The Commission began its inquiry, on the date fixed, and met three times a week from that time on. Peter did not try to push himself forward, but he was by far the best prepared on the subject, and was able to suggest the best sources of information. He asked good questions, too, of the various witnesses summoned. Finally he was the one regular attendant, and therefore was the one appealed to for information elicited at previous meetings. He found the politician his best helper. Pell was useful when he attended, which was not very often, and even this intermittent attendance ceased in June. “I’m going to Newport,” he explained, and did not appear again till late in the fall. The contractor really took no part in the proceedings beyond a fairly frequent attendance, and an occasional fit of attention whenever the inquiry related to building. The labor-agitator proved quite a good man. He had, it is true, no memory, and caused them to waste much time in reading over the minutes of previous meetings. But he was in earnest, and proved to be perfectly reasonable as soon as he found that the commissioners’ duties were to inquire and not to make speeches. Peter walked home with him several times, and they spent evenings together in Peter’s rooms, talking over the evidence, and the possibilities. Peter met a great many different men in the course of the inquiry; landlords, real-estate agents, architects, engineers, builders, plumbers, health officials, doctors and tenants. In many cases he went to see these persons after they had been before the Commission, and talked with them, finding that they were quite willing to give facts in private which they did not care to have put on record. He had been appointed the Secretary of the Food Commission, and spent much time on that work. He was glad to find that he had considerable influence, and that Green not merely acted on his suggestions, but encouraged him to make them. The two inquiries were so germane that they helped him reciprocally. No reports were needed till the next meeting of the Legislature, in the following January, and so the two commissions took enough evidence to swamp them. Poor Ray was reduced almost to despair over the mass of “rubbish” as he called it, which he would subsequently have to put in order. Between the two tasks, Peter’s time was well-nigh used up. It was especially drawn upon when the taking of evidence ceased and the drafting of the reports began. Ray’s notes proved hopeless, so Peter copied out his neatly, and let Ray have them, rather glad that irrelevant and useless evidence was thus omitted. It was left to Peter to draw the report, and when his draft was submitted, it was accompanied by a proposed General Tenement-house Bill. Both report and bill were slightly amended, but not in a way that Peter minded.