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 roa...