The Long Loneliness

Day goes to work at The New York Call. Founded in 1908, the Call soon became America’s premier socialist newspaper. Before she finds the job, she walks the streets with her sister, looking for work. Though they are just two years apart in age, Day feels like she has grown up, whereas her sister has remained a child. Day again feels lonely: “In all that great city of seven million, I found no friends; I had no work; I was separated from my fellows” (51). During that lonely five-month period, Day does have an opportunity to explore the city of New York. The poverty is not the same as Chicago’s. There are different smells in the slums, and more men aimlessly sitting around on the streets. However, Day really wants to live in New York.

Day hears of a New York police squad that has decided to become a “‘diet squad,’” experimenting with “how little they could live on” (52). Perhaps they are trying to show that it is possible for poor people to exist on very little. This stunt inspires Day, who “offered to be a diet squad of one, demonstrating how [she] could live on five dollars a week,” and is hired by the Call, a Socialist paper (52).