The first "official" study of poverty and joblessness in the United States was commissioned by the Massachusetts legisla- ture in 1821. (The report's authors suggested that the "sturdy beggar" and "profligate vagrant" be consigned to the work- house.) Interest in the subject waned during the five decades thereafter, when, as economist John Garraty has noted, rootless, out-of-work persons generally answered to the name of pioneers." Then, in the 1870s and '80s,...