Though I was up and out before eight o’clock the next morning, I returned to my room late in the afternoon without having secured a position. It was not for the lack of trying. I called at nine places advertising for workers. At the first place there were twenty-two applicants for two vacancies. At another there were forty women waiting when I arrived, and several came later—only six vacancies. Before the door of a down-town candy factory I was one of more than fifty women and girls. Many of them had been waiting since eight o’clock. At twelve a man came out and roughly ordered us all off. When some of us protested he burst out laughing and informed us that all vacancies had been filled before eight-thirty. The next day I was more fortunate—that is, I was taken on at the first place to which I applied. This was a candy factory. After packing fancy chocolates during the morning I was sent to another department and assigned to the task of helping a chocolate-dipper. This position, so my fellow packers informed me, was very desirable since the next step up is chocolate-dipping, a work that always commands a good wage. “It’s grand!” one little girl, who looked as though she had not washed her face or combed her hair for a week, assured me. “You’ll learn how to dip. They make big money, dippers do. I’ve gotter cousin who married a dipper. She used to make as much as eighteen a week. She has the swellest clothes!” During my first day in this candy factory I imagined that the unneat appearance of my fellow workers was caused by dirt accumulated since their arrival that morning. The next day taught me better. There were precious few of them, either men or women, who had the appearance of having washed their faces before leaving home. The apron handed me on my second day was so soiled that I asked the woman in charge how often she had them washed. “Wash these things,” she cried, laughing, as she held up another apron in a worse condition than the one she had given me, “they ain’t never washed sence I been here. When they gets so sticky and stuck up that they spoil your clothes they take ’em away and give me some more. I guess they burn ’em. They ain’t fitten for nothing else.” “If customers knew that, perhaps they wouldn’t pay such high prices for your candies,” I suggested. “What folks don’t know don’t hurt ’em none,” she retorted. That night I had a severe bilious attack, and when morning came I was too sick to think of going to work. Had it been the biscuit factory or any other position in which I had worked, excepting the department store, I would have gotten Alice to telephone and give my reason for not reporting. Two days in that candy factory were enough for me. Even the money due me—at the rate of eight dollars a week—was not sufficient to draw me back. Now when I see the name of that firm on a candy-box I very gladly allow other people to consume it. Yet I am fond of candy.