AndI like to think that in everything you wear there's a stitch of mineright close to you. And that when you and the boy lie down at nightI'm touching you because I made everything clean for you with my ownhands. "

It makes my throat grow lumpy even now when I remember the eager, half-ashamed way she looked up into my eyes as she said this. Lord, sometimes she made me feel like a little child and other times shemade me feel like a giant. But whichever way she made me feel at themoment, she always left me wishing that I had in me every good thing aman can have so that I might be half way worthy of her. There aretimes when a fellow knows that as a man he doesn't count for much ascompared with any woman. And with such a woman as Ruth--well, Godknows I tried to do my best in those days and have tried to do thatever since, but it makes me ache to think how little I've been able togive her of all she deserves. 

In her housework Ruth had developed a system that would have made afortune for any man if applied in the same degree to his business. Ilearned a lot from her. Instead of going at her tasks in the haphazardfashion of most women or doing things just because her grandmotherand her mother did them a certain way, she used her head. I've alreadytold how she did her washing little by little every day instead ofwaiting for Monday and then tearing herself all to pieces, and that'sa fair example of her method. When she was cooking breakfast and had agood fire, she'd have half her dinner on at the same time. Anythingthat was just as good warmed up, she'd do then. She'd make her stewsand soups while waiting for the biscuits to bake and boil her rice ormake her cold puddings while we were eating. When that stove wasworking in the morning you couldn't find a square inch of it thatwasn't working. As a result, she planned never to spend over half anhour on her dinner at night and by the time the breakfast dishes werewashed she was through with her cooking until then. 

She used her head even in little things; she'd make one dish do thework of three. She never washed this dish until she was through withit for good. And she'd find the time at odd moments during her cookingto wash these dishes as they came along. If she spilled anything onthe floor she stopped right then and there and cleaned it up, with theresult that when breakfast was served, the kitchen looked asship-shape as when she began. When she _was_ busy, she was the busiestwoman you ever saw. She worked with her head, both hands, and herfeet. As a result instead of fiddling around all day, when she wasthrough she was through. 

When she got up in the morning she knew exactly what she had to do forthe day, just how she was going to do it and just when she was goingto do it. And you could bank that the things at night would be done, and be done just as she had planned. She thought ahead. That's a greatthing to master in any business. 

In my own work, the plan I had outlined for myself I developed day byday. At the end of three months I found that even what little ItalianI had then learned was a help to me. The mere fact that I was studyingtheir language placed me on a better footing with my fellows. Theyseemed to receive it as a compliment and to feel that I was taking apersonal interest in them as a race. My desire to practise my fewphrases was always a letter of introduction to a newcomer. 

I talked with them about everything--where they came from, what madethem come, what they did before they came, how long they worked andwhat pay they got in Italy, how they saved to get over here, how theysecured their jobs, what they hoped to do eventually, where theylived, how large their families were, how much it cost them to liveand what they ate. I inquired as to what they liked and what theydisliked about their work; what they considered fair and what unfairabout the labor and the pay; what they liked and didn't like about theforeman. Often I couldn't get any opinion at all out of them on thesesubjects; often it wasn't honest and often it wasn't intelligent. Butas with my other questioning when I sifted it all down and thought itover, I was surprised at how much information I did get. If I didn'tlearn facts which could be put into words, I was left with a verydefinite impression and a very wide general knowledge. 

In the meanwhile my note book was always busy. I kept jotting downnames and addresses with enough running comment to help me to recallthe men individually. I wasn't able to locate one out of ten of thesemen later but the tenth man was worth all the trouble. 

As the winter advanced and the air grew frosty and the snow and icecame, the work in a good many ways was harder. And yet everythingconsidered I don't know but what I'd rather work outdoors at zero thanat eighty-five. Except that my hands got numb and everything was moredifficult to handle I didn't mind the cold. There was generallyexercise enough to keep the blood moving. 

We had a variety of work before spring. After the subway job I shiftedto a big house foundation and there met another group of skilledworkmen from whom I learned much. The work was easier and thesurroundings pleasanter if you can speak of pleasant surroundingsabout a hole in the ground. The soil was easier to handle and we wentto no great depth. Here too I met a new gang of laborers. I missedmany familiar faces out of the old crowd and found some interestingnew men. Rafferty had gone and I was sorry. I saw more or less of himhowever during the winter for he dropped around now and then on Sundayevenings. I don't think he ever forgot the incident of the sewer gas. 

I enjoyed too every hour in my night school. I found here a very largeper cent. Of foreigners and they were naturally of the more ambitioustype. I found I had a great deal to learn even in the matter ofspreading mortar and using a trowel. It was really fascinating workand in the instructor I made an invaluable friend. Through him I wasable to arrange my scattered fragments of information into largergroups. Little by little I told him something of my plan and he wasvery much interested in it. He gave me many valuable suggestions andlater proved of substantial help in more ways than one. 

CHAPTER XIII

I BECOME A CITIZEN

As I said, there were still many opportunities which I didn't havetime to improve. The three of us seemed to have breathed in down heresome spirit which left us almost feverish in our desire to learn. Whether it was the opportunity which bred the desire or the desire asexpressed by all these newcomers, fresh from the shackles of their oldlives, which created the opportunity, I leave to the students of suchmatters. All I know is that we were offered the best in practicalinformation, such as the trade schools and the night high schools; thebest in art, the best in music, the best in the drama. I am speakingalways of the newcomer--the emigrant. Sprinkled in with these was thecheaper element of the native-born, whether of foreign or of Americandescent, who spent their evenings on the street or at the cheaptheatres or in the barrooms. This class despised the whole business. Incidentally these were the men who haunted the bread line, theSalvation Army barracks, and were the first to join in any publicdemonstration against the rich. The women, not always so much by theirown fault, were the type which keeps the charitable associations busy. I'm not saying that among these there were not often cases of sheerhard luck. Now and then sickness played the devil with a family andmore often the cussedness of some one member dragged down a half dozeninnocent ones with him, but I do say that when misfortune did come tothis particular class they didn't buck up to it as Helen Bonningtondid or use such means as were at their disposal to pull out of it. They just caved in. Even in their daily lives, when things were goingwell with them, they lost in the glitter and glare of the city thatspark which my middle-class friends lost by stagnation. 

Because there was no poetic romance left in their own lives, theydespised it in the lives of others and laughed at it in art. Whateverwent back into the past, they looked upon scornfully as "ancient. "They lived each day as it came with a pride in being up-to-date. As aresult, they preferred musical comedy of the horse play kind to realmusic; they preferred cheap melodrama to Shakespere. They lived andbreathed the spirit of the yellow journals. 

I don't know what sort of an education it is the Italians come overhere with, but they were a constant surprise to me in theirappreciation of the best in art. And it was genuine--it was simple. I've heard a good many jokes about the foolishness of giving them adiet of Shakespere and Beethoven, of Mæterlinck and Mascagni, but thatsort of talk comes either from the outsiders or from the Great WhiteWay crowd. When you've seen Italians not only crowd in to the freeproductions down here but have seen them put up good money to attendthe best theatres; when you've heard them whistle grand opera at theirwork and save hard earned dollars to spend on it down town; whenyou've seen them crowd the art museums on free days and spend a halfdollar to look at some private exhibition of a fellow countryman's, you begin to think, if you're honest, that the laugh is on you. Theymade me feel ashamed not only because I was ignorant but because afterI became more familiar with the works of the masters I was slowerthan they to appreciate them. In many cases I couldn't. I didn'tflatter myself either that this was because of my superior franknessor up-to-dateness. I knew well enough that it was because of a lack inme and my ancestors. 

Scarcely a week passed when there wasn't something worth seeing orhearing presented to these people. It came either through a settlementhouse or through the generosity of some interested private patron. However it came, it was always through the medium of a class whichuntil now had been only a name to me. This was the independentlywell-to-do American class--the Americans who had partly made andpartly inherited their fortunes and had not yet come to misuse them. It is a class still active in American life, running however more tothe professions than to business. Many of their family names have beenfamiliar in history to succeeding generations since the earlysettlement of New England. They were intellectual leaders then andthey are intellectual leaders now. If I could with propriety I'd liketo give here a list of half a dozen of these men and women who came, in time, to revive for me my belief that after all there still isleft in this country the backbone of a worthy old stock. But theydon't need any such trivial tribute as I might give them. The thingthat struck me at once about them was that they were still finding anoutlet for their pioneer instinct not only in their professions andtheir business, but in the interest they took in the new pioneer. Shoulder to shoulder with the modern Pilgrims they were pushingforward their investigations in medicine, in science, in economics. They were adapting old laws to new conditions; they were developingthe new West; they were the new thinkers and the new politicians. 

I don't suppose that if I had lived for fifty years under the oldconditions I would have met one of them. There was no meeting groundfor us, for we had nothing in common. I couldn't possibly interestthem and I'm sure I was too busy with my own troubles to take anyinterest in them even if I had known of their existence. 

Even down here I resented at first their presence as an intrusion. Whenever I met them I was inclined to play the cad and there's nobigger cad on the face of the earth than a workingman who is beginningto feel his oats. But as I watched them and saw how earnest they wereand how really valuable their efforts were I was able to distinguishthem from still another crowd who flaunted their silly charities inthe newspapers. But these other quiet men and women were of differentcalibre; they were the ones who established pure milk stations, whoencouraged the young men of real talent like Giuseppe, and who headedall the real work for good done down here. 

They came into my life when I needed them; when perhaps I was swingingtoo far in my belief that the emigrant was the only force for progressin our nation. I know they checked me in some wild thinking in which Iwas beginning to indulge. 

I find I have been wandering a little. But what we thought, countedfor as much towards the goal as what we did and even if the thinkingis only that of one man--and an ordinary man at that--why, so for thatmatter was the whole venture. I want to say again that all I'm tryingto do is to put down as well as I can remember and as well as I amable, my own acts and thoughts and nothing but my own. Of course thatmeans Ruth's and Dick's too as far as I understood them, for theywere a part of my own. I don't want what I write to be taken as thereport of an investigation but just as the diary of one man'sexperience. 

If I had had the time I could have seen at least two of Shakespere'splays--presented by amateurs, to be sure, but amateurs with talent andenthusiasm and guided by professionals. I could have heard at least ahalf dozen good readers read from the more modern classics. I couldhave listened to as many concerts by musicians of good standing. Icould have heard lectures on a dozen subjects of vital interest. Thenthere were entertainments designed confessedly to entertain. Inaddition to these there were many more lectures in the city itselfopen free to the public and which I now for the first time learnedabout. There was one series in particular which was addressed once aweek by men of international renown. It was a liberal education initself. Many of my neighbors attended. 

But as for Dick he was too busy with his studies and Ruth was too gladto sit at home and watch him, to go out at night. 

What spare time I myself had I began to devote to a new interest. Rafferty had first roused me to my duty as a citizen in the matter oflocal politics and through the winter called often enough to keep myinterest whetted. But even without him I couldn't have escaped thequestion. Politics was a live issue down here every day in the year. One campaign was no sooner ended than another was begun. Sweeney wasno sooner elected than he began to lay wires for his fellows in thecoming city election who in their turn would sustain him in whateverfurther political ambitions he might have. If the hold the boss had ona ward or a city was a mystery to me at first, it didn't long remainso. The secret of his power lay in the fact that he never let go. Hewas at work every day in the year and he had an organization withwhich he could keep in touch through his lieutenants whether he was inWashington or at home. Sweeney's personality was always right there inhis ward wherever his body might be. 

