A young scholar, recently graduated from Princeton College, travels across the United States as a member of the working class, taking any job he could find, enduring hardships and struggling to make a living. He travelled mainly on foot, designing for himself a social experiment on experiencing different class and culture structures and the reality of working conditions at the end of the 19th century. This volume continues the story that began in the first volume (The Workers - An Experiment in Reality -The East), and spans the region from Illinois to California - Summary by Phyllis Vincelli