Livro Poverty

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE VAGRANT The vagrant is the modern nomad, drifting about, without aim or ambition.

He emigrates to the country on the coming of spring. He returns, with the coming of winter, to the large centres of population and takes up a shifting residence in the various lodging-houses.

In all cities there are special districts in which most of the nomadic vagrants as well as the habitual town bums are to be found. They usually furnish a considerable element to the flotsam and jetsam which constitute a large portion of the population in the districts of vice.

New York has, among other such districts, the Tenderloin and the Bowery. Chicago has South Clark Street, Dearborn Street, and West Madison; Philadelphia, St. Louis, San Francisco, Denver, have similar districts, and so have all European cities.

It is also significant that many cities, if not all, have districts of vice distinguished from each other on monetary lines; there is vice for the well-to-do, and there is vice for the poor.

In the well-to-do districts are to be found hotels for transients, gamblers, perverts, and thesporty elements, and in the poorer districts lodging- houses for tlae vagrant population. In these districts the honest wayfarer seeking work, the clerk trying to live cheaply, and the young man from the country seeking employment in the city, become vicious and vagrant.

Vices are added to their poverty. Such districts have so large a population in certain cities, and wield so powerful a political influence, that the public officials have openly said at times that the vices of these districts could not be controlled.

The mayor of one of the largest cities in this country said a few years ago that special privileges must be granted the people of these districts; they should not be governed by...