The Sweeney Club rooms were always open. Night after night you couldfind his trusted men there. Here the man out of a job came and fromhere was recommended to one contractor or another or to the "city";here the man with the sick wife came to have her sent to somehospital which perhaps for some reason would not ordinarily receiveher; here the men in court sent their friends for bail; here camethose with bigger plans afoot in the matter of special contracts. IfSweeney couldn't get them what they wanted, he at least sent them awaywith a feeling of deep obligation to him. Naturally then when electiontime came around these people obeyed Sweeney's order. It wasn'treasonable to suppose that a campaign speech or two could affect theirloyalty. 

Of course the rival party followed much the same methods but the manin power had a tremendous advantage. The only danger he needed to fearwas a split in his own faction as some young man loomed up withambitions that moved faster than Sweeney's own for him. Such a man Ibegan to suspect--though it was looking a long way into thefuture--was Rafferty. That winter he took out his naturalizationpapers and soon afterwards he began an active campaign for the CommonCouncil. It was partly my interest in him and partly a new sense ofduty I felt towards the whole game that made me resolve to have a handin this. I owed that much to the ward in which I lived and which wasdoing so much for me. 

In talking with some of the active settlement workers down here, Ifound them as strongly prejudiced against the party in power as I hadbeen and when I spoke to them of Rafferty I found him damned in theireyes as soon as I mentioned his party. 

"The whole system is corrupt from top to bottom, " said the head of onesettlement house to me. 

"Are you doing anything to remedy it?" I asked. 

"What _can_ you do?" he said. "We are doing the only thingpossible--we're trying to get hold of the youngsters and give them ahigher sense of civic virtue. "

"That's good, " I said, "but you don't get hold of one in ten of thecoming voters. And you don't get hold of one in a hundred of thecoming politicians. Why don't you take hold of a man like Dan who isbound to get power some day and talk a little civic virtue into him. "

"You said he was a Democrat and a machine man, " said he, as thoughthat settled it. 

"I don't see any harm in either fact, " I said, "if you get at the goodin him. A good Democrat is a good citizen and a good machine is agood power, " I said. 

The man smiled. 

"You don't know, " he said. 

"Do _you_ know?" I asked. "Have you been to the rallies and met themen and studied their methods?"

"All you have to do is to read the papers, " he answered. 

"I don't think so, " I said. "To beat an enemy you ought to study himat first hand. You ought to find out the good as well as the bad inhim. You ought to find out where he gets his power. "

"Graft and patronage, " he answered. 

"What about the other party?" I said. 

"Just as bad. "

"Then what are you going to do about it?" I asked. 

"Our only hope is education, " he said. 

"Then, " I said, "why not educate the young politicians? Get to knowRafferty--he's young and simple and honest now. Help him to advancehonestly and keep him that way. "

He shook his head doubtfully but he agreed to have a talk with Dan. Inthe meanwhile I had a talk with Dan myself. I told him what my schemewas. 

"Dan, " I said, "you must decide right at the beginning of your careerwhether you're going to be just a tool of Sweeney's or whether you'regoing to stand on your own feet. "

"Phot's the mather with Sweeney, now?" he asked. 

"In some ways he's all right, " I said. "And in other ways he isn't. But anyhow he's your boss and you have to do what he tells you to dojust as though he was your landlord back in Ireland and you nothingbut a tenant. "

"Eh?" he said looking up quick. 

I thought I'd strike a sore spot there and I made the most of it. Italked along like this for a half hour and I saw his lips cometogether. 

"He'd knife me, " he said finally. "He's sore now 'cause I'm aftherwantin' to run for the council this year. "

I had heard the rumor. 

"Then, " I said, "why don't you pull free and make a little machine ofyour own. Some of the boys will stand by you, won't they?"

"Will they?" he grinned. 

With that I took him around to the settlement house. Dan listened goodnaturedly to a lot of talk he didn't understand but he listened withmore interest to a lot of talk about the needs of the district whichit was now getting cheated out of, which he did understand. Andincidentally the man who at first did all the talking in the endlistened to Dan. After the latter had gone, he turned to me and said:

"I like that fellow Rafferty. "

That seemed to me the really important thing and right there and thenwe sat down and worked out the basis of the "Young American PoliticalClub. " Our object was to reach the young voter first of all andthrough him to reach the older ones. To this end we had a "Committeeon Boys" and a "Committee on Naturalization. " I insisted from thebeginning that we must have an organization as perfect as that of anypolitical machine. Until we felt our strength a little however, Isuggested it was best to limit our efforts to the districts alone. Wetook a map of the city and we cut up the districts into blocks with ayoung man at the head of each block. He was to make a list of all theyoung voters and keep as closely in touch as possible with thepolitical gossip of both parties. Over him there was to be a streetcaptain and over him a district captain and finally a president. 

All this was the result of slow and careful study. All the workersdown here fell in with the plan eagerly and one of them agreed to paythe expenses of a hall any time we wished to use one for campaignpurposes. At first our efforts passed unnoticed by either politicalparty. It was thought to be just another fanciful civic dream. We wereglad of it. It gave us time to perfect our organization withoutinterference. 

This business took up all the time I could spare during the winter. But instead of finding it a drag I found it an inspiration. Theyinsisted upon making me president of the Club and though I wouldrather have had a younger man at its head I accepted the honor with afeeling of some pride. It was the first public office I had ever heldand it gave me a new sense of responsibility and a better sense ofcitizenship. 

In the meanwhile Dan made no open break with Sweeney but it soonbecame clear that he was not in such good favor as before. Although wehad not yet openly endorsed his candidacy we were doing a good dealof talking for him. I received several visits from Sweeney'slieutenants who tried to find out just what we were about. My answerinvariably was "No partisanship but clean politics. "

When it came time to register I was forced to register with one of thetwo parties in order to take any part in the primaries. I registeredas a Democrat for the first time in my life. I also attended a primaryfor the first time in my life. I also felt a new power back of me forthe first time in my life. Little by little Dan had come to be anissue. Sweeney did not openly declare himself but it was soon evidentthat he had come to the primaries prepared to knife Rafferty if itwere possible. Back of Dan stood his large personal following; back ofme stood the balance of power. Sweeney saw it, gave the nod, and Danwas nominated. 

Six weeks later he was elected, too. You'd have thought he had beenelected mayor by the noise the small boys made. Rafferty came to mewith his big paw outstretched, "Carleton, " he said, "the only thing I've got agin ye is thot ye ain'tan Irishmon. Faith, ye'd make a domd foine Irishmon. "

"It's up to you now, " I said, "to make a damned fine American. "

It wasn't more than two months later that Dan came to me to ask myopinion on a request of Sweeney's. It looked a bit off color and Isaid so. 

"You can't do it, Dan, " I said. 

"It manes throuble, " he said. 

"Let it come. We're back of you with both feet. "

Dan followed my advice and the trouble came. He was fired from his jobas foreman under Sweeney. 

But you can't keep down as good a foreman as Dan was and he hadanother job within a week. 

A few months later I had another job myself. I was made foreman withmy own firm at a wage of two dollars and a half a day. When I wentback and announced this to Ruth, she cried a little. Truly our cupseemed full and running over. 

CHAPTER XIV

FIFTEEN DOLLARS A WEEK

My first thought when I received my advance in pay was that I couldnow relieve Ruth of some of her burdens. There was no longer any needof her spending so much time in trotting around the markets and thedepartment stores. Nor was there any need of her doing so muchplotting and planning in her endeavor to save a penny. Furthermore Iwas determined that she should now enjoy some of the little luxuriesof life in the way of better things to wear and better things to eat. But that idea was taken out of me in short order. 

"No, " she said, as soon as she recovered from the good news. "Wemustn't spend one cent more than we've been spending. "

"But look here, " I said; "what's the good of a raise if we don't useit?"

"What's the good of a raise if we spend it?" she asked me. "We'll useit, Billy, but we'll use it wisely. How many times have you told methat if you had your life to live over again you wouldn't spend onecent over the first salary you received, if it was only three dollarsa week, until you had a bank account?"

"I know that, " I said. "But when a man has a wife and boy like you andDick--"

"He doesn't want to turn them into burdens that will hold him down allhis life, " she broke in. "It isn't fair to the wife and boy, " shesaid. 

I couldn't quite follow her reasoning but I didn't have to. When Icame home the next Saturday night with fifteen dollars in my pocketinstead of nine she calmly took out three for the rent, five forhousehold expenses and put seven in the ginger jar. I suggested thatat least we have one celebration and with the boy go to the littleFrench restaurant we used to visit, but she held up her hands inhorror. 

"Do you think I'd spend two dollars and a half for--why, Billy, youwouldn't!"

"I'd like to spend ten, " I said. "I'd like to go there to dinner andbuy you a half dozen roses and get the three best seats in the besttheater in town, " I said. 

She came to my side and patted my arm. 

"Thank you, Billy, " she said. "But honest--it's just as much fun tohave you want to do those things as really do them. "

I believe she meant it. I wouldn't believe it of anyone else but for aweek she talked about that dinner and those flowers and the theateruntil she had me wondering if we hadn't actually gone. Dick thought wewere crazy. 

And so, just as usual, after this she'd take her basket and start outtwo or three mornings a week and walk with me as far as the market. She'd spend an hour here and then if she needed anything more she'd godown town to the big stores and wander around here for another hour. But Saturday nights was her great bargain opportunity. If I couldn'tgo with her she'd take Dick and the two would plan to get there atabout nine o'clock. From this time on she often picked up for a songodd ends of meat and good vegetables which the market men didn't wantto carry over to Monday. In fact they _had_ to sell out these thingsas their stock at the beginning of the week had to be fresh. I supposemarketing at this time of day would be a good deal of a hardship forthose living in the suburbs but it was a regular lark for her. Mosteveryone is good natured on Saturday night if on no other night. Theweek's work is done and people have enough money from their payenvelopes to feel rich for a few hours anyway. Then there were thelights and the crowd and the shouting so that it was like twentycountry fairs rolled into one. 

After the excitement of coming home Saturdays with so much money woreoff, I began to forget that I _was_ earning fifteen instead of nine. If Ruth had spent it on the table I'm sure I'd have forgotten it evenmore quickly. I was getting all I wanted to eat, was warm and had agood clean bed to sleep in and what more can a man have even if he'searning a hundred a week? I think people are very apt to forget thatafter all a millionaire can spend only about so much on himself. Andafter the newness of fresh toys has worn off--like steam yachts andprivate cars--he is forced to be satisfied with just what I had, nomatter how much more money he makes. He has only his five senses andonce these are satisfied he's no better off than a man who satisfiesthese same senses on eight dollars a week. Generally he's worse offbecause in a year or so he has probably dulled them all. Rockefellerhimself probably never in his life got half the fun out of anythingthat I did in just crawling into my clean bed at night with everytired muscle purring contentedly and my mind at rest about the nextday. I doubt if he knows the joy of waking up in the morning restedand hungry. The only advantage he had over me that I can see is thepower he had to help others. In a way I don't believe he found anygreater opportunity even for that than Ruth found right here. 

For those interested in the details I'm going to give anotherquotation from Ruth's note book. But to my mind these details aren'tthe important part of our venture. The thing that counted was thespirit back of them. It isn't the fact that we lived on from six toeight dollars a week or the statistics of how we lived on that whichmakes my life worth telling about if it _is_ worth telling about. Inthe first place prices vary in different localities and shift fromyear to year. In fact since we began they have almost doubled. In thesecond place people have lived and are living to-day on less than wedid. I give our figures simply to satisfy the curious and to show howRuth planned. But no one could do as she did or do as we did merely byaping her little economies, or accepting the result of them. Eitherthey would find the task impossible or look upon it as a privation andendure it as martyrs. In this mood they wouldn't last a week. I knowthat people who read this without at least a germ of the pioneer inthem will either smile or shrug their shoulders. I've met plenty ofthis sort. I met them by the dozen down here. As I said, you can findthem in every bread line, in every Salvation Army barracks or theAssociated Charities will furnish you a list of as many as you want. You'll find them in the suburbs or you'll find them marching in linethe next time there is a procession of the unemployed. 

