Seeking Fortune in America - F. W. Grey

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in a hall in company with 150 or 200 men all come after one vacancy. Any one who has not been through the mill in dire need of work can hardly imagine the agony one feels when a callous office-boy comes in from the sanctum, and with a grin hangs up a sign, “Position filled.” I used to get up before 5 A.M. to buy the early morning papers, rush home to make a list of the vacancies I thought I could fill and the hour at which application had to be made. Often two or three advertisements would name the same hour, and I would have to choose between them, but always with the feeling that I had picked the wrong one. To some places I could walk, but as Chicago is a huge town, I had to take cars to many of them, and car-fare eats up money. It was certainly disheartening to go day after day to five or six places and see the sign without even having a chance to talk to the “boss”; but it was just as bad when I did see him, as the invariable answer was, “I need experienced men only. Yes, I dare say you could do the work, but we cannot afford to take chances. Good-bye.”

      Finally, I got a job at a wholesale drygoods (clothing) house, addressing envelopes. I worked hard, as I did not dare to lose even this temporary employment, and luckily, on the third day, attracted the attention of one of the heads, who transferred me to the permanent office force at $10 per week. This, though small pay, was at least permanent till I could find something better or could get a rise, and I worked hard to make up for my other deficiencies. I had been there working about ten days, when one night on reaching home I received a note from an influential friend connected with the New York Biscuit Company (Chicago branch), that I could get a position paying $15 per week by applying to the superintendent at the factory the next morning at 9 A.M., and intimating that the superintendent had said that the position would only remain open till then. On reaching the office the next morning, I applied for leave for an hour, from nine till ten, and was refused. I was now in a quandary to throw up a job I held, paying $10, for another paying $15, but which I was not sure that I could fill, as I did not know of what the work consisted. I decided to take the chance, and went to the cashier to ask for my money. He told me, “The firm pays by the week, and if you do not stay out the week you get nothing.” I was now in for it; so I hurried over to the biscuit factory, and handed my friend’s note to the superintendent, who told me the job was to run the freight elevator. This, though better than nothing, was not what I had been expecting, and it was somewhat of a blow. I went to work at noon, and found out that the elevator-man was the intermediary between surly teamsters on the ground floor and cursing foremen on all the other floors. I had not my full strength then, being under twenty, and found it taxed every ounce that was in me to handle bales of wrapping-paper weighing 200 lbs., which I had to load on to and unload from my elevator, also great hogsheads of lard weighing 800 lbs. Cases of eggs were easy, and barrels of flour, but the paper, lard, and molasses were terrible, and I found they used the same password on every floor, “Hurry up!” After four days I found my hands and back in such a condition that I could not keep up with the freight, and so, in spite of my dread of again having to hunt work, I resigned. The superintendent treated me very well, saying how sorry he was they had no other vacancy to give me, and paid me up.

      There is a class of brutes in the States, and possibly in other places, who live off the poor desperately in need of a job; and it must pay well, from the offices they are able to keep up and the advertising they do. They advertise for, say, painters at $3 per day, or it may be workers in crayon to enlarge photos. When you apply, you find out that there is still a vacancy, that the work is very simple, but, in order to secure the position, you must buy your paint-brushes and paints from them for $5 or more, or it may be crayons at the same price or a greater one. If you are desperate, and must have work before your funds all run out, you buy, using your last few dollars for the purpose. If you have not quite the amount they demand, they will tell you that in your special case they will let you have it for the few cents less you may have, as they hate to let any one escape them. After buying your outfit they may possibly give you work (provided they see you have money still left) for an hour or so, when you will be told you are not up to the standard, but that they can teach you their method for another $20 or so; and so it goes on till they have bled you. This game is worked in a hundred different ways, but the result is always the same, and you are out from $5 to $25, according to how much money or sense you have; and you will have left to show for your money perhaps 50 cents’ worth of crayons. It is a wonder to me that such men are not killed more often than they are by some poor, desperate devil who sees nothing but suicide before him, but wants to pay his debts before he goes. I was lucky enough to keep out of their clutches through being warned, but wasted much time in answering their advertisements, which are wonderfully plausible. I have often wondered why Carnegie and some other of the wealthy, who are trying to give their surplus wealth away for the good of humanity, do not start some sort of national labour bureau to bring the worker and the work together, charging a small fee and giving honest treatment. Surely this would do almost as much good as libraries, &c., and would save many a young girl from a life of shame, and honest young fellows from suicide or crime.

      My next job was as insurance solicitor (tout), but I could not make car-fare at it. Then I sold sewing machines, or rather tried to, but got tired of having the dog set on me. I then got a berth as city salesman for a wholesale grocery house, and did fairly well for a while; but the quality of the goods with which they filled the orders was so inferior to the samples that I could never get a second order in the same store. My next job was with a drug manufacturer as demonstrator—that is, I had a chair and a table, which I moved weekly from one large store to another in different parts of the city, and gave out samples (of root-beer and different essences) and advertising matter, and explained all about the merits of our particular goods, and tried to answer all the fool questions put to me. The reason of all this was that we sold our goods to those stores under a guarantee that we would advertise them till we had created a demand for them. After some weeks of this I was put out on the street as city salesman, and did well, making $15 per week and expenses. The head of the firm, a “Yankee” from Hartford, Conn., was one of the best men I ever worked for, and the kindest. The first week I handed him a detailed account of my expenses he told me, “I only want the total, not the items. A dishonest man cannot work for me, and an honest man I trust.” Then, when he had looked over it, he saw I had lunches down at 15 cents (7½d.), and he said, “My employees do not have to eat 15-cent lunches. Get yourself decent meals hereafter.” For men such as this it is a pleasure to work, and they lose nothing by their kindness.

       Table of Contents

      Life under Difficulties—drawbacks of a Public-school Training—Hints on Emigration—Pneumonia—Unemployment in Chicago, 1893.

      Do not imagine from what I have just written that I stepped from one of these positions into another. Far from it; there are successive gaps between filled with fruitless searching after work. In one thing I was very lucky: two of my wife’s brothers came to Chicago at the same time she and I did, and we all helped one another. When in need, one could always get meals from the others, if they had work; and for this reason none of us starved, though we ate slim meals occasionally. I remember, one evening, one of the boys came up to our room to go out and sup with us (we ate at a restaurant), whereas my wife and I had been waiting for him to come home, so that we could get him to take us out! I had a little bank in which I had been putting pennies for a rainy day, and we decided to break it open, as the rainy day had arrived. It had, if I remember right, 78 cents in it; and there came the rub—none of us wanted to hand the waiter 78 copper cents for the supper, so it had to be changed into silver, and none of us wanted to do the changing. At last we put the job on my wife, as we were two to one against her.

      My wife was the life of the whole lot of us boys, for boys we all were. She it was who cheered us and kept heart in us during bad times, and during one very bad time she tided me over by getting a position as cashier at a soda-fountain, till I was on my feet again.

      We had our amusements too, and occasionally went to the theatre, in the peanut gallery, and sometimes I got passes from an actor friend of mine. There was a piano in our boarding-house, where a mob of about a dozen of us would congregate in the evenings and have music, singing, and story-telling. It was quite a conglomeration. There were two old-maid sisters, teachers

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