“North of the Slot were the theaters, hotels, and shopping district, the banks and the staid, respectable business houses. South of the Slot were the factories, slums, laundries, machine-shops, boiler works, and the abodes of the working class.”

These lines describe the central geographic divide within San Francisco at the time of the story. They also illustrate the literal class divide as well as a metaphoric distinction between the middle and working class that will be important in the story.

“At first, Freddie Drummond found it monstrously difficult to get along among the working people. He was not used to their ways, and they certainly were not used to his.”

These lines introduce Freddie’s initial entrance into the working-class area south of the Slot. He begins as an outsider and will become more comfortable there as the story progresses.

“In those six months he worked at many jobs and developed into a very good imitation of a genuine worker. He was a natural linguist, and he kept notebooks, making a scientific study of the workers’ slang or argot, until he could talk quite intelligibly. This language also enabled him more intimately to follow their mental processes, and thereby to gather much data for a projected chapter in some future book which he planned to entitle ‘Synthesis of Working-Class Psychology.’”

This passage describes Freddie’s initial approach to the residents south of the Slot. Essentially, he is there to research and study them and gather information to forward the writing of his book.