ABSTRACT
In the 1880s and 1890s American popular fiction abounded in humorous, cruel, sentimental, and, occasionally, realistic portrayals of tramps, bums, and lowlife. In the huddled crowd it is hard to distinguish between those who are unemployed laborers and those who are tramps by choice, taking charity as their due. Beggars are so strategically placed in the courtyard, at the entrances, and in the corridors and passageways of the church that there is no way of evading them except by entering and leaving through the roof. Some places get more traffic than others; these are occupied by "old timers" who hold them by right of seniority. Economic opportunities in the Jewish ghettos of Eastern Europe were so limited that some poor people, urimeleit, although not exactly beggars, had to depend on the more fortunate. To reduce the burden on their immediate neighbor's urimeleit would go to other Jewish communities to fill their knapsacks with food for their wives and children.
