These men, like the gulls and their fish, pick a little something from the storm. They follow the fortunes of the contractors who make arrangements with the city for the removal of the snow, and about the wagon-barns where the implements of snow removal are kept, and where daily cards of employment are issued they may be seen waiting by hundreds, and not at such hours and under such conditions as are at all pleasant to contemplate, either. In the early hours of the morning, when the work of the day is first being doled out, they may be seen, cold, overcoatless, often with bare hands and necks, no collar, or, if so, only a rag of a thing, and hats too battered and timeworn to be honestly dignified by the name of hat at all. The city usually pays at the rate of two dollars a day for what shoveling these men can do. They are not wanted even at that rate by the contractors, for stray, healthy laborers are usually preferred; but the pressure under which the contractors are put by the city and the public makes a showing necessary. So thousands are admitted to temporary labor who would not otherwise be considered, and these are they. So in this cold, raw, strenuous weather they stand like so many sheep waiting at the entrance to a fold. There is no particular zeal in this effort which they are making to live. Hunger for life they have, but it is a rundown hunger, dispirited by lack of encouragement. They have been kicked and pushed about the world in an effort to live until, as a rule, they are comparatively heartbroken and courage-broken. This storm, which spells comfort and indoor seclusion and amusement for many, spells a rough opportunity for them--a gutter crust, to be sure, but a crust. [Illustration: The Men in the Snow] And so they are here early in the morning, in the dark. They stand in a long file outside the contractors’ stable door, waiting for that consideration which his present need may show. A man at a little glass window cut in a door receives them. He is a hearty, material, practical soul who has very little to suggest in the way of mentality but much in the spirit of acquisitiveness. He is not interested in the condition of the individuals before him. It does not concern him that in most cases this is a last despairing grasp at a straw. Will this fellow work? Will he be satisfied to take $1.75 in place of the $2.00 which the city pays? He does not ask them that so clearly; it is done in another way. “Got a shovel?” “No, sir.” “Well, it’ll cost you a quarter to get one.” “I ain’t got no quarter.” “Well, that’s all right. We’ll take it out o’ your pay.” Not for to-day only, mind you, but for every day in which work is done, the quarter comes out for the shovel. It is suggested in some sections that the shovel is sometimes stolen, but there are gang foremen, and no money is paid without a foreman’s O. K., and he is responsible for the shovels.... Hence----