ss men who were his customers had sharpened up his wits
all round. In the ten weeks he saved over forty dollars. I wanted him
to put this in the bank but he insisted on buying his own winter
clothes with it and on the whole I thought he'd feel better if I let
him. Then he had another proposition. He wanted to keep his evening
customers through the year. I thought it was going to be pretty hard
for him to do this with his school work but we finally agreed to let
him try it for a while anyway. After all I didn't like to think he
couldn't do what other boys were doing.

CHAPTER XVII

THE SECOND YEAR

Now as far as proving to us the truth of my theory that an intelligent
able-bodied American ought to succeed where millions of ignorant,
half-starved emigrants do right along, this first year had already
done it. It had also proved, to our own satisfaction at least, that
such success does not mean a return to a lower standard of living but
only a return to a simpler standard of living. With soap at five cents
a cake it isn't poverty that breeds filth, but ignorance and laziness.
When an able-bodied man can earn at the very bottom of the ladder a
dollar and a half a day and a boy can earn from three to five dollars
a week and still go to school, it isn't a lack of money that makes the
bread line; it's a lack of horse sense. We found that we could
maintain a higher standard of living down here than we were able to
maintain in our old life; we could live more sanely, breathe in higher
ideals, and find time to accept more opportunities. The sheer, naked
conditions were better for a higher life here than they were in the
suburbs.

I'm speaking always of the able-bodied man. A sick man is a sick man
whether he's worth a million or hasn't a cent. He's to be pitied. With
the public hospitals what they are to-day, you can't say that the sick
millionaire has any great advantage over the sick pauper. Money makes
a bigger difference of course to the sick man's family but at that
you'll find for every widow O'Toole, a widow Bonnington and for every
widow Bonnington you'll find the heart-broken widow of some
millionaire who doesn't consider her dollars any great consolation in
such a crisis.

Then, too, a man in hard luck is a man in hard luck whether he has a
bank account or whether he hasn't. I pity them both. If a rich man's
money prevents the necessity of his airing his grief in public, it
doesn't help him much when he's