But give me true pioneers such as our own forefathers were, such asthe young men out West are to-day, such as every steamer lands here bythe hundreds from foreign countries every week and I say you can'tdown that kind, you can't kill them. I don't say that it's right toraise the price of necessities. I don't think it is, though I don'tknow much about it. But I do say that if you double the cost of foodstuffs and then double it again, though you may cruelly starve out theweaklings, you'll find the pioneers still on their feet, stillfighting. 

It seems strange to me that men will go to Alaska and contentedlyfreeze and dig all day in a mine--not of their own, but for wages--andnot feel so greatly abused or unhappy; that they will swing an axe allday in a forest and live on baked beans and bread without feeling likemartyrs; that they will go to sea and grub on hard tack and salt porkand fish without complaint and then will turn Anarchists on the samefare in the East. It seems strange too that these men keep strong andhealthy, and that our ancestors kept strong and healthy on even astill simpler diet. Why, my father fought battles--and the mentalstrain must have been terrific--and did more actual labor every day incarrying a rifle and marching than I do in a week, and slept out doorsunder a blanket--all on a diet that the average tramp of to-day wouldspurn. He did this for four years and if the sanitary conditions hadbeen decent would have returned well and strong as many a man did whodidn't run afoul typhoid fever and malaria. Men who do such thingshave something in them that the men back East have lost. I call it theromantic spirit or the pioneer spirit and I say that a man who has itwon't care whether he's living in Maine or California and thatwhatever the conditions are he will overcome them. I know that wethree would have lived on almost rice alone as the Japanese do beforewe'd have cried quit. That was because we were tackling this problemnot as Easterners but as Westerners; not as poor whites but asemigrants. Men on a ranch stand for worse things than we had and haveless of a future to dream about. 

So I repeat that to my mind the house details don't count here for anymore than they did in the lives of the original New England settlers, or the forty-niners, or those on homesteads or in Alaska to-day. However, I'll put them in and I'll take the month of May as anexample--the first month after I was made foreman. It's fairer to givethe items for a month. They are as follows:

 Oatmeal, . 17 Corn meal, . 10 About one tenth barrel flour, . 65 Potatoes, . 35 Rice, . 08 Sugar, . 40 White beans, . 16 Pork, . 20 Molasses, . 10 Onions, . 23 Lard, . 50 Apples, . 36 Soda, etc. , . 14 Soap, . 20 Cornstarch, . 10 Cocoa shells, . 05 Eggs, . 75 Butter, 1. 12 Milk, 4. 48 Meats, 1. 60 Fish, . 60 Oil, . 20 Yeast cakes, . 06 Macaroni, . 09 Crackers, . 06 Total $12. 75

This makes an average of three dollars and nineteen cents a week. Witha fluctuation of perhaps twenty-five cents either way Ruth maintainedthis pretty much throughout the year now. It fell off a little in thesummer and increased a little in the winter. It's impossible to giveany closer estimate than this. Even this month many things were usedwhich were left over from the week preceding and, on the other hand, some things on this list like molasses and sugar and cornstarch wenttowards reducing the total of the month following. 

This left say a dollar and seventy-five cents a week for such smallincidentals as are not accounted for here but chiefly for sewingmaterial, bargains in cloth remnants and such things as were neededtowards the repair of our clothes as well as for such new clothes aswe had to buy from time to time. I think we spent more on shoes thanwe did clothes but Ruth by patronizing the sample shoe shops alwayscame home with a three or four dollar pair for which she never paidover two dollars and sometimes as low as a dollar and a half. The boyand I bought our shoes at the same reduction at bankrupt sales. Wegave our neighbors this tip and saw them save a good many dollars inthis way. 

On the whole these people were not good buyers; they never lookedahead but bought only when they were in urgent need and then bought atthe cheapest price regardless of quality. They would pay two and twoand a half for shoes that wouldn't last them any time at all. WhateverRuth bought she considered the quality first and the price afterwards. Then, too, she often ran across something she didn't need at the timebut which was a good bargain; she would buy this and put it away. Shewas able to buy many things which were out of season for half what thesame things would cost six months later. It was very difficult to makeour neighbors see the advantage of this practice and their blindnesscost them many a good dollar. 

We also had the advantage of our neighbors in knowing how to take goodcare of our clothes. The average man was careless and slovenly. In aweek a new suit would be spotted with grease, wrinkled, and all out ofshape. He never thought of pressing it, cleaning it or of putting itaway carefully when through wearing it. The women were no better abouttheir own clothes. This was also true of their shoes. They mightshine them once a month but generally they let them go until theydried up and cracked. In this way their new clothes soon becameworkday clothes, their new shoes, old shoes, and as such they lasted avery few months. 

Dick and I might have done a little better than our neighbors evenwithout Ruth to watch us, but we certainly would not have had thetraining we did have. Shoes had to be cleaned and either oiled orshined before going to bed. If it rained we wore our old pairs whetherit was Sunday or not or else we stayed at home. Every time Dick or Iput on our good clothes we were as carefully inspected as troops onparade. If a grease spot was found, it was removed then and there. Ifa button was missing or a bit of fringe showed or a hole the size of apin head was found we had to wait until the defect was remedied. EverySunday morning the boy pressed both his suit and mine and every nightwe had to hang our coats over a chair and fold our trousers. If wewere careless about it, the little woman without a word simply got upand did them over again herself. 

These may seem like small matters but the result was that we all of uskept looking shipshape and our clothes lasted. When we finally didfinish with them they weren't good for anything but old rags and eventhen Ruth used them about her housework. I figured roughly that Ruthkept us well dressed on about half what it cost most of our neighborsand yet we appeared to be twice as well dressed as any of them. Ofcourse we had a good many things to start with when we came down herebut our clothing bill didn't go up much even during the last year whenour original stock was very nearly exhausted. She accomplished thisresult about one-half by long-headed buying, and one-half by hercarefulness and her skill with the needle. 

To go back to the matter of food, I'll copy off a week's bill of fareduring this month. Ruth has written it out for me. You'll notice thatit doesn't vary very much from the earlier ones. 

 Sunday. 

 Breakfast: fried hasty pudding with molasses; doughnuts, cocoa made from cocoa shells. 

 Dinner: lamb stew with dumplings, boiled potatoes, boiled onions, cornstarch pudding. 

 Monday. 

 Breakfast: oatmeal, baked potatoes, creamed codfish, biscuits. 

 Luncheon: for Billy: brown bread sandwiches, cold beans, doughnuts, milk; for Dick and me: boiled rice, cold biscuits, baked apples, milk. 

 Dinner: warmed over lamb stew, baked apples, cocoa, cold biscuits. 

 Tuesday. 

 Breakfast: oatmeal, milk toast, cocoa. 

 Luncheon: for Billy: cold biscuits, hard-boiled eggs, doughnuts; for Dick and me: warmed over beans, biscuits. 

 Dinner: hamburg steak, baked potatoes, graham muffins, apple sauce, milk. 

 Wednesday. 

 Breakfast: oatmeal, griddle-cakes with molasses, cocoa shells. 

 Luncheon: for Billy: sandwiches made of biscuits and left over steak, doughnuts; for Dick and me: crackers and milk, hot gingerbread. 

 Dinner: vegetable hash, hot biscuits, gingerbread, apple sauce, milk. 

 Thursday. 

 Breakfast: oatmeal, fried hasty pudding, doughnuts, cocoa shells. 

 Luncheon: for Billy: hard-boiled eggs, cold biscuits, gingerbread, baked apple; for Dick and me: baked potatoes, apple sauce, cold biscuits, milk. 

 Dinner: lyonnaise potatoes, hot corn bread, Poor man's pudding, milk. 

 Friday. 

 Breakfast: smoked herring, baked potatoes, oatmeal, graham muffins. 

 Luncheon: for Billy: herring, cold muffins, doughnuts; for Dick and me: German toast, apple sauce. 

 Dinner: fish hash, biscuits, Indian pudding, milk. 

 Saturday. 

 Breakfast: oatmeal, German toast, cocoa shells. 

 Luncheon: for Billy: cold biscuits, hard-boiled eggs, bowl of rice; for Dick and me: rice and milk, doughnuts, apple sauce. 

 Dinner: baked beans, new raised bread. 

To a man accustomed to a beefsteak breakfast, fried hasty pudding mayseem a poor substitute and griddle cakes may seem well enough to taperoff with but scarcely stuff for a full meal. All I say is, have thosethings well made, have enough of them and then try it. If a man has asound digestion and a good body I'll guarantee that such food will notonly satisfy him but furnish him fuel for the hardest kind of physicalexercise. I know because I've tried it. And though to some my lunchesmay sound slight, they averaged more in substance and variety than thelunches of my foreign fellow-workmen. A hunk of bread and a bit ofcheese was often all they brought with them. 

Dick thrived on it too. The elimination of pastry from his simpleluncheons brought back the color to his cheeks and left him hard asnails. 

I've read since then many articles on domestic economy and how on afew dollars a week a man can make many fancy dishes which will foolhim into the belief that he is getting the same things which beforecost him a great many more dollars. Their object appears to be togive such a variety that the man will not notice a change. Now thisseems to me all wrong. What's the use of clinging to the notion that aman lives to eat? Why not get down to bed rock at once and face thefact that a man doesn't need the bill of fare of a modern hotel or anysubstitute for it? A few simple foods and plenty of them is enough. When a man begins to crave a variety he hasn't placed his emphasisright. He hasn't worked up to the right kind of hunger. Compare theold-time country grocery store with the modern provision house and itmay help you to understand why our lean sinewy forefathers have givenplace to the sallow, fat parodies of to-day. A comparison might alsohelp to explain something of the high cost of living. My grandfatherkept such a store and I've seen some of his old account books. Aboutall he had to sell in the way of food was flour, rice, potatoes, sugarand molasses, butter, cheese and eggs. These articles weren't put upin packages and they weren't advertised. They were sold in bulk andall you paid for was the raw material. The catalogue of a modernprovision house makes a book. The whole object of the change it seemsto me is to fill the demand for variety. You have to pay for that. Butwhen you trim your ship to run before a gale you must throw overboardjust such freight. Once you do, you'll find it will have to blowharder than it does even to-day to sink you. I am constantly surprisedat how few of the things we think we need we actually _do_ need. 

The pioneer of to-day doesn't need any more than the pioneer of ahundred years ago. To me this talk that a return to the customs of ourancestors involves a lowering of the standard of living is allnonsense; it means nothing but a simplifying of the standard ofliving. If that's a return to barbarism then I'm glad to be abarbarian and I'll say there never were three happier barbarians thanRuth, the boy and myself. 

CHAPTER XV

THE GANG

If I'd been making five dollars a day at this time, I wouldn't havemoved from the tenement. In the first place as far as physical comfortwent I was never better off. We had all the room we needed. During thewinter we had used the living room as a kitchen and dining room justas our forefathers did. We economized fuel in this way and Ruth keptthe rooms spotless. We had no fires in our bedrooms and did not wantany. We all of us slept with our windows wide open. If we had had tenmore rooms we wouldn't have known what to do with them. When we had avisitor we received him in the kitchen. Some of our neighbors tookboarders and also slept in the kitchen. I don't know as I should wantto do that but at the same time many a family lives in a one room hutin the forest after this fashion. By outsiders it's looked upon asrather romantic. It isn't considered a great hardship by the settlersthemselves. 

