ry nationality. New York public schools are veritable
congresses of nations and a boy who plans to go into business gets far
more than mere book learning from them. Jim's poverty cut him out of
athletics and clubs so that all his inherent New England tendency to
mental aloofness would have been vastly increased if it had not been for
his summer vacations.

The first day of his summer vacation, Jim applied for a job. A steel
skyscraper was being erected in 42nd street and Jim asked the
superintendent of construction for work. The superintendent looked at
the lank lad, who now, fifteen, would have appeared eighteen were it not
for his smooth, almost childish face.

"What kind of work, young fella?" asked the Boss.

"Anything to start with," replied Jim, "until we see what I can do."

"You're as thin as a lath. Ye can get down there with Derrick No. 2 and
get some muscle laid on you. A dollar fifty a day is the best I can do
for you. Get along now."

Jim's brain reeled with joy at the size of his prospective income. He
nodded, pulled off his coat, leaving it in the superintendent's office
and found his way to Derrick No. 2.

The structure was a big one, so big that the exigencies of New York
traffic were forcing the company to build in sections. A steel frame
nearly eighteen stories high was nearly finished at one edge, while
blasting for another portion of the foundation, five stories deep, was
going on at the other edge.

Derrick No. 2 was in the new foundation. Jim's foreman was a Greek. His
companion, with whom he guided the rock that the derrick lifted was a
Sicilian. The steam drillman whom Jim had to help was a negro. There
were ten nationalities on the pay roll of the company. Jim had grown
accustomed to feeling in school that New York was not in America, but in
a foreign country. Down in the five-story hole in the ground, with the
ear-shattering batter of the steam riveters above him, the groaning of
the donkey engines, the tear and screech of the steam drills beside him,
with the never ending clatter and chatter of tongues that he could not
understand about him, Jim often got the sense of suffocation of which
his father had complained. He detested foreigners, anyhow. There was in
Jim the race vanity of the Anglo-Saxon which is as profound as it is
unconscious.

Now, with his boyish sweat mingling with that of these alien workers on
the great new structure, Jim wondered how he was going to stand this,
su