Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 78, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 April 1914 — Picking Up a Living on the Streets of Gotham [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Picking Up a Living on the Streets of Gotham

NEW YORK. —He was a charter member of the Amalgamated Associates Who Get a Living Without Work. He never ascended to “second story” robbery dr descended to pocket picking. Both were too risky. Quick as a trout after a

fly, slippery as an eel just out of Hudson river mud, and with sight as alert as that of a crab after carrion on the river bottom, he skims the tidal flow of New York’s shopping eddies and gathers in what he may. That gathering is good when all New York is shopping—shopping strenuously—but tethered helplessly with its skirts so tightly wrapped about its legs that to stoop over and pick up a dropped parcel is a physical proposition that must be passed up.

Handbags will pop open, particularly If properly pressed by an adept. That helps when business has been bad with the accumulator of unconsidered trifles. ' "I literally pick up a living, and an honest one,” he explained, when asked why he did not return a bundle to its owner, instead of trying to get it into his pocket unobserved. “Findings is keepings, I was taught when I was a kid, but I always advertise them first —if they’re worth it. Good rewards you get sometimes. If I make a good find around the big hotels and it’s advertised, especially when it says, 'No questions asked,’ and it’s a watch or jewel that’s listed in all the pawnshops, I return it" - ' - It turned out that the accumulator had been an exercise boy in a racing stable, steering suckers against handbooks, capper at auction rooms, and finder and feeder for street fakers at intervals.'