[Illustration:  CHICAGO TYPES]

“They’re kind folks and good neighbours,” Mrs. Brown explains, “but they’re different from us.  They eat what the rest of us throw away, and there’s no work they won’t do.  They’re putting money aside fast; most of ’em owns their own houses; but since they’ve moved into this neighbourhood the price of property’s gone down.  I don’t have nothing to do with ’em.  We don’t any of us.  They’re not like us; they’re different.”

Without letting a day elapse I started early the following morning in search of a new job.  The paper was full of advertisements, but there was some stipulation in each which narrowed my possibilities of getting a place, as I was an unskilled hand.  There was, however, one simple “Girls wanted!” which I answered, prepared for anything but an electric sewing machine.

The address took me to a more fashionable side of the city, near the lake; a wide expanse of pale, shimmering water, it lay a refreshing horizon for eyes long used to poverty’s quarters.  Like a sea, it rolled white-capped waves toward the shore from its far-away emerald surface where sail-freighted barks traveled at the wind’s will.  Free from man’s disfiguring touch, pure, immaculate, it appeared bridelike through a veil of morning mist.  And at its very brink are the turmoil and confusion of America’s giant industries.  In less than an hour I am receiving wages from a large picture frame company in East Lake Street.  Once more I have made the observation that men are more agreeable bosses than women.  The woman, when she is not exceptionally disagreeable, like Frances, is always annoying.  She bothers and nags; things must be done her way; she enjoys the legitimate minding of other people’s business.  Aiming at results only, the masculine mind is more tranquil.  Provided you get your work done, the man boss doesn’t care what methods you take in doing it.  For the woman boss, whether you get your work done or not, you must do it her way.  The overseer at J.’s picture frame manufactory is courteous, friendly, considerate.  I have a feeling that he wishes me to cooeperate with him, not to be terrorized and driven to death by him.  My spirits rise at once, my ambition is stimulated, and I desire his approval.  The work is all done by the piece, he explains to me, telling me the different prices.  The girls work generally in teams of three, dividing profits.  Nothing could be more modern, more middle-class, more popular, more philistine than the production of J.’s workrooms.  They are the cheap imitations fed to a public hungry for luxury or the semblance of it.  Nothing is genuine in the entire shop.  Water colours are imitated in chromo, oils are imitated in lithograph, white carved wood frames are imitated in applications of pressed brass.  Great works of art are belittled by processes cheap enough to be within reach of the poorest pocket.  Framed pictures are turned out by the thousand dozens, every size, from the smallest domestic scene, which hangs over the baby’s crib in a Harlem flat, to the large wedding-present size placed over the piano in the front parlour.  The range of subjects covers a familiar list of comedies or tragedies—­the partings before war, the interior behind prison bars, the game of marbles, the friendly cat and dog, the chocolate girl, the skipper and his daughter, etc., etc.