A Letter From the Publisher

By Robert L. Miller

For those who worked on this week's cover package on beggars, the issue is a part of everyday life. In Manhattan panhandlers flood the subways during the morning rush hour and congregate outside the Time & Life Building on the ; Avenue of the Americas. A few blocks west are some of the city's welfare hotels, whose squalor and dangers often drive yet more families onto the streets to beg. "It was once possible to grow up in New York City and hide from its problems," says Staff Writer Nancy Gibbs, who wrote the main story, "but now the poor demand our help and attention, and no one imagines anymore that by ignoring them they will disappear."

TIME staffers, like everyone else who has ever walked a city block, have debated the merits of giving to panhandlers. "Until this assignment," recalls Jerome Cramer, who reported on the story from the Washington bureau, "I was one who lived by a firm no-give policy. I believed that organized charities were best able to provide the care and services needed by panhandlers." But as Cramer talked with panhandlers in the nation's capital, he became convinced that "begging is their job, and they do it because they are in need. They may need food or they may need a drink, but they do need the money."

Other correspondents also found their attitudes evolving. "It's not too much to ask that giving to charities be supplemented, not supplanted, with giving to panhandlers," observes Scott Brown, a Los Angeles correspondent. He found a majority of panhandlers in Santa Monica, Calif., to be "far too weary to demand anything more than a glance and a moment of my time -- most simply remained silent."

Chicago Correspondent Elizabeth Taylor found that "while reporting on this story, I inevitably focused on why panhandling makes someone who is approached feel uncomfortable, and realized how dreadful it is for people in great need who think they have no choice other than to put themselves in a situation in which they will be rejected -- and often abused in the process -- again and again just to get a few coins." One of the hardest parts of the assignment, she says, "was walking into someone's life, encouraging him to trust you and tell his story, then leaving." After spending several hours with one beggar, Taylor made plans to meet him at the same corner the next day. He never returned.