* * * * * In the continued search for work through the succeeding day it was natural to drift early into the employment bureaus. Clark and I made a careful round of these, he in search of employment at his trade and I of any job that offered. Here, too, however, we were but units in the great number of seekers. Some of the agencies offered for a small fee and a nominal price of transportation to ship us to the farther West or to the Northwest and insure us employment with gangs of day-laborers, but of work in Chicago they could promise none. In the course of a day last week, as I was going about alone, I was attracted by the prominent sign of an employment bureau, on the West Side, which we had not visited so far. It was the conventional bureau, much like the office of a steamship company. It occupied the floor above the basement, reached by a flight of steps from the pavement; a row of wooden chairs stood along the outer wall; a wooden partition extended down the centre of the room, with a door and two windows in it. The hour was noon and the office was deserted but for a comparatively young man of florid face and close-set, light-brown eyes, thin hair, and a bristling mustache clipped close above his mouth. He was at work upon his books behind one of the windows. With a direct, matter-of-fact glance he looked me over, and then his eye sought the place on the open page held by his finger. “What can I do for you?” he asked. “I am looking for work,” I said. “Have you any employment to offer?” “What kind of work?” “I am a day-laborer,” I replied. “Nothing,” he said, laconically, and his eye followed the finger as it moved across the open page. I waited for a moment, thinking that he might say more, but he remained silent at his work. “If not in Chicago, perhaps you can put me in the way of work near here,” I ventured. “Young man,” he said, and his clear, cold eyes were looking straight into mine, “Young man, we can’t get enough of you fellows in the spring and summer time; we have to go to you and beg you to go to work. You’re mighty independent then, and you don’t give a damn for us. But it’s our turn now. You can do some begging now and see how you like it. It’s good enough for you. No, there ain’t a job that I know of in Chicago that you can get, unless it is in the sewers, and you ain’t fit for that.” “But give me a chance at it,” I urged. “I wouldn’t take the responsibility,” he answered. “It would kill a man of your build in a week, and you couldn’t pass the first inspection, anyway.” And so ended my efforts through the employment agencies.