Poverty and Hardship

By Z. Libin Published in 1916

Translation by Dan Setzer

Zolomon Libin was the pen name of Ysroel-Zalmen Hurvits (1872-1955).

He is known as "The O'Henry of the Lower East Side," and was also called "The Spirit of the Ghetto."

His stories detail the life struggles and hardships of the Jewish immigrants arriving in America.

The immigrants abandoned all they knew in the Old Country to come to the Goldene Medina, the Golden Land.

What they found was sweatshops and squalid tenements in the Lower East Side which, at the time had the highest population concentration in the world.

He gives us a unique insight into how our fore bearers fought against humiliation and despair, and somehow ended up giving us the world of relative comfort we live in today.

This book is volume III of his four-volume Collected Works