On October 1, 1898, twenty-year-old laborer Peter Dumbrowski married Lettie, a girl from his Detroit neighborhood. Both of their Polish immigrant families had left their new Canadian homes in 1881, joining thousands of other families who had already moved south for the promise of good wages in an emerging city.² The following summer, at the age of seventeen, Lettie gave birth to their first daughter and would soon be pregnant with a son. Peter earned enough as a metalworker to support the small family as well as make a down payment toward the purchase of a six-room home on the west side. By Peter's fortieth birthday, he could claim that he made thirty dollars a week at one of Detroit's most important employers of men, Timken Detroit Axle. His eldest son, now sixteen, contributed to the family economy most of his salary (twenty dollars per week) from another key operation, Insulated Wire Works.

     Information on day workers is sketchy, but figures tallied by institutions other than government—by agents operating employment bureaus, by care providers at day nurseries located in settlement houses, by public officials administering mothers' pensions—point to the centrality of day work in urban families. When social workers with Detroit Public Welfare (DPW) interviewed Lettie in 1915 they found that despite Peter's wages the Dumbrowskis lived a troubled life. After twenty years of marriage, Lettie had given birth to nine living children and endured her husband's excessive drinking, taunts, and beatings. Because Peter's temperament often caused him to lose work, she supported the family with day work. Ultimately, the security of the Dumbrowski family depended on Lettie's regular earnings in day work. Lettie earned only three dollars per week as a day worker, yet her wages, not Peter's higher but irregular wages were the dependable, ongoing source of income that kept the family afloat.