He acknowledged his age, past sixty, but insisted he still had strength enough to work for America and France. He would take any job, at any wage. I gave him a card and sent him to an employer who had specially stipulated that he would take no man over forty. Within an hour that employer telephoned and asked for me. Instead of the blowing-up that the registrar at my elbow prophesied, he wished to thank me. The Frenchman was a tip-top workman, he said. Then he added: “It’s not often you find a person, man or woman, who knows when to break a rule. That’s what I called you up for—to thank you for breaking my rule. If you find any more men like your Frenchman, don’t ask his age, just send him along.” Learning that women were needed in the gas-mask factory at Long Island City, I got a card of introduction from the head of the woman’s branch of the employment bureau, and journeyed out. This woman had told me that the wage was exceptional—twenty-five to forty a week. As fifteen dollars a week had, up to that time, been the highest I had received, and that for only a few weeks, I looked forward to making my fortune in the gas-mask factory in a few days. Another case of exaggerated wage. Fifteen dollars is what I was paid, and I would have had to work there a good long time before getting a raise. As it happened I worked there two days, received my training and was made an inspector at fifteen dollars a week, then decided to find another job. The fumes of gasolene gave me a hideous headache, and besides I had seen large crowds of women turned away from the doors every day. Returning to the employment offices of the Y. W., I stipulated that my next job must be work for the government, preferably in a munition plant. There were plenty of openings, and taking cards of introduction to several plants near New York City, I set out. “Even if you don’t find anything to suit you,” the woman at the employment desk told me, “it will be helping us, letting us know what you think of the places.” “Send only mature women to that plant in Hoboken. They want night-workers,” I advised her on my return. “Those other two places over in Jersey? If you have girls who have twenty dollars to spend before their wages begin to come in, send them there.” “But the clubwomen?” she questioned. “We were told that the clubwomen had thrown open their homes, would board women workers in those plants.” I showed her my figures, the lowest that I had been able to get, though directed by the employment office of the munition plant: three dollars a week for a small room, up two flights, seven dollars a week for two meals a day and three on Sundays, sixty cents car-fare,—that is if you caught a particular train making the trip for the purpose of taking munition workers.