BOOK II



CHAPTER I


It was late in the summer of 1893 when McGregor came to Chicago, an
ill time for boy or man in that city. The big exposition of the year
before had brought multiplied thousands of restless labourers into the
city and its leading citizens, who had clamoured for the exposition
and had loudly talked of the great growth that was to come, did not
know what to do with the growth now that it had come. The depression
that followed on the heels of the great show and the financial panic
that ran over the country in that year had set thousands of hungry men
to wait dumbly on park benches poring over want advertisements in the
daily papers and looking vacantly at the lake or had driven them to
tramp aimlessly through the streets, filled with forebodings.

In time of plenty a great American city like Chicago goes on showing a
more or less cheerful face to the world while in nooks and crannies
down side-streets and alleys poverty and misery sit hunched up in
little ill-smelling rooms breeding vice. In times of depression these
creatures crawl forth and joined by thousands of the unemployed tramp
the streets through the long nights or sleep upon benches in the
parks. In the alleyways off Madison Street on the West Side and off