Left: debs for NYEE, Center: Margaret Loeb Kempner. Despite a smattering of initial. Whereas hobos, itinerant workers, and grifters had always been a part of the public landscape, confined largely to the Bowery and Skid Row, now everyday folk—lower- and middle-class men, women, and children—were out of work and homeless. Everywhere one turned, the makeshift shanties, soup kitchens, flophouses, and shelters were inescapable. The number of despairing and destitute who poured into the dispensary was staggering: patient visits leaped from , in to , in and need-based interviews surged 63 percent over the same interval.