In the early years of the Great Depression, thousands of unemployed homeless transients settled into Vancouver's "hobo jungle." The jungle operated as a distinct community, in which goods were exchanged and shared directly, without benefit of currency. The organization of life was immediate and consensual, conducted in the absence of capital accumulation. But as the transients moved from the jungles to the city, they made innumerable demands on Vancouver's Relief Department, consuming financial resources at a rate that threatened the city with bankruptcy. In response, the municipality instituted a card-control system-no longer offering relief recipients currency to do with as they chose. It also implemented new investigative and assessment procedures, including office spies, to weed out organizational inefficiencies. Todd McCallum argues that, threatened by this "ungovernable society," Vancouver's Relief Department employed Fordist management methods that ultimately stripped the transients of their individuality