Walter A. Wyckoff 
A Day with a Tramp / and other days [PDF ebook] 

PREFACE
The following narratives, like those published in the series of “The Workers, ” East and West, are drawn from notes taken during an expedition made ten years ago. In the summer of 1891 I began an experiment of earning my living as a day laborer and continued it until, in the course of eighteen months, I had worked my way from Connecticut to California.
In justice to the narratives it should be explained that they are submitted simply for what they are, the casual observations of a student almost fresh from college whose interest in life led him to undertake a work for which he had no scientific training.