“The wage being eleven dollars a week, girls working there who room with and are fed by those clubwomen, will have just forty cents with which to get lunch, laundry, and any other little luxury,” I went on. “And don’t forget she doesn’t get a dollar until the end of her second week. Her first week’s pay is held until she leaves—God knows for why—and she is not paid for her second week until she finishes it. In the meantime she has to pay for everything in advance, board, lodging, and car-fare.” “Those clubwomen!” she exclaimed, in disgust. “The fuss they made about taking munition workers in their homes for the sake of helping the government.” “That’s what being a worker means—everybody’s prey,” I replied, and the thought did not make me any the happier. “It’s gouge and squeeze, and when only a flicker of life remains fling them in an almshouse or a pauper’s grave. Ours is a Christian country.” During the two months that followed I worked a few days in a cigarette factory, in a second cracker factory, folded circulars, addressed envelopes, stamped envelopes, and folded more circulars. It was on this last job that I was taken for a labor organizer. Having nothing else to say to the woman working at my elbow, I asked if that printing-house was open or closed shop. Within three minutes she pattered off, and held a lengthy conversation with the forewoman. Within another three minutes this forewoman had informed me that as the work was “running short,” she would have no need of my services “right then.” Those two words, “right then,” so I was informed, prevented that forewoman’s dismissal from being a discharge. Had she discharged me I could have collected the wage due me; as I was “laid off,” I had to wait until the next pay-day. “There’s more ways of killing a dog besides choking it to death with butter,” the woman who explained the matter to me added. “Some of these days—if the workers’ day comes in my time—I’ll do some of the choking.” On returning to my friend of the Y. W. employment department, she gave me a handful of cards. “They’re all good positions, but I know which you’ll take,” she told me. “It’s the one with the smallest salary.” “Why? I’m working for my living, living on my earnings,” I retorted, not a bit pleased by her declaration. “Yes, but you’ve got an enormous amount of curiosity,” she laughed at me. “That position is with the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. It’s in the office, posting the books, and the salary is only fifteen a week. You’ll take it because you want to see how it works.” I handed all the other cards back to her and set out for the offices of the A. S. P. C. A. There I was taken on and put to work at once—writing in a huge book the numbers for the current year of licensed dogs. It was not tenement work, but it touched the tenements and that pleased me.