The Ginsbergs' introduction to America was the ghetto on the Lower East Side of New York where they lived in a four-room railroad flat. Mose began schooling with a Yiddish teacher, only to have it cut short by the sudden death of his father. The Ginsberg children went to work, Mose selling matches, candles and ice on the sidewalk. On Saturday evenings he would take the horse-drawn streetcar to the Peddler's Market on 9th Avenue between 38th and 42nd streets known as Hell's Kitchen. "I sold matches, a penny a box, six boxes for five cents. I'd sell everything right out. And I used to go to the saloons and sell candles and cigar lighters. In those days there was a saloon on every corner. Occasionally, I'd get a glass of seltzer in my face, too - oh yes, they'd put you out! It was an Irish neighborhood, and Jewish peddlers didn't fit in too good in those days. Getting home without getting chased was hard."

Making ends meet was not easy for the Ginsberg family, and in 1894 they left New York and began a long trek north by boat to Troy, by railroad to Plattsburgh and Saranac Lake and then by horse and buggy to the logging town of Buck Mountain where relatives were waiting for them. Mose remembers the loneliness of those dark woods: "It took all day long to go just thirty-two miles. And needless to say, we didn't see anyone. To come from New York City to a place like this...."