One finds among them a type of incipient organization, whereby the Penner of each district have a kind of headman who assigns to the members of the district their places in the night shelter and arbitrates their quarrels. The Penner scrupulously see to it that no criminal infiltrates them, and, when this happens, they denounce him to the police to whom they often render good services. The headmen of the Penner are well-known persons whom the authorities always know how to find when they need information about some obscure character. Such a specification of poverty, as the lack of shelter implies, is necessary today to contribute an element of association.

XREF: Recalls later studies of informal street economies and mutual aid networks; also evokes Robert Putnam's social capital among marginalized groups.

XREF: Relates to ideas about the visibility of poverty shifting with modernization — connects to Goffman's stigma work and contemporary debates about panhandling bans.

Georg Simmel, on individuality and social…, loc. 447