You are inclined to agree that this description fits in pretty well with your observation of a number of them, but what of these others who look like family men, who look worried and harried? “Sure, there’s lots others,” prompts your adviser. “There’s three columns every day callin’ for painters. There’s a column most every day of printers. People paints houses all the year round. There’s general help wanted. There’s carpenters. It gits some. Cooks and waiters and dishwashers in the big pull, though.” You have been wondering if this is really true, but it sounds plausible enough. These men are obviously, in a great many cases, cooks and waiters. Their search calls for an early start, for the restaurants and hotels usually keep open all night. It may be. And all the time you have been wondering why the papers do not come. It seems a shame that these men should have to stand here so long. There’s a great crowd now, between two and three hundred. A policeman is tramping up and down, keeping an open passageway. He is not in any friendly mood. “Stand back,” he orders angrily. “I’m tellin’ ye fer the last time, now!” A great passageway opens. Now of a sudden comes a boy running with a great bundle of the most successful morning paper, a most staggering load. Actually the crowd looks as though it would seize him and tear his bundle away from him, but instead it only closes in quickly behind. When he reaches the Irish woman’s stand there is a great struggling, grabbing circle formed. “The ----,” is the cry. “Gimme a ----,” and for the space of a half-dozen minutes a thriving, exciting business is done in morning papers. Then these men run with their papers like dogs run with a bone. They hurry, each to some neighboring light, and glance up and down the columns. Sometimes they mark something, and then you see them hurry on again. They have picked their prospect. It is a pitiful spectacle from one point of view, a decidedly grim one from another. Your dishwasher (or ex-waiter) confides that most of these positions, apart from tips, pay only five dollars a week and board. And he admits that the board is vile. While you are talking you recognize some gentlemanly newspaper man, well-salaried, taking his belated way home. What a contrast! What a far cry! “And say,” says your dishwasher friend, “I thought I’d git a job to-night. I thought somebody’d buy this ring. It’ll bring $1.75 in the pawnshop in the mornin’. I ain’t got carfare or I wouldn’t mention it. I usually soaks it early in the week and gits it out Saturday. I’ll soak it to-morrow, and git another chance to-morrow night.” What a story! What a predicament! You go down in your pocket and produce a quarter. You buy him a paper. “On your way,” you say cheerily--but the misery! The depths! To think that any one of us should come to this!