There are distilleries in Jewtown, or just across its borders, that depend almost wholly on her custom. It is curious to find preconceived notions quite upset in a review of the nationalities that go to make up this squad of street beggars. The Irish head the list with fifteen per cent. Eight per cent. were Germans. The relative prevalence of the races in our population does not account for this showing.
Various causes operate, no doubt, to produce it.
Chief among them is, I think, the tenement itself. He is distinctly on its lowest level from the start. With the Irishman the case is different. The tenement, especially its lowest type, appears to possess a peculiar affinity for the worse nature of the Celt, to whose best and strongest instincts it does violence, and soonest and most thoroughly corrupts him. The blind beggar alone is winked at in New York's streets, because the authorities do not know what else to do with him.