This chapter, on literatures of labor and poverty, centers on Philadelphia and considers narratives of a group often sidelined in critical discourse: the “free” laboring poor, especially the mobile poor, both black and white. Illuminating the rich, complex interrelationship between oral and literary culture in this period, these narratives reveal a fascination with the voice of the poor that was evident throughout early national culture. The chapter first takes up a variety of poverty narratives, from enforced narratives delivered at the Philadelphia Almshouse to written begging letters to published beggar narratives and other autobiographical texts; it then explores how oral testimonials of the poor shaped the dialogic form of the early American novel.