Then we had the advantage of our roof and with summer coming on welooked forward to the garden and the joy of the warm starry nights. Wehad some wonderful winter pictures, too, from that same roof. It wasworth going up there to see the house tops after a heavy snow storm. 

If I had wanted to move I could have done only one of two things;either gone back into the suburbs or taken a more expensive flat uptown. I certainly had had enough of the former and as for the latter Icould see no comparison. If anything this flat business was worse thanthe suburbs. I would be surrounded by an ordinary group of people whohad all the airs of the latter with none of their good points. I'd behedged in by conventions with which I was now even in less sympathythan before. I wouldn't have exchanged my present freedom of movementand independence of action for even the best suite in the mostexpensive apartment house in the city. Not for a hundred dollars aweek. Advantages? What were they? Would a higher grade of wall paper, a more expensive set of furniture and steam heat compensate me forthe loss of the solid comfort I found here by the side of my littleiron stove? Was an electric elevator a fair swap for my roof? Were thegilt, the tinsel and the soft carpets worth the privilege I enjoyedhere of dressing as I pleased, eating what I pleased, doing what Ipleased? Was their apartment-house friendship, however polished, worththe simple genuine fellowship I enjoyed among my present neighbors?What could such a life offer me for my soul's or my body's good that Ididn't have here? I couldn't see how in a single respect I couldbetter my present condition except with the complete independence thatmight come with a fortune and a country estate. Any middle ground, assuming that I could afford it, meant nothing but the undertakingagain of all the old burdens I had just shaken off. 

Ruth, the boy and myself now knew genuinely more people than we hadever before known in our lives. And most of them were worth knowingand the others worth some endeavor to _make_ worth knowing. We wereall pulling together down here--some harder than others, to be sure, but all with a distinct ambition that was dependent for success uponnothing but our own efforts. 

I was in touch with more opportunities than I had ever dreamedexisted. All three of us were enjoying more advantages than we hadever dreamed would be ours. My Italian was improving from day to day. I could handle mortar easily and naturally and point a joint as wellas my instructor. I could build a true square pier of any size fromone brick to twenty. I could make a square or pigeonhole corner or layout a brick footing. And I was proud of my accomplishment. 

But more interesting to me than anything else was the opportunity Inow had as a foreman to test the value of the knowledge of my formerfellow workmen which I had been slowly acquiring. I was anxious to seeif my ideas were pure theory or whether they were practical. They hadproven practical at any rate in securing my own advance. This had comeabout through no such pull as Rafferty's. It was the result of nothingbut my intelligent and conscientious work in the ditch and among themen. And this in turn was made possible by the application of theknowledge I picked up and used as I had the chance. It was onlybecause I had shown my employers that I was more valuable as a foremanthan a common laborer that I was not still digging. I had been able todo this because having learned from twenty different men how to handlea crowbar for instance, I had from time to time been able to directthe men with whom I was working as at the start I myself had beendirected by Anton'. Anton' was still digging because that was all heknew. I had learned other things. I had learned how to handle Anton'. 

I had no idea that my efforts were being watched. I don't know now howI was picked out. Except of course that it must have been because ofthe work I did. 

At any rate I found myself at the head of twenty men--all Italians, all strangers and among them three or four just off the steamer. Myfirst job was on a foundation for an apartment house. Of course mypart in it was the very humble one of seeing that the men kept at workdigging. The work had all been staked out and the architect's agentwas there to give all incidental instructions. He was a young graduateof a technical school and I took the opportunity this offered--for hewas a good-natured boy--to use what little I had learned in my nightschool and study his blue prints. At odd times he explained them to meand aside from what I learned myself from them it helped me to directthe men more intelligently. 

But it was on the men themselves that I centred my efforts. As soon aspossible I learned them by name. At the noon hour I took my lunch withthem and talked with them in their own language. I made a note ofwhere they lived and found as I expected that many were from my ward. Incidentally I dropped a word here and there about the "Young AmericanPolitical Club, " and asked them to come around to some of themeetings. I found out where they came from and wherever I could, Iassociated them with some of their fellows with whom I had worked. Ifound out about their families. In brief I made myself know every manof them as intimately as was possible. 

I don't suppose for a minute that I could have done this successfullyif I hadn't really been genuinely interested in them. If I had gone atit like a professional hand shaker they would have detected thehypocrisy in no time. Neither did I attempt a chummy attitude nor afatherly attitude. I made it clearly understood that I was an Americanfirst of all and that I was their boss. It was perfectly easy to dothis and at the same time treat them like men and like units. I triedto make them feel that instead of being merely a bunch of Dagoes theywere Italian workingmen. Your foreign laborer is quick to appreciatesuch a distinction and quick to respond to it. With the American-bornyou have to draw a sharper line and hold a steadier rein. I figuredout that when you find a member of the second or third generationstill digging, you've found a man with something wrong about him. 

The next thing I did was to learn what each man could do best. Ofcourse I could make only broad classifications. Still there were menbetter at lifting than others; men better with the crowbar; men betterat shoveling; men naturally industrious who would leaven a group ofthree or four lazy ones. As well as I could I sorted them out in thisway. 

In addition to taking this personal interest in them individually, Ibased my relations with them collectively on a principle of strict, homely justice. I found there was no quality of such universal appealas this one of justice. Whether dealing with Italians, Russians, Portuguese, Poles, Irish or Irish-Americans you could always get belowtheir national peculiarities if you reached this common denominator. However browbeaten, however slavish, they had been in their formerlives this spark seemed always alive. However cocky or anarchisticthey might feel in their new freedom you could pull them up with asharp turn by an appeal to their sense of justice. And by justice Imean nothing but what ex-president Roosevelt has now made familiar bythe phrase "a square deal. " Justice in the abstract might not appealto them but they knew when they were being treated fairly and whenthey were not. Also they knew when they were treating you fairly andwhen they were not. I never allowed a man to feel bullied or abused; Inever gave a sharp order without an explanation. I never discharged aman without making him feel guilty in his heart no matter how much heprotested with his lips. And I never discharged him without making theother men clearly see his guilt. When a man went, he left nosympathizers behind him. 

On the other hand I made them act justly towards their employer andtowards me. I taught them that justice must be on both sides. I triedto make them understand that their part was not to see how little workthey could do for their money and that mine was not to see how muchthey could do, but that it was up to both of us to turn out a fullfair day's work. They were not a chain gang but workmen selling theirlabor. Just as they expected the store-keepers to sell them fairmeasure and full weight, so I expected them to sell a full day andhonest effort. 

It wasn't always possible to secure a result but when it wasn't I gotrid of that man on the first occasion. It was very much easier tohandle in this way the freedom-loving foreigners than I looked for;with the American-born it was harder than I expected. 

On the whole however I was mighty well pleased. I certainly got a lotof work out of them without in any way pushing them. They didn't sweatfor me and I didn't want them to--but they kept steadily at their workfrom morning until night. Then too, I didn't hesitate to do a littlework myself now and then. If at any point another man seemed to beneeded to help over a difficulty I jumped in. I not only often savedthe useless efforts of three or four men in this way but I convincedthem that I too had my employers' interests at heart. My object wasn'tsimply to earn my day's pay, it was to finish the job we were on inthe shortest possible time. It makes a big difference whether a manfeels he is working by the day or by the job. I tried to make themfeel that we were all working by the job. 

Without boasting I think I can say that we cut down the contractor'sestimate by at least a full day. I know they had to do some hustlingto get the pile-drivers to the spot on time. 

On the next job I had to begin all over again with a new gang. Itseemed a pity that all my work on the other should be wasted but Ididn't say anything. For two months I took each time the men I had anddid my best with them. I had my reward in finding myself placed at thehead of a constantly increasing force. I also found that I was beingsent on all the hurry-up work. I learned something every day. Finallywhen the time seemed ripe I went to the contractor's agent with theproposition towards which I had all along been working. This was thatI should be allowed to hire my own men. 

The agent was skeptical at first about the wisdom of entrusting suchpower as this to a subordinate but I put my case to him squarely. Isaid in brief that I was sure I could pick a gang of fifty men whowould do the work of seventy-five. I told him that for a year now Ihad been making notes on the best workers and I thought I could securethem. But I would have to do it myself. It would be only through mypersonal influence with them that they could be got. He raised severalobjections but I finally said:

"Let me try it anyhow. The men won't cost you any more than the othersand if I don't make good it's easy enough to go back to the old way. "

It's queer how stubbornly business men cling to routine. They getstuck in a system and hate to change. He finally gave me permission tosee the men. I was then to turn them over to the regular paymaster whowould engage them. This was all I wanted and with my note book Istarted out. 

It was no easy job for me and for a week I had to cut out my nightschool and give all my time to it. Many of the men had moved andothers had gone into other work but I kept at it night after nighttrotting from one end of the city to the other until I rounded upabout thirty of them. This seemed to me enough to form a core. I couldpick up others from time to time as I found them. The men rememberedme and when I told them something of my plan they all agreed with agrin to report for work as soon as they were free. And this was howCarleton's gang happened to be formed. 

It took me about three months to put all my fifty men into goodworking order and it wasn't for a year that I had my machine where Iwanted it. But it was a success from the start. At the end of a year Ilearned that even the contractor himself began to speak with somepride of Carleton's gang. And he used it. He used it hard. In fact hemade something of a special feature of it. It began to bring himemergency business. Wherever speed was a big essential, he secured thecontract through my gang. He used us altogether for foundation workand his business increased so rapidly that we were never idle. Ibecame proud of my men and my reputation. 

But of course this success--this proof that my idea was a goodone--only whetted my appetite for the big goal still ahead of me. Iwas eager for the day when this group of men should really beCarleton's gang. It was hard in a way to see the result of my ownthought and work turning out big profits for another when all I neededwas a little capital to make it my own. Still I knew I must bepatient. There were many things yet that I must learn before I shouldbe competent to undertake contracts for myself. In the meanwhile Icould satisfy my ambition by constantly strengthening and perfectingthe machine. 

Then, too, I found that the gang was bringing me into closer touchwith my superiors. One day I was called to the office of the firm andthere I met the two men who until now had been nothing to me but twonames. For a year I had stared at these names painted in black onwhite boards and posted about the grounds of every job upon which Ihad worked. I had never thought of them as human beings so much assome hidden force--like the unseen dynamo of a power plant. They wereboth Irish-Americans--strong, prosperous-looking men. Somehow theymade me distinctly conscious of my own ancestry. I don't mean that Iwas over-proud--in a way I don't suppose there was anything to boastof in the Carletons--but as I stood before these men in the positionof a minor employee I suppose that unconsciously I looked forsomething in my past to offset my present humiliating situation. Andfrom a business point of view, it was humiliating. The Carletons hadbeen in this country two hundred years and these men but twenty-fiveor thirty and yet I was the man who stood while they faced me in theireasy chairs before their roll-top desks. It was then that I was gladto remember there hadn't been a war in this country in which aCarleton had not played his part. I held myself a little better forthe thought. 

They were unaffected and business-like but when they spoke it wasplain "Carleton" and when I spoke it was "Mr. Corkery, " or "Mr. Galvin. " That was right and proper enough. 

They had called me in to consult with me on a big job which they weretrying to figure down to the very lowest point. They were willing toget out of it with the smallest possible margin of profit for theadvertisement it would give them and in view of future contracts withthe same firm which it might bring. The largest item in it was thehandling of the dirt. They showed me their blue prints and their roughestimate and then Mr. Corkery said:

"How much can you take off that, Carleton?"

I told him I would need two or three hours to figure it out. He calleda clerk. 

"Give Carleton a desk, " he said. 

Then he turned to me:

"Stay here until you've done it, " he said. 

