The rainfall is scarcely ten inches a year, making it possible for the laboring man to work out doors every working day in the year. Laborers get $1.75 to $2.50 per day, and are always in demand. There are numerous restaurants in Los Angeles that set out a good, substantial meal for ten cents. San Pedro is the port of entry for Los Angeles. With the exception of Chicago, Los Angeles contains more employment bureaus than any other city in the United States. While standing in one of these labor bureaus a few days later, I learned that a certain hotel in San Pedro wanted a hotel clerk. I gave up my job trucking freight and took the street car for San Pedro. After having a short talk and showing my references to Jennings and White, proprietors of the Angelus Hotel, I was offered the place as clerk at $15.00 per month, board and room. I accepted the position. The little town of San Pedro bears the distinction of being one of the nine corners of the world. The Pacific Ocean is in full view from the front entrance of the Angelus Hotel. From this point it is only a two-hours run on the steamboat Cabrillo to the famous fishing grounds of Santa Catalina Island. If you are a good fisherman with hook and line, two hours in these waters will supply you with from seventy-five to one hundred and fifty pounds of fish. I had been clerking for Jennings & White about six weeks, when one day a man registered in the hotel from Searchlight, Nevada. The man praised up Searchlight in glowing terms. "Everything in Searchlight is on a boom," said he. "Wages are good, and it's the very place for a young man to make money." I was not making anything and had already grown tired of the little, sleepy town of San Pedro. The fever of travel was once more infused within me. I would go to Searchlight, and if I found it like the man had said, I promised myself I would settle down there and stop traveling about. To hold my position as clerk in the hotel I had been compelled to invest all of my small salary in clothing. When I resigned the job I had saved just $2.00. Mr. Jennings said I was doing a bad thing starting to Searchlight broke, and that he would give me a letter of reference to a Los Angeles street car Superintendent. I reproduce his letter in this book, though I never used it, for I was bent now upon going to Searchlight, and that afternoon took the car for Los Angeles. I knocked about the streets of Los Angeles three or four days trying to get up courage to begin beating trains again. During my six weeks of ease and contentment at the hotel I had grown almost as timid as when I first left home. Hardly before I knew it I was stranded in Los Angeles without a penny. My grip had been left in charge of Jennings & White, to be forwarded to me in case I reached Searchlight safely. I told some kind-hearted gentleman on the street of my trouble, and he kindly advised me to apply to the Los Angeles Chief of Police.