Chicago, 1910
A week's attendance at any police court will convince anyone that the curse of the town is the loafer, the professional "out of work" cuss who pretends to be hunting a job, and hunts well that the job may not overtake him.
He manages to live off of some one. If foolish relatives do not supply him with a living, he makes it by his wits, with the help of a brace and bit and a "jimmy" and friends (?) who through fear, or by influence will take the stand to testify to his character, hence he escapes and the community suffers. He can always find a way around the vagrancy laws, and like the poor, he is always with us.
Lost to all sense of shame or decency, he lives off a mother, brother or sister's work, or even a woman's shame, anything but work by his own hands. The health department is great on prescribing remedies for all sorts of evils, and we sincerely wish they would tackle this job of getting rid of the pestiferous loafer.
—Suburbanite Economist, Chicago, Aug. 19, 1910, p. 1.
Note: The typesetting on this editorial had some of the words and portions of lines switched around, and apparently some words left out. I patched it up to make it make sense. The question mark (?) after "friends" is as in the original, which may have been someone in the typesetting department with a bad manuscript wondering what was going on with the context. I think it's questioning whether the loafer's friends are really friends. But with the botched up text, the "com-" from community is hooked on to "friends" and someone might be saying, "What???"
No comments:
Post a Comment