It took me all the forenoon. I worked carefully because it seemed tome that here was a big chance to prove myself. I worked at thosefigures as though I had every dollar I ever hoped to have at stake. Ididn't trim it as close as I would have done for myself but as it wasI took off a fifth--the matter of five thousand dollars. When I cameback, Mr. Corkery looked over my figures. 

"Sure you can do that?" he asked. 

I could see he was surprised. 

"Yes, sir, " I said. 

"I'd hate like hell to get stuck, " he said. 

"You won't get stuck, " I answered. 

"It isn't the loss I mind, " he said, "but--well there is a firm or twothat is waiting to give me the laugh. "

"They won't laugh, " I said. 

He looked at me a moment and then called in a clerk. 

"Have those figures put in shape, " he said, "and send in this bid. "

Corkery secured the contract. I picked one hundred men. The morning webegan I held a sort of convention. 

"Men, " I said, "I've promised to do this in so many days. They say wecan't do it. If we don't, here's where they laugh at the gang. "

We did it. I never heard from Corkery about it but when we werethrough I thanked the gang and I found them more truly mine than theyhad ever been before. 

Every Saturday night I brought home my fifteen dollars, and Ruth tookout three for the rent, five for household expenses, and put seven inthe ginger jar. We had one hundred and thirty dollars in the bankbefore the raise came, and after this it increased rapidly. Therewasn't a week we didn't put aside seven dollars, and sometimes eight. The end of my first year as an emigrant found me with the followingitems to my credit: Ruth, the boy and myself in better health than wehad ever been; Ruth's big mother-love finding outlet in theneighborhood; the boy alert and ambitious; myself with the beginningof a good technical education, to say nothing of the rudiments of anew language, with a loyal gang of one hundred men and two hundreddollars in cash. 

This inventory does not take into account my new friends, my newmental and spiritual outlook upon life, or my enhanced self-respect. Such things cannot be calculated. 

That first year was, of course, the important year--the big year. Itproved what could be done, and nothing remained now but time in whichto do it. It established the evident fact that if a raw, uneducatedforeigner can come to this country and succeed, a native-born withexperience plus intelligence ought to do the same thing more rapidly. But it had taught me that what the native-born must do is to simplifyhis standard of living, take advantage of the same opportunities, toilwith the same spirit, and free himself from the burdensome bonds ofcaste. The advantage is all with the pioneer, the adventurer, theemigrant. These are the real children of the republic--here in theEast, at any rate. Every landing dock is Plymouth Rock to them. Theyare the real forefathers of the coming century, because they possessall the rugged strength of settlers. They are making their owncolonial history. 

CHAPTER XVI

DICK FINDS A WAY OUT, TOO

When school closed in June, Dick came to me and said:

"Dad, I don't want to loaf all summer. "

"No need of it, " I said. "Take another course in the summer school. "

"I want to earn some money, " he said, "I want to go to work. "

If the boy had come to me a year ago with that suggestion I shouldhave felt hurt. I would have thought it a reflection upon my abilityto support my family. We salaried men used to expect our children tobe dependent on us until they completed their educations. For a boy towork during his summer vacation was almost as bad form as for the wifeto work for money at any time. It had to be explained that the boy wasa prodigy with unusual business ability or that he was merely seekingexperience. But Dick did not fall into any of these classes. This waswhat made his proposal the more remarkable to me. It meant that hewas willing to take just a plain every-day plugging job. 

And underlying this willingness was the spirit that was resurrectingus all. Instead of acting on the defensive, Dick was now eager to playthe aggressive game. I hadn't looked for this spirit to show in him sosoon, in his life outside of school. I was mighty well pleased. 

"All right, " I said, "what do you think you can do?"

"I've talked with some of the fellows, " he said, "and the surest thingseems to be selling papers. "

I gave a gasp at that. I hadn't yet lost the feeling that a newsboywas a sort of cross between an orphan and a beggar. He was to mepurely an object of pity. Of course I'd formed this notion like a goodmany others from the story books and the daily paper. I connected anewsboy with blind fathers and sick mothers if he had any parents atall. 

"I guess you can get something better than that to do, " I said. 

"What's the matter with selling papers?" he asked. 

When I stopped to think of the work in that way--as just the buyingand selling of papers--I _couldn't_ see anything the matter with it. Why wasn't it like buying and selling anything? You were selling aproduct in which millions of money was invested, a product whicheveryone wanted, a product where you gave your customers their money'sworth. The only objection I could think of at the moment was thatthere was so little in it. 

"It will keep you on the streets five or six hours a day, " I said, "and I don't suppose you can make more than a dollar a week. "

"A dollar a week!" he said. "Do you know what one fellow in our classmakes right through the year?"

"How much?" I asked. 

"He makes between six and eight dollars a week, " said Dick. 

"That doesn't sound possible, " I said. 

"He told me he made that. And another fellow he knows about did aswell as this even while he was in college. He pretty nearly paid hisown way. "

"What do you make on a paper?" I asked. 

"About half a cent on the one cent papers, and a cent on the two centpapers. "

"Then these boys have to sell over two hundred papers a day. "

"They have about a hundred regular customers, " said Dick, "and theysell another hundred papers besides. "

It seemed to me the boys must have exaggerated because eight dollars aweek was pretty nearly the pay of an able-bodied man. It didn't seempossible that these youngsters whom I'd pitied all my life could earnsuch an income. However if they didn't earn half as much, it wasn't abad proposition for a lad. 

I talked the matter over with Ruth and I found she had the sameprejudices I had had. She, too, thought selling papers was a branch ofbegging. I repeated what Dick told me and she shook her headdoubtfully. 

"It doesn't seem as though I could let the boy do that, " she said. 

If there was one thing down here the little woman always worried aboutdeep in her heart, it was lest the boy and myself might get coarsened. She thought, I think, without ever exactly saying so to herself thatin our ambition to forge ahead we might lose some of the finerstandards of life. She was bucking against that tendency all thetime. That's why she made me shave every morning, that's why she mademe keep my shoes blacked, that's why she made us both dress up onSunday whether we went to church or not. She for her part kept herselflooking even more trig than when she had the fear that Mrs. Grovermight drop in at any time. And every night at dinner she presided withas much form as though she were entertaining a dinner party. I guessshe thought we might learn to eat with our knives if she didn't. 

"Well, " I said, "your word is final. But let's look at this first as astraight business proposition. "

So I went over the scheme just as I had to myself. 

"These boys aren't beggars, " I said. "They are little business men. And as a matter of fact most of them are earning as much as theirfathers. The trouble is that they've been given a black eye bywell-meaning sympathizers who haven't taken the trouble to find outjust what the actual facts are. A group of big-hearted women who seetheir own chickens safely rounded up at six every night, find thenewsboys on the street as they themselves are on their way to theopera and conclude it's a great hardship and that the lads must behomeless and suffering. Maybe they even find a case or two whichjustifies this theory. But on the whole they are simply comparing theoutside of these boys' lives with the lives of their own shelteredboys. They don't stop to consider that these lads are toughened andthat they'd probably be on the street anyway. And they don't figureout how much they earn or what that amount stands for down here. "

Ruth listened and then she said:

"But isn't it a pity that the boys _are_ toughened, Billy?"

"No, " I said, "it would be a pity if they weren't. They wouldn't lasta year. We have to have some seasoned fighters in the world. "

"But Dick--"

"Dick has found his feet now. The suggestion was his own. Personally Ibelieve in letting him try it. "

"All right, Billy, " she said. 

But she said it in such a sad sort of way that I said:

"If you're going to worry about him, this ends it. But I'd like to seethe boy so well seasoned that you won't have to worry about him nomatter where he is, no matter what he's doing. "

"You're right, " she said, "I want to see him like you. I never worryabout you, Billy. "

It pleased me to have her say that. I know a lot of men who wouldn'tbelieve their wives loved them unless they fretted about them all thetime. I think a good many fellows even make up things just to see thewomen worry. I remember that Stevens always used to come home eitherwith a sick headache or a tale of how he thought he might lose his jobor something of the sort and poor Dolly Stevens would stay awake halfthe night comforting him. She'd tell Ruth about it the next day. I mayhave had a touch of that disease myself before I came down here but Iknow that ever since then I've tried to lift the worrying load off thewife's shoulders. I've done my best to make Ruth feel I'm strongenough to take care of myself. I've wanted her to trust me so thatshe'd know I act always just as though she was by my side. Of courseI've never been able to do away altogether with her fear of sicknessand sudden death, but so far as my own conduct is concerned I'vetried to make her feel secure in me. 

When I stop to think about it, Ruth has really lived three lives. Shehas lived her own and she has lived it hard. She not only has done herdaily tasks as well as she knew how but she has tried to make herselfa little better every day. That has been a waste of time because shewas just naturally as good as they make them but you couldn't evermake her see that. I don't suppose there's been a day when at nightshe hasn't thought she might have done something a little better andlain awake to tell me so. 

Then Ruth has lived my life and done over again every single thingI've done except the actual physical labor. Why every evening when Icame back from work she wanted me to begin with seven-thirty A. M. Andtell her everything that happened after that. And when I came backfrom school at night, she'd wake up out of a sound sleep if she hadgone to bed and ask me to tell her just what I'd learned. Though shenever held a trowel in her hand I'll bet she could go out to-day andbuild a true brick wall. And though she has never seen half the menI've met, she knows them as well as I do myself. Some of them sheknows better and has proved to me time and again that she does. I'veoften told her about some man I'd just met and about whom I wasenthusiastic for the moment and she'd say:

"Tell me what he looks like, Billy. "

I'd tell her and then she'd ask about his eyes and about his mouth andwhat kind of a voice he had and whether he smiled when he said so andso and whether he looked me in the eyes at that point and so on. Thenshe'd say:

"Better be a little careful about him"; or "I guess you can trust him, Billy. "

Sometimes she made mistakes but that was because I hadn't reportedthings to her just right. Generally I'd trust her judgment in the faceof my own. 

Then Ruth led the boy's life. Every ambition he had was her ambition. Besides that she had a dozen ambitions for him that he didn't knowanything about. And she thought and worked and schemed to make everysingle one of them come true. Every trouble he had was her troubletoo. If he worried a half hour over something, she worried an hour. Then again there were a whole lot of other troubles in connectionwith him which bothered her and which he didn't know about. 

Besides all these things she was busy about dressing us and feeding usand making us comfortable. She was always cleaning our rooms andwashing our clothes and mending our socks. Then, too, she looked afterthe finances and this in itself was enough for one woman to do. Thenas though this wasn't plenty she kept light-hearted for our sakes. You'd find her singing about her work whenever you came in and alwaysready with a smile and a joke. And if she herself had a headache youhad to be a doctor and a lawyer rolled in one to find it out. 

So I say the least I could do was to make her trust me so thoroughlythat she'd have one less burden. And I wanted to bring up Dick in thesame way. Dick was a good boy and I'll say that he did his best. 

Ruth says that if I don't tear up these last few pages, people willthink I'm silly. I'm willing so long as they believe me honest. Ofcourse, in a way, such details are no one's business but if I couldn'tgive Ruth the credit which is her due in this undertaking, I wouldn'ttake the trouble to write it all out. 

Dick told his school friend what he wanted to do and asked his adviceon the best way to go at it. The latter went with him and helped himget his license, took him down to the newspaper offices and showed himwhere to buy his papers, and introduced him to the other boys. Thenewsboys hadn't at that time formed a union but there was an agreementamong them about the territory each should cover. Some of the boys hadworked up a regular trade in certain places and of course it wasn'tright for a newcomer to infringe upon this. There was considerabletalking and some bargaining and finally Dick was given a stand in thebanking district. This was due to Dick's classmate also. The latterrealized that a boy of Dick's appearance would do better there thananywhere. 

