HUNTING FOR WORK IN SAN FRANCISCO.

Westport Times, Volume V, Issue 875, 17 October 1871, Page 2

HUNTING FOR WORK IN SAN FRANCISCO.

In a letter to the Alta California " Waif " gives the following account of his experiences while in search of omployinent in San Francisco: In what beautiful colours California is painted—at a distance! The Elysium of romance, the Utopia of nature, the Dorado of abundance, the working man's paradise, the millionaire's sanctuary, the poet's dreamland, the adventurer's haven, are but faintly descriptive of the terms employed to illustrate the "milk and honey " character of the country. ' Se Fictiou befools the world. .

Did you ever find yourselves, gentlemen, in a strange city*without friends or money ? Pray pardon the implied poverty of the question; but this is an up and down age, you know, and because a man happens for the nonce to be poor nolens volena the ergo does not necessarily come in that he is no gentleman. Well, if you were never so placed you will be unable to understand the alphabet of the situation. It is a curious lesson, well- worth knowing—perhaps. Say, a man is intellectually Bmart and can dig up Greek roots, and decline Latin verbs with the greatest facility. His reading is extensive and varied, combining Thucydides, Homer, and Virgil, with Kant and Schiller, and Moliere, Shakespeare, Tennyson, and the rest. He has, moreover, solved Euclid, and handled parallelograms and quotients without trouble; mounted the pyramids of philosophy, and dived into the mines of science, being informed not only in Uteris kumanioribitSybut also in disciplinismaihe. maticis 6t physieis; can design complex syllogisms, and trace beautiful flowers of .rhetoric,, besides grasping the laws of merchantile pursuits and drawing the.balance sheet of trade to a fraction. He naturally enough is conscious of his powers and attainments, and dreams of appreciation. Let it be surmised that he has freely enjoyed the use of money without, until now, having been taught its value, and that for the first time in his life, he looks grim necessity in the face and seeks work for wages. Is he inclined to despair ? Cui bono ? He is in San Francisco—California is before him, and the inhabitants-, by repute, are generous, appreciative, and hospitable.

On his arrival he hasalittle money in his pocket, supposed to be enough to pay two months' expenses. Unthought of incidentals creep in, and at the end of six weeks he finds himself virtually destitute. From the first he has studiously examined the columns of the city newspapers and answered every advertisement offering employment, but being unable to comply with the sine qua non as to local references, hj» letters have never been answered. Day after day he has walked the busy streets, every face he sees belonging to a stranger, and every social joy a blank in his lonely life—in the place, but not of the place—friendless, homeless, unloved, and unknown. A sense of respectability leads him at first to mentally discriminate as to what employment he will accept. He seeks in vain, and the lighter his pockets become the more his feelings change. Necessitas non liabet legem. A month has passed without finding work, and his money is gone. What now ? He looks at his watch—his chain—his ring—his breast pin—and for the first time since he was a child a tear gathers in his eye, and his heart grows faint. What he gazes upon are all souvenirs of affection or sentiment endeared by sweet and temder memories—the gifts of the dead—the relics of happy moments. Necessity conqaers his weakness, enabling him to boldly pocket an article of jewellery, relock his trunk, and pass out into the street. Where now ? Like a guilty being, watched and shunned, he reaches a pawnbrokec's office, and, too crest-fallen to look around, sneaks inside. Producing his doomed property to the manhs sees* he asks a loan, and is offered less than a third its value. Expostulation is useless, and finally he accepts the money with a ticket which fixes the interest at ten per cent, per month. He now becomes desperate and determined to find employment, no matter what its nature may be. At last the iron has entered his soul, and he is transformed into a man who is at'once resolute and reckless of the sacrifice of feeling. The experience of an hour has hardened him ten years, and he looks upon the world through altogether different spectacles from those that he has been accustomed to wear.

The spur of necessity goads him to extra energy. Whereas before he sought out gentlemanly occupation, he now seeks any kind of work. He anxiously scans the bulletin boards of intelligence offices, and makes personal application for employment. Like the bills of fare of certain hotels, where every dish asked for is discovered to be '" all out," he finds that he can procure no work expect what he is known to be totally unable to do. " Ah if you were only a good cook, I could put you in a place," is the sympathetic and unsatisfactory answer he gets, and thus his energetic efforts amount to nothing. Day by day his suspicions grow that the ticketed wants are oftentimes ingenious fabrications to make a show of business —the bill of fare dodge in a new aspect. Still persevering, he presents himself ono day to the Secretary of the public Labour Exchange, and is asked if he can shovel sand, the wages being 20dols. a month. Grown by recent experience auspicious of everything)

lie even doubtg" the integrity of this offer, yat expresses his willingness to do tl* work, and is thereupon told to call again in a day or two, when the chances were that he would be employed. So the log rolls. In very truth, work-hunting to a stranger in this city is, in spite of labour reports, the hardest or hard work, and the most difficult to accomplish. With friends and influence, the task, no doubt, is comi>aratively easy 5 but to a man situated as the one I have described, it as an ordeal which hardens his gentler feelings to adamant, and sinks him continually lower in poverty, bitterness, despondency.