get work and pay her board here. She was pleased to see her in a
way but reflected her husband's point of view in the matter of
work. Anything was good enough so long as it paid--say, five
dollars a week to begin with. A shop girl was the destiny
prefigured for the newcomer. She would get in one of the great
shops and do well enough until--well, until something happened.
Neither of them knew exactly what. They did not figure on
promotion. They did not exactly count on marriage. Things would
go on, though, in a dim kind of way until the better thing would
eventuate, and Carrie would be rewarded for coming and toiling in
the city. It was under such auspicious circumstances that she
started out this morning to look for work.

Before following her in her round of seeking, let us look at the
sphere in which her future was to lie. In 1889 Chicago had the
peculiar qualifications of growth which made such adventuresome
pilgrimages even on the part of young girls plausible. Its many
and growing commercial opportunities gave it widespread fame,
which made of it a giant magnet, drawing to itself, from all
quarters, the hopeful and the hopeless--those who had their
fortune yet to make and those whose fortunes and affairs had
reached a disastrous climax elsewhere. It was a city of over
500,000, with the ambition, the daring, the activity of a
metropolis of a million. Its streets and houses were already
scattered over an area of seventy-five square miles. Its
population was not so much thriving upon established commerce as
upon the industries which prepared for the arrival of others. The
sound of the hammer engaged upon the erection of new structures
was everywhere heard. Great industries were moving in. The huge
railroad corporations which had long before recognised the