So one morning Dick rose early and I staked him to a dollar and hestarted off in high spirits. He didn't have any of the false prideabout the work that at first I myself had felt. He was on my mindpretty much all that day and I came home curious and a little bitanxious to learn the result. He had been back after the morningeditions. Ruth reported he had sold fifty papers and had returnedmore eager than ever. She said he wouldn't probably be home untilafter seven. He wanted to catch the crowds on their way to thestation. 

I suggested to Ruth that we wait dinner for him and go on up town andwatch him. She hesitated at this, fearing the boy wouldn't like it andperhaps not over anxious herself to see him on such a job. But as Isaid, if the boy wasn't ashamed I didn't think we ought to be. So sheput on her things and we started. 

We found him by the entrance to one of the big buildings with hispapers in a strap thrown over his shoulder. He had one paper in hishand and was offering it, perhaps a bit shyly, to each passer-by witha quiet, "Paper, sir?" We watched him a moment and Ruth kept a tightgrip on my arm. 

"Well, " I said, "what do you think of him?"

"Billy, " she said with a little tremble in her voice, "I'm proud ofhim. "

"He'll do, " I said. 

Then I said:

"Wait here a moment. "

I took a nickel from my pocket and hurried towards him as though Iwere one of the crowd hustling for the train. I stopped in front ofhim and he handed me a paper without looking up. He began to makechange and it wasn't until he handed me back my three coppers that hesaw who I was. Then he grinned. 

"Hello, Dad, " he said. 

Then he asked quickly, "Where's mother?"

But Ruth couldn't wait any longer and she came hurrying up and placedher hand underneath the papers to see if they were too heavy for him. 

Dick earned three dollars that first week and he never fell below thisduring the summer. Sometimes he went as high as five and when it cametime for him to go to school again he had about seventy-five regularcustomers. He had been kept out of doors between six and seven hours aday. The contact with a new type of boy and even the contact with thebrisk business men who were his customers had sharpened up his witsall round. In the ten weeks he saved over forty dollars. I wanted himto put this in the bank but he insisted on buying his own winterclothes with it and on the whole I thought he'd feel better if I lethim. Then he had another proposition. He wanted to keep his eveningcustomers through the year. I thought it was going to be pretty hardfor him to do this with his school work but we finally agreed to lethim try it for a while anyway. After all I didn't like to think hecouldn't do what other boys were doing. 

CHAPTER XVII

THE SECOND YEAR

Now as far as proving to us the truth of my theory that an intelligentable-bodied American ought to succeed where millions of ignorant, half-starved emigrants do right along, this first year had alreadydone it. It had also proved, to our own satisfaction at least, thatsuch success does not mean a return to a lower standard of living butonly a return to a simpler standard of living. With soap at five centsa cake it isn't poverty that breeds filth, but ignorance and laziness. When an able-bodied man can earn at the very bottom of the ladder adollar and a half a day and a boy can earn from three to five dollarsa week and still go to school, it isn't a lack of money that makes thebread line; it's a lack of horse sense. We found that we couldmaintain a higher standard of living down here than we were able tomaintain in our old life; we could live more sanely, breathe in higherideals, and find time to accept more opportunities. The sheer, nakedconditions were better for a higher life here than they were in thesuburbs. 

I'm speaking always of the able-bodied man. A sick man is a sick manwhether he's worth a million or hasn't a cent. He's to be pitied. Withthe public hospitals what they are to-day, you can't say that the sickmillionaire has any great advantage over the sick pauper. Money makesa bigger difference of course to the sick man's family but at thatyou'll find for every widow O'Toole, a widow Bonnington and for everywidow Bonnington you'll find the heart-broken widow of somemillionaire who doesn't consider her dollars any great consolation insuch a crisis. 

Then, too, a man in hard luck is a man in hard luck whether he has abank account or whether he hasn't. I pity them both. If a rich man'smoney prevents the necessity of his airing his grief in public, itdoesn't help him much when he's alone in his castle. It seems to methat each class has its own peculiar misfortunes and that money breedsabout as much trouble as it kills. To my mind once a man earns enoughto buy himself a little food, put any sort of a roof over his head, and keep himself warm, he has everything for which money is absolutelyessential. This much he can always get at the bottom. And this much isall the ammunition a man needs for as good a fight as it's in him toput up. It gives him a chance for an extra million over his ninedollars a week if he wants it. But the point I learned down here isthat the million _is_ extra--it isn't essential. Its possessiondoesn't make a Paradise free from sickness and worry and hard luck, and the lack of it doesn't make a Hell's Kitchen where there isnothing but sickness and trouble and where happiness cannot enter. 

As I say, I consider this first year the big year because it taught methese things. In a sense the value of my diary ends here. Once I wasable to understand that I had everything and more that the earlypioneers had and that all I needed to do to-day was to live as theydid and fight as they did, I had all the inspiration a man needs inorder to live and in order to _feel_ that he's living. In looking backon the suburban life at the end of this first twelve months, it seemedto me that the thing which made it so ghastly was just this lack ofinspiration that comes with the blessed privilege of fighting. Thatother was a waiting game and no help for it. I was a shadow living inthe land of shadows with nothing to hit out at, nothing to feel thesting of my fist against. The fight was going on above me and below meand we in the middle only heard the din of it. It was as though we hadclimbed half way up a rope leading from a pit to the surface. We hadclimbed as far as we could and unless they hauled from above we had tostay there. If we let go--poor devils, we thought there was nothingbut brimstone below us. So we couldn't do much but hold on andkick--at nothing. 

But down here if a man had any kick in him, he had something to kickagainst. When he struck out with his feet they met something; when heshot a blow from the shoulder he felt an impact. If he didn't like onetrade he could learn another. It took no capital. If he didn't likehis house, he could move; he wasn't tearing up anything by the roots. If he didn't like his foreman, he could work under another. It didn'tmean the sacrifice of any past. If he found a chance to black boots orsell papers, he could use it. His neighbors wouldn't exile him. Hewas as free as the winds and what he didn't like he could change. Idon't suppose there is any human being on earth so independent as anable-bodied working-man. 

The record of the next three years only traces a slow, steadystrengthening of my position. Not one of us had any set-back throughsickness because I considered our health as so much capital andguarded it as carefully as a banker does his money. I was afraid atfirst of the city water but I found it was as pure as spring water. Itwas protected from its very source and was stored in a carefullyguarded reservoir. It was frequently analyzed and there wasn't a caseof typhoid in the ward which could be traced to the water. The milkwas the great danger down here. At the small shops it was oftencarelessly stored and carelessly handled. From the beginning, I boughtour milk up town though I had to pay a cent a quart more for it. Ruthpicked out all the fish and meat and of course nothing tainted in thisline could be sold to her. We ate few canned goods and then nothingbut canned vegetables. Many of our neighbors used canned meats. Idon't know whether any sickness resulted from this or not but I knowthat they often left the stuff for hours in an opened tin. Many of thetenements swarmed with flies in the summer although it was a smallmatter to keep them out of four rooms. So if the canned stuff _didn't_get infected it was a wonder. 

The sanitary arrangements in the flat were good, though here againmany families proceeded to make them bad about as fast as they could. These people didn't seem to mind dirt in any form. It was a perfectlysimple and inexpensive matter to keep themselves and theirsurroundings clean if they cared to take the trouble. 

Then the roof contributed largely towards our good health. Ruth spenta great deal of time up there during the day and the boy slept thereduring the summer. 

Our simple food and exercise also helped, while for me nothing couldhave been better than my daily plunge in the salt water. I kept thisup as long as the bath house was open and in the winter took a coldsponge and rub-down every night. So, too, did the boy. 

For the rest, we all took sensible precautions against exposure. Wedressed warmly and kept our feet dry. Here again our neighbors wereinsanely foolish. They never changed their clothes until bed time, didn't keep them clean or fresh at any time, and they lived in atemperature of eighty-five with the air foul from many breaths andtobacco smoke. Even the children had to breathe this. Then both menand women went out from this into the cold air either over-dressed orunder-dressed. The result of such foolishness very naturally wastuberculosis, pneumonia, typhoid and about everything else thatcontributes to a high death rate. Not only this but one personsuffering from any of these things infected a whole family. 

Such conditions were not due to a lack of money but to a lack ofeducation. The new generation was making some changes however. Often agirl or boy in the public schools would come home and transform thethree or four rooms though always under protest from the elders. Cleansurroundings and fresh air troubled the old folks. 

Ruth, too, was responsible for many changes for the better in thelives of these people. Her very presence in a room was an inspirationfor cleanliness. Her clothes were no better than theirs but she stoodout among them like a vestal virgin. She came into their quarters andmade the women ashamed that the rooms were not better fitted toreceive so pure a being. You would scarcely have recognized Michele'srooms at the end of the first year. The windows were cleaned, thefloors scrubbed, and even the bed linen was washed occasionally. Thebaby gained in weight and Michele when he wanted to smoke either satoutside on the door step or by an open window. But Michele was anexception. 

Ruth's efforts were not confined to our own building either. Herinfluence spread down the street and through the whole district. Thedistrict nurse was a frequent visitor and kept her informed of all hercases. Wherever Ruth could do anything she did it. Her first objectwas always to awaken the women to the value of cleanliness and afterthat she tried her best to teach them little ways of preparing theirfood more economically. Few of them knew the value of oatmeal forinstance though of course their macaroni and spaghetti was a prettygood substitute. In fact Ruth picked up many new dishes of this sortfor herself from among them. 

Some families spent as much for beer as for milk. Ruth couldn't changethat practice but she did make them more careful where they boughttheir milk--especially when there was a baby in the house. Then, too, she shared all her secrets of where and how to buy cheaply. Sometimesadvantage was taken of these hints, but more often not. They didn'tpay much more for many articles than she did but they didn't get asgood quality. However as long as the food tasted good and satisfiedtheir hunger you couldn't make them take an extra effort and get stuffbecause it was more nutritious or more healthful. They couldn't thinkahead except in the matter of saving dollars and cents. 

These people of course were of the lower class. There was anotherelement of decidedly finer quality. Giuseppe for example was one ofthese and there were hundreds of others. It was among these thatRuth's influence counted for the most. They not only took advantage ofher superior intelligence in conducting their households but theybreathed in something of the soul of her. When I saw them send for herin their grief and in their joy, when I heard them ask her advicewith almost the confidence with which they prayed, when I heard themgive her such names as "the angel mother, " "the blessed Americansaint, " I felt very proud and very humble. Such things made me glad inanother way for the change which had taken her out of the old lifewhere such qualities were lost and brought her down here where theycounted for so much. These people stripped of convention live withtheir hearts very near the surface. They don't try to conceal theiremotions and so you are brought very quickly into close touch withthem. Ruth herself was a good deal like that and so her influence fora day among them counted for as much as a year with the old crowd. 

In the meanwhile I resumed my night school at the end of the summervacation and was glad to get back to it. I had missed the work andwent at it this next winter with increased eagerness to perfect myselfin my trade. 

During this second year, too, I never relaxed my efforts to keep mygang up to standard and whenever possible to better it by the additionof new men. Every month I thought I increased the respect of the menfor me by my fair dealing with them. I don't mean to say I fullyrealized the expectations of which I had dreamed. I suppose that atfirst I dreamed a bit wildly. There was very little sentiment in therelation of the men to me, although there was some. Still I don't wantto give the impression that I made of them a gang of blind personalfollowers such as some religious cranks get together. It was necessaryto make them see that it was for their interest to work for me andwith me and that I did do. I made them see also that in order to workfor me they had to work a little more faithfully than they worked forothers. So it was a straight business proposition. What sentimentthere was came through the personal interest I took in them outside oftheir work. It was this which made them loyal instead of merely hardworking. It was this which made them my gang instead of Corkery'sgang--a thing that counted for a good deal later on. 

