MENDICANCY, a condition of penmen: pauperism, where professional beggars are st numerous that government laws are necessao, to remove or control them. A population o: mendicants naturally results in a criminal com munity and all countries containing this ek meat have endeavored to remove this evil ty legislation. There were beggars in biblical times. As early as 1351 France was compellol to pass laws against °Lazy persons, truants, and able-bodied beggars.° Laws were passed is England on this subject as early as the time of Henry VIII. Mendicity has been found to m ist to a greater extent in South European coins tries than elsewhere, and in Spain and Italy the professional beggar has been one of the great est evils, the standard of prosperity, morally and intelligence declining as mendicity in creased.
According to the census statistics of 1900 there were 91,227 professional beggars in Span. of whom 51,948 were women. In some of the cities beggars are licensed to carry on their trade. Seeking alms is recognized as a mate business, and the municipality demands a percentage upon the collections. Seville is the only city in the kingdom which forbids beg ging upon the streets. In some of the other towns beggars are allowed to come out and ply their trade one day in the week, perhaps Friday or Sunday, when the streets swarm with them t as they go from house to house, sometimes on horseback, it is said sometimes in carriages m also. In Madrid there is no restriction and no license, and the streets are lined with them.
The United States gathers no figures of beggars as their existence is illegal. If paupers, they are supposed to go to the almshouses. The 1910 census showed 73,645 so cared Tor, 9,500 in New England, 10,272 in New York, 8,653 in Pennsylvania, 7,400 in Ohio, 5,395 in Illinois, 2,927 in Indiana, 2,641 in Wisconsin, 2,600 in California, etc.
In Mexico, both Indians and native Mexi cans to the number of thousands make up the army of professional beggars, and Mexico ap pears to have no laws to regulate them. In the Mexican cities and at fairs and festivals the mendicants are to be seen in astonishing vari ety; some maimed, some blind and able-bodied fellows with most artistic "make-ups') of tat tered garments and unkempt hair and beards. Some of these stand before one silently with a dumb appealing look in their eyes. Others kneel in the midst of the way and fill the air with their doleful stereotyped appeals for char ity. These beggars are humbugs after the man ner of their kind the world over.
In the United States, where labor is in greater demand and better paid than abroad, there seems to be no excuse for mendicity, and yet there are many professional beggars here, largely able-bodied foreigners. The laws of Massachusetts, New York and some other States make vagrancy a crime and authorize the commitment of tramps to the workhouse, house of correction and common jail for vary ing periods. In the Atlantic Coast States the evil is a serious one.
New York City is a beggars' paradise. Be tween 6,000 and 8,000 professional mendicants make that city their home. Every other city in the United States suffers from the professional beggar, but not to the same extent as New York. The outdoor officer of the Charity Or ganization Society says that mendicants from all parts of the country flock to New York be cause the indiscriminate giving there is so com mon. Cities and States ship their beggar popu lation to New York. About 10 per cent of these beggars are women.