The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather: were my business to know it.
His father was a shoemaker, his uncle a furrier, and he,
being a younger son, was apprenticed to the latter's trade.
You never got anywhere working for your relatives, he said,
so when he was a journeyman he went to Vienna and worked
in a big fur shop, earning good money. But a young fellow
who liked a good time didn't save anything in Vienna; there were
too many pleasant ways of spending every night what he'd made
in the day. After three years there, he came to New York.
He was badly advised and went to work on furs during a strike,
when the factories were offering big wages. The strikers won,
 My Antonia |