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Further, a band of toughs known as the Howard Street Gang prowled the streets in South San Francisco, robbing and raping. It was an ordeal to walk from Hellman House to the ferry landing at night. My mother invariably waited for me at the Claremont streetcar station and she repeatedly urged me to give up my job. And finally, I often resented the fact that being a working girl sharply curtailed my social life on the campus. It seemed to be malign fate that I had to be at Hellman House every time there was a dance or a party that would have been fun, and every time a beau asked me for a date that was the night I had set aside to make up for time lost in my studies. But the job paid $75 a month and I felt that we needed the money.

Another such institution, Hull House in Chicago, greatly influenced me in those formative years in designing and weaving. Ann Swainson said an accomplished Swedish weaver, a Madame de Niergaard, was instructing immigrants there and she advised me to go to Chicago to study more advanced