Our first positions after our release from prison were in the employ of
the P. N. Peterson Granite company, of St. Paul and Stillwater, Mr.
Peterson having known us since early in our prison life.
We were to receive $60 a month each and expenses. Jim was to take care of
some office work, and take orders in the immediate vicinity of Stillwater.
He worked mostly through Washington county, and with a horse and buggy,
but had not been at work more than two months when the sudden starting of
the horse as he was getting out of the buggy started anew his intermittent
trouble with the bullet that lodged under his spine, and he was compelled
to find other employment.
He then went into the cigar department of the Andrew Schoch grocery
company in St. Paul, and after several months there was employed by Maj.
Elwin, of the Elwin cigar company in Minneapolis, where he remained until
a few days before his death.
I traveled for the Peterson company until Nov., 1901, covering nearly all
of Minnesota. But the change from the regularity of prison hours to the
irregular hours, meals and various changes to which the drummer is subject
was too much for me, and I returned to St. Paul to enter the employ of
Edward J. and Hubert C. Schurmeier, who had been strenuous workers for my
pardon, and James Nugent at the Interstate institute for the cure of the
liquor and morphine habits, on Rosabel street in St. Paul.
There I remained several months, and then was employed by John J.
O’Connor, chief of police at St. Paul, in connection with private
interests to which he could not give his personal attention.