People On The Breadline are poor and on the verge of destitution. The phrase has an American origin, and travelled across the Atlantic in the 1870s. Around that time a bakery, run by the Fleischman family in New York, was renowned for the quality and freshness of its bread. All the bread sold was baked in the morning. Any left over at the end of each day was given to the poor and starving for free, rather than being kept for the following day's customers. In America, a queue is known as a line, so at the end of each day a “breadline” of hungry or starving people would form outside the bakery.