Nathan gazed at Joe like a lost soul.

“But I think, Mr. Joe,” he said, slowly, “you place your hopes too high.  I don’t like to be too gloomy, Mr. Joe, but I have my doubts about a rush.”

“Slate,” cried Joe, slapping the tragic bookkeeper a whack, “you’re inspiring!”

And he swung out to the street in the brilliant morning sunshine, ready to begin his canvass.

“Next door,” he mused, “is the place to start.”

There was a woman sitting on the stoop, a two-year-old girl in her arms.  Joe paused and looked at the baby.

“Hello, you.”

The baby looked at him a little doubtfully, and then laughed.

“Girl or boy?” asked Joe of the mother.

“Girl.”

“How old?”

“Two.”

“She’s a darling!  What’s her name?”

“Name’s Annie.”

“Named after you?”

“Sure!”

“You wouldn’t mind if I gave her a peppermint to suck?”

“Would you mind some candy, Annie?”

“Candy!” shrieked the child.

Joe dove into his bulging pocket and produced a good hard white one.  Annie snatched it up and sucked joyously.

“Thank the man, Annie.”

“Thank you.”

“Is this your only one, Mrs.—­”

“Cassidy’s my name!  No, I’ve buried two others.”

“From this house?”

“No, we keep movin’—­” Mrs. Cassidy laughed a little.

Joe made a grim face.

“Jump your rent, eh?”

Mrs. Cassidy shrugged her shoulders.

“What can poor people do?”

“But hasn’t Mr. Cassidy a job?”

“He has when he has it—­but it’s bum work.  Slave like a nigger and then laid off for six months, maybe.”

“What kind of work is that?”

“’Longshore—­he’s a ’longshoreman.”

“And when he’s unemployed you have a hard time, don’t you?”

“Hard?” Mrs. Cassidy’s voice broke.  “What can we do?  There’s the insurance every week—­fifteen cents for my man, ten cents for me, and five cents for Annie.  We couldn’t let that go; it’s buryin’-money, and there ain’t a Cassidy isn’t going to have as swell a funeral as any in the ward.  And then we’ve got to live.  I’ve found one thing in this world—­the harder you work the less you get.”

Joe spoke emphatically.

“Mrs. Cassidy, when your husband’s out of work, through no fault of his own, he ought to get a weekly allowance to keep you going.”

“And who’s to give it to him?”

“Who?  Do you know what they do in Germany?”

“What do they do in Germany?”

“They have insurance for the unemployed, and when a man’s out he gets so-and-so-much a week.  We ought to have it in America.”

“How can we get it?  Who listens to the poor?”

“Your man belongs to a union, doesn’t he?”

“Sure!”

“Well, the trouble is our people here don’t know these things.  If they knew them, they’d get together and make the bosses come round.  It’s ignorance holding us all back.”