The American Tramp

PERHAPS the most striking thing about vagrancy in the United States is that we know so little about it. It results naturally that our treatment of vagrancy is rarely consistent. It follows also that we are often indifferent as to both the extent and the treatment of vagrancy. Our concern for vagrancy is prone to limit itself to computing for the moment the probable orbit of the tramp who happens to knock at the kitchen door, or who “touches ” us on the street for a dime to get to his “sister across the ferry.” In the absence of ample or accessible facts and figures about tramps and vagrancy, our viewpoint remains strongly individualistic and opportunist, as the following quotations from recent considerations of our “tramp problem ” will show.

The Psychological Viewpoint.

In the Atlantic Monthly of May, 1907, the Contributor tells of wandering one day in search of copy. Upon the grassy banks of Salt Creek he ran across Jack the Hobo, waiting for his shirt to dry. Jack was on his back; the shirt hung limply from a branch above.

“I wisht you ’d seen the rivers I seen,” muses Jack. “I seen places where you would n’t never want to do nothin’ all day, but just lay there, smellin’ them flowers and listenin’ to them birds. I come out here to wash my shirt. I start out to work on Monday, takin’ a job to cut grass. Maybe I work all day Monday; maybe I don’t. Some weeks I stick out till Tuesday, or even till Thursday or Friday, but I get to feelin’ uneasy. Bimeby I can’t stand it no longer. ‘ Hell! ’ I say to myself, ' I just got to wash my shirt. That’s what’s the matter with me.’

“Then I come out here and build me a camp fire, and cook something to eat, and lay down on my back, and just enjoy till I think that shirt of mine is dry. Maybe it takes a day; maybe two days — more likely it is close to a week before I feel real sure that shirt is dry enough so it’s safe to put it on again. Then I go back to town and take a job, till I think it needs washin’ again.”

In this idyl the Contributor, believing he sees revealed the true meaning of the ancient nomadic craving, leads us, as readers, to dream of the Golden Age of Vagrancy.

The Sociological Viewpoint.

In Minneapolis, in June, 1907, an annual national conference of charities and corrections was held. Several sessions were devoted to the consideration of vagrancy, its extent, and its treatment. It was conclusively shown that the tramp question has become a national problem. Railroads representing more than half the total mileage operated in the United States and Canada were cited as officially reporting to the conference that the illegal use of railroads by tramps is a grave and constant danger to passengers, employees, and to the vagrants themselves. Most railroads, especially trunk lines, are much troubled by tramps, who steal rides, pilfer, rob stations, build fires in box-cars, place obstructions on the tracks, interfere with signals, stone trains, and at times injure and even kill employees. A representative of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad stated his belief that the financial loss to railroads from vagrancy would total at least $25,000,000 for the year.

The annual reports of the Interstate Commerce Commission show an appalling list of killed and injured trespassers on American railroads. More trespassers are annually killed than the combined totals of employees and passengers annually killed. Since representative railroad officials estimate that from onehalf to three-fourths of killed and injured trespassers are tramps, the annual death roll is gruesomely significant. The injured vagrants do not wait to be counted, if they can avoid it, and therefore the statistics on injured trespassers are not valuable for comparison with those of injured employees and passengers. The following table shows the various ways in which trespassers are killed, the relative frequency of the various kinds of fatal accidents, and also the total deaths and injuries reported during the five years ending in June, 1905.

We have the idea that our American railroads kill many passengers. Yet almost ten trespassers are killed to every passenger killed. We believe that the trainman takes his life in his hands; yet more than twice as many trespassers annually sustain fatal accidents. When we read that in five years 23,974 trespassers were killed by railroads, and 25,236 trespassers injured, we wonder that there should be left living a single Jack the Hobo to wash his shirt. In these five years there were more trespassers killed than there are inhabitants in Bangor, Maine, or Burlington, Vermont. Were this army of the dead lying but three feet apart along the trackside in ghastly regularity, they would stretch out for nearly fourteen miles. At a brisk walk, it would take four hours to reach the end of the line. And were all those reported injured in the last five years lying but three feet apart, we should be obliged to walk for more than four hours more, before we reached the end of this second line. The Baltimore and Ohio representative said that many railroads maintain private “tramp graveyards,” in which are buried many of the unknown dead, without inquest and with expedition. Question: How many city graveyards could be annually filled with the unrecorded, unreported vagrant dead ?

