It is such an old subject in New York. It has been here so long. For thirty-five or forty years newspapers and magazines have discussed the bread-line, and yet there it is, as healthy and vigorous a feature of the city as though it were something to be desired. And it has grown from a few applicants to many, from a small line to a large one. And now it is a sight, an institution, like a cathedral or a monument. A curious thing, when you come to think of it. Poverty is not desirable. Its dramatic aspect may be worth something to those who are not poor, for prosperous human nature takes considerable satisfaction in proclaiming: “Lord, I am not as other men,” and having it proved to itself. But this thing, from any point of view is a pathetic and a disagreeable thing, something you would feel the city as a corporation would prefer to avoid. And yet there it is.
For the benefit of those who have not seen it I will describe it again, though the task is a wearisome one and I have quite another purpose than that of description in doing so. The scene is the side door of a bakery, once located at Ninth Street and Broadway, and now moved to Tenth and Broadway, the line extending toward the west and Fifth Avenue, where formerly it was to the east and Fourth Avenue. It is composed of the usual shabby figures, men of all ages, from fifteen or130 younger to seventy. The line is not allowed to form before eleven o’clock, and at this hour perhaps a single figure will shamble around the corner and halt on the edge of the sidewalk. Then others, for though they appear to come slowly, some dubiously, they almost all arrive one at a time. Haste is seldom manifest in their approach. Figures appear from every direction, limping slowly, slouching stupidly, or standing with assumed or real indifference, until the end of the line is reached, when they take their places and wait.
A low murmur of conversation begins after a time, but for the most part the men stand in stupid, unbroken silence. Here and there may be two or three talkative ones, and if you pass close enough you will hear every topic of the times discussed or referred to, except those which are supposed to interest the poor. Wretchedness, poverty, hunger and distress are seldom mentioned. The possibilities of a match between prize-ring favorites, the day’s evidence in the latest murder trial, the chance of war somewhere, the latest improvements in automobiles, a flying machine, the prosperity or depression of some other portion of the world, or the mistakes of the government at Washington—these, or others like them, are the topics of whatever conversation is held. It is for the most part a rambling, disconnected conversation.
“Wait until Dreyfus gets out of prison,” said one to his little black-eyed neighbor one night, years ago, “and you’ll see them guys fallin’ on his neck.”
“Maybe they will, and maybe t............