The elder Bok did not find his “lines cast in pleasant places” in the United States.  He found himself, professionally, unable to adjust the methods of his own land and of a lifetime to those of a new country.  As a result the fortunes of the transplanted family did not flourish, and Edward soon saw his mother physically failing under burdens to which her nature was not accustomed nor her hands trained.  Then he and his brother decided to relieve their mother in the housework by rising early in the morning, building the fire, preparing breakfast, and washing the dishes before they went to school.  After school they gave up their play hours, and swept and scrubbed, and helped their mother to prepare the evening meal and wash the dishes afterward.  It was a curious coincidence that it should fall upon Edward thus to get a first-hand knowledge of woman’s housework which was to stand him in such practical stead in later years.

It was not easy for the parents to see their boys thus forced to do work which only a short while before had been done by a retinue of servants.  And the capstone of humiliation seemed to be when Edward and his brother, after having for several mornings found no kindling wood or coal to build the fire, decided to go out of evenings with a basket and pick up what wood they could find in neighboring lots, and the bits of coal spilled from the coal-bin of the grocery-store, or left on the curbs before houses where coal had been delivered.  The mother remonstrated with the boys, although in her heart she knew that the necessity was upon them.  But Edward had been started upon his Americanization career, and answered; “This is America, where one can do anything if it is honest.  So long as we don’t steal the wood or coal, why shouldn’t we get it?” And, turning away, the saddened mother said nothing.

But while the doing of these homely chores was very effective in relieving the untrained and tired mother, it added little to the family income.  Edward looked about and decided that the time had come for him, young as he was, to begin some sort of wage-earning.  But how and where?  The answer he found one afternoon when standing before the shop-window of a baker in the neighborhood.  The owner of the bakery, who had just placed in the window a series of trays filled with buns, tarts, and pies, came outside to look at the display.  He found the hungry boy wistfully regarding the tempting-looking wares.

“Look pretty good, don’t they?” asked the baker.

“They would,” answered the Dutch boy with his national passion for cleanliness, “if your window were clean.”

“That’s so, too,” mused the baker.  “Perhaps you’ll clean it.”

“I will,” was the laconic reply.  And Edward Bok, there and then, got his first job.  He went in, found a step-ladder, and put so much Dutch energy into the cleaning of the large show-window that the baker immediately arranged with him to clean it every Tuesday and Friday afternoon after school.  The salary was to be fifty cents per week!