Mary took a civil service examination and got a job with the
State Bureau of Labor. She finished her first year with the
Bureau at the same time when John finished his first year with
the electrical firm. She had earned $600. He had earned $480.
There were several hundred other apprentices in the shops along with John. When he thought of the next year's work at fifty a month and when he looked at the horde of competing Bachelors of Science in which he was pocketed, he whitened a bit.
"I must get out of the ruck," he said to himself. "I must get a specialty. I must do some more preparing.
He began to perceive how long it takes the modern man to grow up, intellectually and financially. He began to perceive what a tedious road he must travel before he could arrive at maturity—and Mary!
But he had pluck. "I'll really prepare," he said, "and then I'll really make good."
A western university offered a scholarship of $500 a year, the holder of which would be free to devote himself to a certain specified technical subject. John tried for the scholarship and got it, and spent a year chasing electrical currents from the time when they left the wheels of street cars to the time when they eventually sneaked back home again into the power-house, after having sported clandestinely along gas mains and water pipes, biting holes into them as they went.
It was a good subject, commercially. At the end of the year he was engaged as engineer by a street-car company which was being sued by a gas company for allowing its current to eat the gas company's property. He was to have a salary of $1,000 a year. He was going strong.
One thousand dollars! Millions of married couples live on less than that. But John didn't even think of asking Mary to share it with him.
Mary, when married, was to be supported in approximate accordance with the standards of the people John knew. Every John thinks that about it, without really thinking about it at all. It's just in him.
It bothered Mary. How much money would John want to spend on her before he would take her? It made her feel like a box of candy in a store window.