The personal reputation I had won gave me new opportunities of which Itook every advantage this second year. It put me in touch with theresponsible heads of departments. Through them I was able to acquire amuch broader and more accurate knowledge of the business as a whole. Iasked as many questions here as I had below. I received moreintelligent answers and was able to understand them moreintelligently. I not only learned prices but where to getauthoritative prices. As far as possible I made myself acquainted withthe men working for the building constructors and for those workingfor firms whose specialty was the tearing down of buildings. I used mynote-book as usual and entered the names of every man who, in hisline, seemed to me especially valuable. 

And everywhere, I found that my experiment with the gang was wellknown. I found also that my tendency for asking questions was evenbetter known. It passed as a joke in a good many cases. But betterthan this I found that I had established a reputation for sobriety, industry and level-headedness. I can't help smiling how little thosethings counted for me with the United Woollen or when I sought workafter leaving that company. Here they counted for a lot. I realizedthat when it came time for me to seek credit. 

In the meanwhile I didn't neglect the fight for clean politics in myward. 

I resigned from the presidency of the young men's club at the end of ayear and we elected a young lawyer who was taking a great interest inthe work down here to fill the vacancy. That was a fine selection. Theman was fresh from the law school and was full of ideals which datedback to the _Mayflower_. He hadn't been long enough in the world tohave them dimmed and was full of energy. He took hold of the originalidea and developed it until the organization included every ward inthis section of the city. He held rallies every month and brought downbig speakers and kept the sentiment of the youngsters red hot. Thishad its effect upon the older men and before we knew it we had amachine that looked like a real power in the whole city. Sweeney sawit and so did the bigger bosses of both parties. But the presidentkept clear of alliances with any of them. He stood pat with whatpromised to be a balance of power, ready to swing it to the cleanestman of either party who came up for office. 

I made several speeches myself though it was hard work for me. I don'trun to that sort of thing. I did it however just because I didn't likeit and because I felt it was the duty of a citizen to do something nowand then he doesn't like for his city and his country. The old excusewith me had been that politics was a dirty business at best and thatit ought to be left to the lawyers and such who had something to gainfrom it. The only men I ever knew who went into it at all were thosewho had a talent for it and who liked it. Of course that's dead wrong. A man who won't take the trouble to find out about the men up foroffice and who won't bother himself to get out and hustle for the bestof them isn't a good citizen or a good American. He deserves to begoverned by the newcomers and deserves all they hand out to him. Andthe time to do the work isn't when a man is up for president of theUnited States, it's when the man is up for the common council. Thehigher up a politician gets, the less the influence of the singlevoter counts. 

It was in the spring that some of my ideals received a set back. Thealderman from our ward died suddenly and Rafferty was naturally hotafter the vacancy. He came to see me about it, but before he broachedthis subject he laid another before me that took away my breath. Itwas nothing else than that I should go into partnership with him underthe firm name of "Carleton and Rafferty. " I couldn't believe itpossible that he was in a position to take such a step within a coupleof years of digging in the ditch. But when he explained the scheme tome, it was as simple as rolling off a log. A firm of liquor dealershad agreed to back him--form a stock company and give him a thirdinterest to manage it. He had spoken to them of me and said he'd do itif they would make it a half interest and give us each a quarter. 

"But good Lord, Dan, " I said, "we'd have to swing a lot of business tomake it go. "

"Never you worry about thot, mon, " he said. "I'll fix thot all rightif I'm elicted to the boord. "

"You mean city contracts?" I said. 

"Sure. "

I began to see. The liquor house was looking for more licenses andwould get their pay out of Dan even if the firm didn't make a cent. But Dan with such capital back of him as well as his aldermanic powerwas sure to get the contracts. He would leave the actual work to meand my men. 

I sat down and for two hours tried to make Dan realize how this crowdwanted to use him. I couldn't. In addition to being blinded by hisoverwhelming ambition, he actually couldn't see anything crooked inwhat they wanted. He couldn't understand why he should let such anopportunity drop for someone else to pick up. He had slipped out of myhands completely. This was where the difference between five or sixyears in America as against two hundred showed itself. And yet whatwas the old stock doing to offset such personal ambition and energy asRafferty stood for?

"No, Dan, " I said, "I can't do it. And what's more I won't let you doit if I can help it. "

"Phot do yez mane?" he asked. 

"That I'm going to fight you tooth and nail, " I said. 

He turned red. Then he grinned. 

"Well, " he said, "it'll be a foine fight anyhow. "

I went to the president of the club and told him that here was wherewe had to stop Rafferty. He listened and then he said, "Well, here's where we do stop him. "

We went at the job in whirlwind fashion. I spoke a half dozen timesbut to save my life I couldn't say what I wanted to say. Every time Istood up I seemed to see Dan's big round face and I remembered thekindly things he used to do for the old ladies. And I knew that Dan'soffer to take me into partnership wasn't prompted altogether byselfish motives. He could have found other men who would have servedhis purpose better. 

In the meanwhile Dan had organized "Social Clubs" in half a dozensections. For the first few weeks of the campaign I never heard of himexcept as leading grand marches. But the last week he waded in. There's no use going into details. He beat us. He rolled up atremendous majority. The president of the club couldn't understand it. He was discouraged. 

"I had every boy in the ward out working, " he said. 

"Yes, " I said, "but Dan had every grandmother and every daughter andevery granddaughter out working. "

Dan came around to the flat one night after the election. He was ashappy as a boy over his victory. 

"Carleton, " he said, again, "it's too domd bad ye ain't an Irishmon. "

After he had gone, Ruth said to me:

"I don't think Mr. Rafferty will make a bad alderman at all. "

CHAPTER XVIII

MATURING PLANS

I received several offers from other firms and as a result of these mywages were advanced first to three dollars a day and then to three anda half. Still Ruth refused to take things easier by increasing thehousehold expenses. During the third year we lived exactly as we hadlived during the first year. In a way it was easier to do this nowthat we knew there was no actual necessity for it. Of course it waseasier, too, now that we had fallen into a familiar routine. Thethings which had seemed to us like necessities when we came down herenow seemed like luxuries. And we none of us had either the craving forluxuries or the time to enjoy them had we wished to spend the money onthem. In the matter of clothes we cared for nothing except to bewarmly and cleanly dressed. Strip the problem of clothes down to thisand it's not a very serious one. To realize that you've only toremember how the average farmer dresses or how the homesteaderdresses. It's only when you introduce style and the conventions thatthe matter becomes complicated. Perhaps it was easier for me to dressas I pleased than for the boy or Ruth but even they got right down tobed rock. The boy wore grey flannel shirts and so at a stroke did awaywith collars and cuffs. For the rest a simple blue suit, a cap, stockings and shoes were all he needed outside his under clothes whichRuth made for him. Ruth herself dressed in plain gowns that she coulddo up herself. For the street, she still had the costumes she camedown here with. None of us kept any extra clothes for parade. 

We carried out the same idea in our food, as I've tried to show; weinsisted that it must be wholesome and that there must be enough ofit. Those were the only two things that counted. Variety except of thehumblest kind, we didn't strive for. I've seen cook books whichcontain five hundred pages; if Ruth compiled one it wouldn't havetwenty. Here again the farmer and the pioneer were our models. Ifanyone in the country had lived the way we were living, it wouldn'thave seemed worth telling about. I find the fact which amazes peoplein our experiment was that we should have tried the same standard inthe city. Everyone seems to think this was a most dangerous thing toattempt. The men who on a camping trip consider themselves well fed onsuch food as we had to eat expect to starve to death if placed on thesame diet once within sound of the trolley cars. And on the campingtrip they do ten times the physical labor and do it month after monthin air that whets the appetite. Then they come back and boast howstrong they've grown, and begin to eat like hogs again and wonder whythey get sick. 

We camped out in the city--that's all we did. And we did just whatevery man in camp does; we stripped down to essentials. We could havelived on pork scraps and potatoes if that had been necessary. We couldhave worried along on hard tack and jerked beef if we'd been pressedhard enough. Men chase moose, and climb mountains and prospect forgold on such food. Why in Heaven's name can't they shovel dirt on thesame diet?

So, too, about amusements. When a man is trying to clear thirty acresof pine stumps, he doesn't fret at the end of the day because hecan't go to the theatre. He doesn't want to go. Bed and his dreams areamusement enough for him. And he isn't called a low-browed savagebecause he's satisfied with this. He's called a hero. The world atlarge doesn't say that he has lowered the standard of living; itboasts about him for a true American. Why can't a man lay brickswithout the theatre?

As a matter of fact however we could have had even the amusements ifwe'd wanted them. For those who needed such things in order topreserve a high standard of living they were here. And I don't saythey didn't serve a useful purpose. What I do say is that they aren'tabsolutely necessary; that a high standard of living isn't altogetherdependent on sirloin steaks, starched collars and music halls as I'veheard a good many people claim. 

This third year finished my course in masonry. I came out in June witha trade at which I could earn from three dollars to five dollars a dayaccording to my skill. It was a trade, too, where there was prettygenerally steady employment. A good mason is more in demand than agood lawyer. Not only that but a good mason can find work in any cityin this country. Wherever he lands, he's sure of a comfortable living. I was told that out west some men were making as high as ten dollars aday. 

I had also qualified in a more modest way as a mechanical draftsman. Icould draw my own plans for work and what was more useful still, do mywork from the plans of others. 

By now I had also become a fairly proficient Italian scholar. I couldspeak the language fluently and read it fairly well. It wasn't thefault of Giuseppe if my pronunciation was sometimes queer and if veryoften I used the jargon of the provinces. My object was served as longas I could make myself understood to the men. And I could do thatperfectly. 

This year I watched Rafferty's progress with something like envy. Thefirm was "D. Rafferty and Co. " Within two months I began to see thename on his dump carts whenever I went to work. Within six months hesecured a big contract for repaving a long stretch of street in ourward. I knew our firm had put in a bid on it and knew they must havebeen in a position to put in a mighty low bid. I didn't wonder so muchabout how Dan got this away from us as I did how he got it away fromSweeney. That was explained to me later when I found that Sweeney wasin reality back of the liquor dealers. Sweeney owned about half theirstores and had taken this method to bring Dan back to the fold, oncehe found he couldn't check his progress. 

During this year Dan bought a new house and married. We went to thewedding and it was a grand affair with half the ward there. Mrs. Rafferty was a nice looking girl, daughter of a well-to-do Irishman inthe real estate business. She had received a good education in aconvent and was altogether a girl Dan could be proud of. The house wasan old-fashioned structure built by one of the old families who hadbeen forced to move by the foreign invasion. Mrs. Rafferty hadfurnished it somewhat lavishly but comfortably. 

As Ruth and I came back that night I said:

"I suppose if it had been 'Carleton and Rafferty' I might have had ahouse myself by now. "

"I guess it's better as it is, Billy, " she said, with a smile. 

Of course it was better but I began to feel discontented with mypresent position. I felt uncomfortable at still being merely aforeman. When we reached the house Ruth and I took the bank book andfigured out just what our capital in money was. Including the boy'ssavings which we could use in an emergency it amounted to fourteenhundred dollars. During the first year we saved one hundred and twentydollars, which added to the eighty we came down here with, made twohundred dollars. During the second year we saved three hundred andninety dollars. During the third year we saved six hundred dollars. This made a total of eleven hundred and ninety dollars in the bank. The boy had saved more than two hundred dollars over his clothes inthe last two years. 

