Constant street accosting by the unemployed wears down the urban middle class

Evidence

In addition to jeers and insults, embarrassments and shocks, and dangers to self and property, it seems likely that the petit bourgeois were also subject to another less threatening, but perhaps no less irritating, form of harassment: they were constantly accosted on the streets by the unemployed, begging, offering services, or asking for jobs. A recent visitor to Guatemala City (where-as in the historic early industrial city-massive numbers of rural immigrants are swelling the ranks of the unemployed) reports that it was impossible to walk down the streets without being subjected to a continual stream of offers to wash his car, polish his car, shine his shoes, bless his car, and so forth, and to a continual stream of requests for money. He adds that he soon found himself becoming irritated by all this “assault” on his self and wanted nothing so much as the right to be left alone (personal communication). — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 341

Categorization

• XREF: Directly connects to the analytical purpose: the relentless street solicitation parallels Simmel’s blasé attitude and the desire for civil inattention in Lofland’s stranger-handling repertoire. The Guatemala City parallel to early industrial cities is a strong explanatory analogy.
• QUESTION: The parallel between Guatemala City’s rural-immigrant swelling and the historic early industrial city is asserted in passing — worth asking what this modern/ancient comparison implies about anonymity as a structural constant.