Miscellany: Shrewd

In Hamburg (reported the current issue of The World’s Health) and in other Rhineland and southern German cities, a shrewd new system of handling beggary has been evolved. Books of tickets, each worth five or ten pfennigs, are available to generous citizens at the City Hall. Upon being accosted, instead of handing the ragged one money, so often misgiven to impostors, the benefactor tears out tickets, directs the mendicant to a relief bureau, with assurance that his case will be looked up and aided by food, clothing and even employment within 24 hours of his applying. The genuinely destitute are thus succored. Charlatans tear up the tickets in disgust, soon quit their game.