It was Rafferty who helped me turn this over in a real estate deal inwhich he was interested. I made six hundred dollars by that. Everything Rafferty touched now seemed to turn to money. One reasonwas that he was thrown in contact with money-makers all of whom wereanxious to help him. He received any number of tips from those eagerto win his favor. Among the tips were many that were legitimate enoughlike the one he shared with me but there were also many that were notquite so above-board. But to Dan all was fair in business andpolitics. Yet I don't know a man I'd sooner trust upon his honor in apurely personal matter. He wouldn't graft from his friends howevermuch he might from the city. In fact his whole code as far as I couldsee was based upon this unswerving loyalty to his friends andscrupulous honesty in dealing with them. It was only when honestybecame abstract that he couldn't see it. You could put a thousanddollars in gold in his keeping without security and come back twentyyears later and find it safe. But he'd scheme a week to frame up adeal to cheat the city out of a hundred dollars. And he'd do it withhis head in the air and a grin on his face. I've seen the same thingdone by educated men who knew better. I wouldn't trust the latter witha ten cent piece without first consulting a lawyer. 

The money I had saved didn't represent all my capital. I had as mychief asset the gang of men I had drilled. Everything else being equalthey stood ready to work for me in preference to any other man in thecity. In fact their value as a machine depended on me. If I had beendischarged and another man put in my place the gang would haveresolved itself again into merely one hundred day laborers. Nor wasthis my only other asset. I had established myself as a reliable manin the eyes of a large group of business men. This meant credit. Normust I leave out Dan and his influence. He stood ready to back me notonly financially but personally. And he knew me well enough to knowthis would not involve anything but a business obligation on my part. 

With these things in mind then I felt ready to take a radicaldeparture from the routine of my life when the opportunity came. But Imade up my mind I would wait for the opportunity. I must have a chancewhich would not involve too much capital and in which my chief assetwould be the gang. Furthermore it must be a chance that I could usewithout resorting to pull. Not only that but it must be something onwhich I could prove myself to such good advantage that other businesswould be sure to follow. I couldn't cut loose with my men and leavethem stranded at the end of a single job. 

I watched every public proposal and analyzed them all. I found thatthey very quickly resolved themselves into Dan's crowd. I kept myears wide open for private contracts but by the time I heard of any Iwas too late. So I waited for perhaps three months. Then I saw in thedaily paper what seemed to me my opportunity. It was an open bid forsome park construction which was under the guardianship of acommission. It was a grading job and so would require nothing but thesimplest equipment. I looked over the ground and figured out thegang's part in it first. Then I went to Rafferty and told him what Iwanted in the way of teams. I wanted only the carts and horses--Iwould put my own men to work with them. I asked him to take my notefor the cost. 

"I'll take your word, Carleton, " he said. "Thot's enough. "

But I insisted on the note. He finally agreed and offered to securefor me anything I wanted for the work. 

I went back to Ruth and we sat down and figured the matter all overonce again. We stripped it down to a figure so low that my chiefprofit would come on the time I could save with my machine. I allowedfor the scantiest profit on dirt and rock though I had secured a goodoption on what I needed of this. I was lucky in finding a short haulthough I had had my eye on this for some time. Of one thing I wasextremely careful--to make my estimate large enough so that I couldn'tpossibly lose anything but my profit. Even if I wasn't able to carryout my hope of being able to speed up the gang I should be able to paymy bills and come out of the venture even. 

Ruth and I worked for a week on it and when I saw the grand total ittook away my breath. I wasn't used to dealing in big figures. Theyfrightened me. I've learned since then that it's a good deal easier insome ways to deal in thousands than it is in ones. You have widermargins, for one thing. But I must confess that now I was scared. Iwas ready to back out. When I turned to Ruth for the final decision, she looked into my eyes a second just as she did when I asked her tomarry me and said, "Go after it, Billy. You can do it. "

That night I sent in my estimate endorsed by Dan and a friend of hisand for a month I waited. I didn't sleep as well as usual but Ruthdidn't seem to be bothered. Then one night when I came home I foundRuth at the outside door waiting for me. I knew the thing had beendecided. She came up to me and put her hand on my shoulder and pattedme. 

"It's yours, Billy, " she said. 

My heart stopped beating for a moment and then it went on againbeating a dozen ticks to the second. 

The next day I closed up my options. I went to Corkery, gave my noticeand told him what I was going to do. He was madder than a hornet. Ilistened to what he had to say and went off without a word in reply. He was so unreasonable that it didn't seem worth it. That noon Irounded up the men and told them frankly that I was going to start inbusiness for myself and needed a hundred men. I told them also thatthis first job might last only four or five weeks and that while I hadnothing definite in mind after that I was in hopes to secure in themeanwhile other contracts. I said this would be largely up to them. Itold them that I didn't want a man to come who wasn't willing to takethe chance. Of course it was something of a chance because Corkery hadbeen giving them steady employment. Still it wasn't a very big chancebecause there was always work for such men. 

I watched anxiously to see how they would take it. I felt that thetruth of my theories were having their hardest test. When they let outa cheer and started towards me in a mass I saw blurry. 

I'll never forget the feeling I had when I started out in the morningthat first day as an independent contractor; I'll never forget myfeeling as I reached the work an hour ahead of my men and waited forthem to come straggling up. I seemed closer than ever to my ancestors. I felt as my great-great-grandfather must have felt when he cut loosefrom the Massachusetts colony and went off down into the unknownConnecticut. I was full enough of confidence but I knew that a monthmight drive me back again. Deeper than this trivial fear however therewas something bigger--something finer. I was a free man in a largerway than I had ever been before. It made me feel an American to thevery core of my marrow. 

The work was all staked out but before the men began I called them alltogether. I didn't make a speech; I just said:

"Men--I've estimated that this can be done by an ordinary bunch of menin forty days; I've banked that you can do it in thirty. If yousucceed, it gives me profit enough to take another contract. Do thebest you can. "

There wasn't a mother's son among them who didn't appreciate myposition. There were a good many who knew Ruth and knew her throughwhat she had done for their families, and these understood it evenbetter. The dirt began to fly and it was a pretty sight to watch. Inever spoke again to the men. I simply directed their efforts. I spentabout half the time with a shovel in my hands myself. There wasscarcely a day when Ruth didn't come out to watch the work with ananxious eye but after the first week there was little need foranxiety. I think she would have liked to take a shovel herself. OneSaturday Dick came out and actually insisted upon being allowed to dothis. The men knew him and liked to see such spirit. 

Well, we clipped ten days from my estimate, which left me with all mybills paid and with a handsome profit. Better still I had secured onthe strength of Carleton's gang another contract. 

The night I deposited my profit in the bank, Ruth quite unconsciouslytook her pad and pencil and sat down by my side as usual to figure upthe household expenses for the week. We had been a bit extravagantthat week because she had been away from the house a good deal. Thetotal came to four dollars and sixty-seven cents. When Ruth hadfinished I took the pad and pencil away from her and put it in mypocket. 

"There's no use bothering your head any more over these details, " Isaid. 

She looked at me almost sadly. 

"No, Billy, " she said, with a sigh, "there isn't, is there?"

CHAPTER XIX

ONCE AGAIN A NEW ENGLANDER

During all those years we had never seen or heard of any of our oldneighbors. They had hardly ever entered our thoughts except as veryoccasionally the boy ran across one of his former playmates. Shortlyafter this, however, business took me out into the old neighborhoodand I was curious enough to make a few inquiries. There was no change. My trim little house stood just as it then stood and around it werethe other trim little houses. There were a few new houses and a fewnew-comers, but all the old-timers were still there. I met Grover, whowas just recovering from a long sickness. He didn't recognize me atfirst. I was tanned and had filled out a good deal. 

"Why, yes, " he said, after I had told my name. "Let me see, you wentoff to Australia or somewhere, didn't you, Carleton?"

"I emigrated, " I answered. 

He looked up eagerly. 

"I remember now. It seems to have agreed with you. "

"You're still with the leather firm?" I inquired. 

He almost started at this unexpected question. 

"Yes, " he answered. 

His eyes turned back to his trim little house, then to me as though hefeared I was bringing him bad news. 

"But I've been laid up for six weeks, " he faltered. 

I knew what was troubling him. He was wondering whether he would findhis job when he got back. Poor devil! If he didn't what would becomeof his trim little house? Grover was older by five years than I hadbeen when the axe fell. 

I talked with him a few minutes. There had been a death or two in theneighborhood and the children had grown up. That was the only change. The sight of Grover made me uncomfortable, so I hurried about mybusiness, eager to get home again. 

God pity the poor? Bah! The poor are all right if by poor you mean thetenement dwellers. When you pray again pray God to pity themiddle-class American on a salary. Pray that he may not lose his job;pray that if he does it shall be when he is very young; pray that hemay find the route to America. The tenement dwellers are safe enough. Pray--and pray hard--for the dwellers in the trim little houses of thesuburbs. 

I've had my ups and downs, my profits and losses since I enteredbusiness for myself but I've come out at the end of each year wellahead of the game. I never made again as much in so short a time as Imade on that first job. One reason is that as soon as I was solidly onmy feet I started a profit sharing scheme, dividing with the men whatwas made on every job over a certain per cent. Many of the originalgang have left and gone into business for themselves of one sort andanother but each one when he went, picked a good man to take his placeand handed down to him the spirit of the gang. 

Dick went through college and is now in my office. He's a hustler andis going to make a good business man. But thank God he has a heart inhim as well as brains. He hopes to make "Carleton and Son" a big firmsome day and he will. If he does, every man who faithfully andhonestly handles his shovel will be part of the big firm. His ideaisn't to make things easy for the men; it's to preserve the spiritthey come over with and give them a share of the success due to thatspirit. 

We didn't move away from our dear, true friends until the other boycame. Then I bought two or three deserted farms outside thecity--fifty acres in all. I bought them on time and at a bargain. I'mtrying another experiment here. I want to see if the pioneer spiritwon't bring even these worn out acres to life. I find that some of myforeign neighbors have made their old farms pay even though the goodAmericans who left them nearly starved to death. I have some cows andchickens and pigs and am using every square foot of the soil for onepurpose or another. We pretty nearly get our living from the farm now. 

We entertain a good deal but we don't entertain our new neighbors. There isn't a week summer or winter that I don't have one or morefamilies of Carleton's gang out here for a half holiday. It's the onlyway I can reconcile myself to having moved away from among them. Ruthkeeps very closely in touch with them all and has any number ofschemes to help them. Her pet one just now is for us to raise enoughcows so that we can sell fresh milk at cost to those families whichhave kiddies. 

Dan comes out to see us every now and then. He's making ten dollars tomy one. He says he's going to be mayor of the city some day. I toldhim I'd do my best to prevent it. That didn't seem to worry him. 

"If ye was an Irishmon, now, " he said, "I'd be after sittin' up nightsin fear of ye. But ye ain't. "

I'm almost done. This has been a hard job for me. And yet it's been apleasant job. It's always pleasant to talk about Ruth. I found thateven by taking away her pad and pencil I didn't accomplish much in theway of making her less busy. Even with three children to look afterinstead of one she does just as much planning about the housework. Andwe don't have sirloin steaks even now. We don't want them. Our dailyfare doesn't vary much from what it was in the tenement. 

Ruth just came in with Billy, Jr. , in her arms and read over theselast few paragraphs. She says she's glad I'm getting through with thisbecause she doesn't know what I might tell about next. But there'snothing more to tell about except that to-day as at the beginningRuth is the biggest thing in my life. I can't wish any better luck forthose trying to fight their way out than they may find for a partnerhalf as good a wife as Ruth. I wouldn't be afraid to start all overagain to-day with her by my side. 

THE END

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