how to find work."

The words had scarcely escaped my lips when a man by the name of Tim
Grogan stood up and accepted the challenge.

I made an appointment to meet Grogan on Chatham Square at half-past
five the next morning. Before I met him, I had done more thinking on
the question of the unemployed than I had ever done in my life. I
balked on the change of clothing article in the agreement--and
furnished my own. Two or three men had enough courage to get up early
in the morning and see Tim off--they were sceptical about my
intention.

The first thing that we did was to try the piano, soap and other
factories on the West Side. From place to place we went, from
Fourteenth to Fifty-ninth Street without success. Sometimes under
pretence of business and by force of the power to express myself in
good English, I gained an entrance to the superintendent; but I always
failed to find a job. We crossed the city at Fifty-ninth Street and
went down the East Side. Wherever men were working, we applied. We
went to the stevedores on the East Side, but they were all "full up."
"For God's sake," I said to some of them, but I was brushed aside with
a wave of the hand. I never felt so like a beggar in my life. Tim
trotted at my heels, encouraging me with whimsical Irish phrases, one
of which I remember--

"Begorra, mister, the hardest work for sure is no work at all, at
all!"

In the middle of the afternoon, I began to get disturbed; then I