business was to offer a home and refreshments to beggars
in exchange for the proceeds of their foragings; and was
there any one else in the whole city who would do this --
would the victim have done it himself?

Poor Jurgis might have been expected to make a suc~
cessful beggar. He was just out of the hospital, and des~
perately sick-looking, and with a helpless arm; also he
had no overcoat, and shivered pitifully. But, alas, it
was again the case of the honest merchant, who finds that
the genuine and unadulterated article is driven to the
wall by the artistic counterfeit. Jurgis, as a beggar,
was simply a blundering amateur in competition with
organized and scientific professionalism. He was just out
of the hospital -- but the story was worn threadbare, and
how could he prove it? He had his arm in a sling -- and
it was a device a regular beggar's little boy would have
scorned. He was pale and shivering -- but they were
made up with cosmetics, and had studied the art of chat~
tering their teeth. As to his being without an overcoat,
among them you would meet men you could swear had on
nothing but a ragged linen duster and a pair of cotton
trousers -- so cleverly had they concealed the several suits
of all-wool underwear beneath. Many of these profes~
sional mendicants had comfortable homes, and families,
and thousands of dollars in the bank; some of them had
retired upon their earnings, and gone into the business of
fitting out and doctoring others, or working children at
the trade. There were some who had both their arms
bound tightly to their sides, and padded stumps in their
sleeves, and a sick child hired to carry a cup for them.
There were some who had no legs, and pushed themselves
upon a wheeled platform -- some who had been favored
with blindness, and were led by pretty little dogs. Some
less fortunate had mutilated themselves or burned them~
selves, or had brought horrible sores upon themselves with
chemicals; you might suddenly encounter upon the street
a man holding out to you a finger rotting and discolored
with gangrene -- or one with livid scarlet wounds half
escaped from their filthy bandages. These desperate ones

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v?