“Some people have doubted the police story of the immigration of beggars, but investigation proves it to be true and unexaggerated. There has been — and continues to be — a steady influx of professional beggars from Europe, lured to these shores by the tales they have heard of the money to be made from ‘those stupid Americans.’ The tales told to them by their enthusiastic relatives in the United States have been to the effect that any lame, halt or blind person, or anyone who could simulate affliction could make more money in greater New York in a week than could be made in Europe in a year.

“And those tales are absolutely true. Professional mendicancy has actually become such a profitable occupation in Brooklyn and New York that these swindlers and loafers make more money than honest hardworking men. There is hardly a professional beggar in Brooklyn or Manhattan who is not considerably better off than 75 percent of the people who give alms. Nearly all of them have comfortable sums put away in banks…”