The following morning I put ten cents in my pocket and started out to get a job before this sum should be used up. How huge the city seemed when I thought of the small space I could cover on foot, looking for work! I walked toward the river, as the commercial activity expressed itself in that direction by fifteen-and twenty-story buildings and streams of velvet smoke. Blocks and blocks of tenements, with the same dirty people wallowing around them, answered my searching eyes in blank response. There was an occasional dingy sign offering board and lodging. After I had made several futile inquiries at imposing offices on the river front I felt that it was a hopeless quest. I should never get work unknown, unskilled, already tired and discouraged. My collar was wilted in the fierce heat; my shabby felt sailor hat was no protection against the sun's rays; my hands were gloveless; and as I passed the plate glass windows I could see the despondent droop of my skirt, the stray locks of hair that blew about free of comb or veil. A sign out: "Manglers wanted!" attracted my attention in the window of a large steam laundry. I was not a "
mangler," but I went in and asked to see the boss. "Ever done any mangling?" was his first question.
"No," I answered, "but I am sure I could learn." I put so much ardour into my response that the boss at once took an interest.
"We might give you a place as shaker; you could start in and work up."
"What do you pay?"
"Four dollars a week until you learn. Then you would work up to five, five and a half."
Better than nothing, was all I could think, but I can't live on four a week.
"How often do you pay?"
"Every Tuesday night."
This meant no money for ten days.