The Viewpoint of the Press

The press is almost unanimously in favor of rigorous treatment of tramps; remedies for vagrancy are less often suggested, most newspapers believing that the buck-saw and the hardest of wood are sufficient to cure the evil. On July 31, 1907, the Chicago Herald thus spoke editorially: “There are several great American jokes, but none is more reliable than Weary Willie.” (Shall we read, for Weary Willie, Jack the Hobo?) “It seems however that he is not all joke. Sometimes he piles up ties on the track to enjoy the dramatic situation caused by a wreck. Sometimes, as when men returning from the harvest fields of the Northwest with their wages are killed for their money by their more vicious and criminal fellows, the funny hobo thus elevates himself to the loftier position of robber and murderer.”

Let us choose a second clipping from hundreds sent to the writer during recent months. On July 14, the Philadelphia Press, commenting on numerous recent assaults by tramps in rural communities, said editorially, under the title, “The Shadow on the Roadside,” “ For the past two weeks the newspapers have each day printed one instance, and often two, of women walking on country roads in and about Philadelphia, or in the rural districts of Eastern Pennsylvania or Southern New Jersey, who have fled in terror from some tramp or vagrant.” (Can it be Jack the Hobo, returning from washing his shirt?) “Tramps continue to multiply. Roads grow more unsafe. No rural countryside can afford to patrol its roads. In the end a state patrol will end this shadow on the roadside by arresting every tramp in sight.”

As these lines are written, the clipping bureau sends in a news dispatch from Pittsburg, stating that the Pennsylvania Railroad has just sent out to country justices of the peace, borough burgesses, and all officers of the law a request that they assist in putting down the tramp evil by punishing those caught stealing rides on trains. “The recent accident at Ridgeway, Pa., where five trainmen were frightfully mangled by a tramp burglar who defended himself with a bottle of nitro-glycerine, has set the Pennsylvania Railroad hard at work on tramp-extermination, and the appeal to-day asks that magistrates give all tramps the law’s limit.”

Let us look at some of the headlines of press “stories,” taken at random from newspapers between July 15 and July 31, 1907.

Macon, Ga. Tramp Terrifies Kathleen, Ga.

Council Bluffs, la. Fifteen Tramps Evicted from Single Train Last Night.

Trenton, N. J. Farmers Bemoan the Lack of Tramps at Harvest Time.

Syracuse, N. Y. Police Took Twenty Tramps.

New York. Sleepy Hobos Ask Freedom of Parks.

Niagara Falls. Furniture Stolen from Freight Cars by Tramps.

Dallas, Tex. Work a Cure for the Hobo.

Milwaukee, Wis. Farmers Deport Grafting Hobos in Freight Car.

Pittsburg, Pa. Tramps Loot House after getting Shelter.

Elkhart, Ind. Only Two Tramps Killed in Big Four Wreck.

Chicago. Cleanly Hobo Steals Bath!! Only Living Specimen of That Class Sought by Police.

The Hobo’s Viewpoint

As illustrating the attitude of mind of the thinking tramp, I cite the following opinion from a noted friend of tramps, a man who indeed has frequently “hit the road ” as a hobo. “ Vagrancy is not a national problem in the sense in which you declare it to be; it is a railroad problem. Penalize the railroads every time they kill or carry a tramp, and the railroad companies will solve the railroad phase of the vagrancy problem without any cost to the community or to the state. If a vagrant were paid for his work while in jail, when he comes out he might have enough money to pay his transportation, and would not have to beat the railroad company. He would have enough money to buy himself good clothes, and would not have to beg them. I can prove by reliable, accurate statistics that more than fifty per cent of the vagrants would work if they could get work.”

And then, for the time being, we feel that it is not Jack the Hobo who is at fault, but society itself, which offers to the vagrant unequal opportunities, unjust imprisonment, and plenty of unguarded chances for him to be maimed or to be killed.

Our Lack of Perspective.

The above quotations show that vagrancy is a serious social problem with wide and varied ramifications. They also show that our efforts to check the “ tramp pest ” are generally spasmodic, half-hearted, and ineffective. Our seriously undertaken remedies tend to be temporary or visionary. Abroad, a generation of careful study of German vagrancy has developed hundreds of roadside relief-stations, wayfarers’ passports, home-inns for over-night, labor registries intertwining many parts of the empire, and voluntary and compulsory labor colonies. In the United States, even a generation ago, the national conferences of charities and corrections were already discussing the tramp, but the country still passes him on, railroads him out of town, condemns him to a short-term sentence in jail, often with farcical labor, or rejoices to have him “ out of sight, out of mind,” at the price of a dime or a nickel.

