The matter of the tools was not insurmountable, but the others seemed to be. After a week’s hunt for work in some small shop where he could have tools supplied him and a union card was not required, he seized a chance to go to work for the United States Biscuit Company, hustling boxes of biscuits, etc., and for his work received pay at the rate of $4 a week, which he calculated would pay his expenses while he was waiting an opportunity to engage in his trade. Four days of this work saw him exhausted physically, his hand mashed, and his wrist strained so that he was unfit for work of any kind. Before he was well again he was in debt so deeply that he was nearly distracted. Just at the time when his family was expecting he should be sending home some fine sums of money, he was unable to make even his own living, through lack not of capability but of opportunity. He got two or three days’ work for an Italian carpenter who was doing some roof-repairing, and the $4 he made paid one week’s expenses at least; then he was commissioned to make a cabinet for filing papers, and Tommaso arranged with an Irish carpenter named Delaney, who had a shop at 147 West Thirtieth Street, for Nicola to work there while making the cabinet, paying Delaney a dollar a day for the use of tools and shop. There was no fire in the shop during Christmas week, and Nicola caught a heavy cold. New Year fell on Friday, and there was no work of course. He spent the day resting and doctoring himself. Saturday morning a terrible blizzard was blowing, and he walked through it from the East Side to the shop, arriving at seven o’clock, but no one had appeared to unlock the place. If he could have spoken English he could have inquired where to find Delaney or where to telephone him, but all he could do was to wait or go home, so he waited there on the step in the driving storm until one o’clock that afternoon, when he appeared at my house hardly in his senses, nearly dead from exposure and on the verge of pneumonia. Only by his friends taking extreme care of him was he able to go back in a few days and finish his work. During this time Tommaso Figaro, acting on my advice, went with Nicola to both the Carpenters’ and Cabinetmakers’ locals, and endeavored to get him admitted to the unions. At first the difficulty seemed to be that there was no union man to sign Nicola’s application, but this was obviated. Why the matter was delayed thereafter I do not know. Two excellent opportunities for employment at the union rate of $18.50 a week were offered to Nicola in the last week of January, but he could not begin work until he got his union card. He did not get it then, nor has he even got it yet.