For the citizens in the city, those ninety percent living in the filthy and chaotic slums, hunger and cold are the norm, living a day-to-day existence, completely separated in class from the nobles in the city center who indulge in luxury.
These city poor, who primarily work as manual laborers, short-term workers, bankrupt tradesmen, washerwomen, drywallers, and dung carriers, have unstable sources of income by nature.
Exhausted from work every day, they barely earn enough to put a morsel of food in their belly.
To them, having black bread to fill their stomachs is the greatest happiness.
Yet, the prosperity of a city largely relies on the exploitation and oppression imposed upon them.
Without a vast supply of cheap labor, it's impossible to produce various handicraft goods, and thus impossible to attract more people to trade, bringing prosperity to the city.
In any city, the majority is always this impoverished class living at the bottom.
