land
upon which the old stock New Englander had not been able to live. But
of course in part explanation of this, you must remember that these
New England villages have long been drained of their best. In many
cases only the maim, the halt, and the blind are left and these stand
no more chance against the modern pioneer than they would against one
of their own sturdy forefathers.

Another occupation which the Italians seemed to preempt was the
boot-blacking business. It may seem odd to dignify so menial an
employment as a business but there is many a head of such an
establishment who could show a fatter bank account than two-thirds of
his clients. The next time you go into a little nook containing say
fifteen chairs, figure out for yourself how many nickels are left
there in a day. The rent is often high--it is some proof of a business
worth thought when you consider that they are able to pay for
positions on the leading business streets--but the labor is cheap and
the furnishings and cost of raw material slight. Pasquale had set me
to thinking long before, when I learned that he was earning almost as
much a week as I. It is no unusual thing for a man who owns his
"emporium" to draw ten dollars a day in profits and not show himself
until he empties the cash register at night.

But the fact that impressed me in these people--and this holds
peculiarly true of the Jews--was that they all shied away from the
salaried jobs. In making such generalizations I may be running a risk
because I'm only giving the results of my own limited observation and
experience. But I want it understood that from the beginning to the
end of these recollections I'm trying to do nothing more. I'm not a
student. I'm not a sociologist. The conditions which I observed may
not hold elsewhere for all I know. From a different point of view,
they might not to another seem to hold even in my own city. I won't
argue with anyone about it. I set down what I myself saw and let it go
at that.

Going back to the small group among whom I lived when I was with the
United Woollen, it seems to me that every man clung to a salary as
though it were his only possible hope. I know men among them who even
refused to work on a commission basis although they were practically
sure of earning in this way double what they were being paid by the
year. They considered a salary as a form of insurance and once in the
grip of this idea they had nothing to look forward to exce