This third year finished my course in masonry. I came out in June with a trade at which I could earn from three dollars to five dollars a day according to my skill. It was a trade, too, where there was pretty generally steady employment. A good mason is more in demand than a good lawyer. Not only that but a good mason can find work in any city in 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 a day.
I had also qualified in a more modest way as a mechanical draftsman. I could draw my own plans for work and what was more useful still, do my work from the plans of others.
By now I had also become a fairly proficient Italian scholar. I could speak the language fluently and read it fairly well. It wasn't the fault of Giuseppe if my pronunciation was sometimes queer and if very often I used the jargon of the provinces. My object was served as long as I could make myself understood to the men. And I could do that perfectly.
This year I watched Rafferty's progress with something like envy. The firm was "D. Rafferty and Co." Within two months I began to see the name on his dump carts whenever I went to work. Within six months he secured a big contract for repaving a long stretch of street in our ward. I knew our firm had put in a bid on it and knew they must have been in a position to put in a mighty low bid. I didn't wonder so much about how Dan got this away from us as I did how he got it away from Sweeney. That was explained to me later when I found that Sweeney was in reality back of the liquor dealers. Sweeney owned about half their stores and had taken this method to bring Dan back to the fold, once he found he couldn't check his progress.
During this year Dan bought a new house and married. We went to the wedding 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 in the real estate business. She had received a good education in a convent and was altogether a girl Dan could be proud of. The house was an old-fashioned structure built by one of the old families who had been forced to move by the foreign invasion. Mrs. Rafferty had furnished 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 a house 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 my present position. I felt uncomfortable at still being merely a foreman. When we reached the house Ruth and I took the bank book and figured out just what our capital in money was. Including the boy's savings which we could use in an emergency it amounted to fourteen hundred dollars. During the first year we saved one hundred and twenty dollars, which added to the eighty we came down here with, made two hundred dollars. During the second year we saved three hundred and ninety 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 in the last two years.
It was Rafferty who helped me turn this over in a real estate deal in which he was interested. I made six hundred dollars by that. Everything Rafferty touched now seemed to turn to money. One reason was that he was thrown in contact with money-makers all of whom were anxious to help him. He received any number of tips from those eager to win his favor. Among the tips were many that were legitimate enough like the one he shared with me but there were also many that were not quite so above-board. But to Dan all was fair in business and politics. Yet I don't know a man I'd sooner trust upon his honor in a purely personal matter. He wouldn't graft from his friends however much he might from the city. In fact his whole code as far as I could see was based upon this unswerving loyalty to his friends and scrupulous honesty in dealing with them. It was only when honesty became abstract that he couldn't see it. You could put a thousand dollars in gold in his keeping without security and come back twenty years later and find it safe. But he'd scheme a week to frame up a deal to cheat the city out of a hundred dollars. And he'd do it with his head in the air and a grin on his face. I've seen the same thing done by educated men who knew better. I wouldn't trust the latter with a ten cent piece without first consulting a lawyer.