The Workers

In July 1891, a slender, bookish Prince­ton graduate packed a small knapsack, put on a suit of old work clothes, and walked into a new existence as a member of the working class. The young scholar, Walter Augustus Wyckoff, Class of 1888, would spend a year and a half traveling from Connecticut to Cali­fornia, taking every job he could find, from digging ditches in Middletown, N.Y., to building roads on the grounds of the Chicago World’s Fair. He traveled mostly on foot and lived only on the wage