After testing me on the other piles he asked me if I
could measure, and could I tally? I told him I could, and he said,
"I'll give you $9.00. Is that enough?" I said that would do for a
starter, and he told me to be on hand at seven o'clock in the morning.
I delivered the few books I had left, drew my money, got a shave, bought
a leather apron, and went to bed. I was up and at John McC----'s yard at
6:30.
He was Police Commissioner then, and one of the whitest men I ever ran
up against.
I started in at my third job since I had been converted. I was at home
in the lumber yard, as I had learned the business While roughing it in
Tonawanda, Troy, Syracuse, Buffalo, and on the Lakes. And when a man
learns anything, if he isn't a fool he can always work at it again. Here
I was at a business few could tell me much about.
TESTIFYING IN A LUMBER YARD
The lumber-handlers as a rule are a free and easy set, nearly all
drinking men. It's warm work, and when a man is piling all day, pulling
up plank after plank, he thinks a pint of beer does him good. They rush
the can--first the piler, then the stager, and then the ground man, then
the piler again, and so on.
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