Enforced idleness made men take to the road; depressions doubled and trebled the number of homeless; industrial accidents could turn workers into street beggars. During the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, many middle-class commentators failed to understand these facts of economic life. The labor union recognizes the tramp as the victim of our present economical system, the New York Times proclaimed pompously in 1886, instead of recognizing in him, as other people do, the victim of a violent dislike to labor and a violent thirst for rum. To those who viewed the new homelessness of the post-Civil War decades in this manner, the issue was simple: there were some people who simply did not want to work. --Down and Out, on the Road: The Homeless in American History, p. 123; photographs from Gilded Age: A History in Documents
Posted on: Fri, 03 Oct 2014 20:11:58 +0000
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