How large a body of sharpers live by preying upon the credulity of these classes it would be difficult to discover, as it also would be difficult to discover all the tricks of their trade. The craft of the bunco-steerers is certainly well known, and yet it perennially finds its victims, and largely, no doubt, among the classes of whom I am speaking. But there are other snares, less sudden but quite as disastrous as those of the bunco-steerers, and far more insidious, since they have about them the apparent sanction of legitimate business. It is these that make most open use of the want-columns of certain of the newspapers. Agencies are advertised, and in them, after the payment of a small fee and the purchase of the needed outfit, large earnings are guaranteed as the result of putting some product upon the market. Opportunities are offered for the investment of a little capital--sums as low as five and ten dollars are solicited--and immense returns are promised. Requests for men are made in urgent terms: “Wanted--three--five--seven men at once. Steady employment guaranteed; good pay. No previous experience necessary. Apply at No. -- ---- Street, second floor front.” One morning I marked a dozen or more of these notices in one newspaper, and carefully made the rounds of the addresses given. In every case I found an establishment which purported to do business at coloring photographs. I was offered employment in each instance. The conditions were as uniform as those governing a regular market. Two dollars was the invariable fee for being taught the secret of the process. One dollar would purchase the needed materials. There was always a strong demand, enough to insure abundant work until spring. “Our agents are sending in large orders all the time,” was the conventional explanation. “You can soon learn to color ten or twelve photographs in a day, and we will pay you at the rate of three dollars a dozen for them.” The discovery that I had no money invariably brought the interview abruptly to an end in an atmosphere which cooled suddenly. I met many actual victims of these devices; one will serve as a type. We both had been sitting for some time on a crowded bench in the lobby of a lodging-house. Each was absorbed in his own “bitterness,” and oblivious to the presence of other men and to the tumult of the room. My companion was cheerfully responsive when I spoke to him, and we both accepted gladly the relief of an interchange of confidence. He was three days beyond the end of his resources. So far he had been fortunate in securing the cost of food and the price of a ten-cent lodging, and had not yet been forced to the station-house. But on that evening, for the first time, he had learned of the station lodging. It loomed for him as the logic of events, and he dreaded it. It was of this that he was thinking gloomily when I spoke to him.