Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 June 1890 — TWELVE DOLLARS A WEEK. [ARTICLE]

TWELVE DOLLARS A WEEK.

Hundreds of Applications for Positions at Those Figures. A good many stories of misfortune and trouble were revealed unexpectedly by an advertisement which a prominent business man inserted in a recent New York paper for a clerk. The advertisement stated that a business man of experience was wanted to begin at a salary of sl2 a week. There were over 200 answers, and many of them wtere long letters from men who had formerly held positions of unquestionable importance and influence in the commercial world of New York. Some of them had been the heads of great dry goods houses, while other applications were signed by the names of firms that were once well-known throughout the country. They were all willing, and indeed anxious to get a position at the salary stated. One of them had been cashier in a New York bank, and once possessed a good deal of property, but he wrote that everything had gone against him for the past ten years, and that he was absolutely in need of the necessaries of life. Among the answers were several letters from young men who had a collegiate education and a knowledge of several foreign languages.