We have little perspective in dealing with the tramp. We underestimate him as a menace to property, health, and morals, and we overestimate him as a subject for the funny papers or as a harmless bird of passage. We are prone to give the “ poor fellow in hard luck ” another chance or we reflect that after all the difference between the globe-trotter and the tramp is that the latter has n’t the price of the ticket. Is it not likely that most of us are more amused at the discovery in a certain police station that an arrested tramp had a tin patch in his trousers than we are horrified and aroused by the tale of the vicious tramp who blew up that Pennsylvania train mentioned above ? It is not that we are callous; we simply have not gained the sense of proportion.

How humorous, perhaps, that in Acton City, Missouri, one day, forty pints of whiskey smuggled into the jail left “ vags too drunk to be tried! ” But how many of us ponder upon the jail conditions that permit such smuggling and such debauchery ? And how many boys and young men were perhaps awaiting trial in that jail at the time, still innocent in the eyes of the law, yet exposed to this debauch ?

In Middleton, New York, some months ago, “A No. 1,” the gentleman tramp, excited admiration because he claimed to have traveled nearly half a million miles, at an actual expense for railroad fares of only $7.56. But what of the thousands of crippled human wrecks of railway vagrancy that live in our almshouses at public expense, or beg their daily bread at the cost of the individual citizen ? What of the private graveyards along the railroad’s right of way, where the tramps lie who were not so fortunate as “A No. 1 ” in escaping a crunching death beneath the wheels ? And how many of the Middletown admirers saw the statement made by “A No. 1 ” in York, Pennsylvania, some days later, advising the youth to stay at home. “Roving is an incurable habit. Once a tramp, always a tramp. For every kindness done me, I can remember twenty mean acts; for every meal given, a hundred cross refusals; for each fair, warm summer night, ten cold, bitter, long winter nights. For every mile stolen on trains there is one narrow escape from death; there are many weary ones over hot, dusty roads.”

What is Vagrancy ?

The time has come for us to study this national problem seriously and consistently. What is vagrancy ? One is tempted to call vagrancy at present the state of being legally nothing else. Its characteristics are largely not positive, but negative. Before a magistrate, the positive fact that “it is no crime to be poor ” often outweighs the charge against the vagrant of having no visible means of support. Of course the absence of visible means of support is but symptomatic of an intention to derive a livelihood from the labor of others. The laws of many states, striving for a definition of vagrants that will include all sorts of intentionally idle, wife-deserting, penniless, scheming, “ undesirable citizens,” create blanket definitions, lacking precision, and even placing the arraigned vagrant in the light of a persecuted martyr, just because he apparently has not committed any definite misdemeanor.

The vagrancy law of Massachusetts, quoted below, is one of the best in this country. “ Vagrants are idle persons who, not having visible means of support, live without lawful employment; persons wandering abroad and visiting tippling shops or houses of ill-fame, or lodging in groceries, out-houses, market-places, sheds, barns, or in the open air, and not giving a good account of themselves; persons wandering abroad and begging, or who go about from door to door, or place themselves in the streets, highways, passages, or other public places, to beg or receive alms, and who do not come within the definition of tramps” (cited below). “ They shall be deemed vagrants, and may be sentenced to the Massachusetts Reformatory or the State Farm, or shall be punished by imprisonment for not more than six months in the house of correction or workhouse.”

Massachusetts defines the tramp practically as the vagrant’s alien brother, “the man from nowhere.” “Whoever, not being a minor under seventeen years of age, a blind person or a person asking charity within his own city or town, roves about from place to place begging, or living without labor or visible means of support, shall be deemed a tramp.” The law furthermore makes the riding upon a freight train of a railroad prima facie evidence that the person is a tramp.

Sentences and Imprisonment.

Our laws make vagrancy a misdemeanor, and punish by short sentences. Suspended sentences are common. Ten nights in a bar-room are too often followed by ten idle days in jail, or by running the “loafer ” out of town. At Duluth, Minnesota, on August 10, “ Wallace was given ten days in the workhouse, with the condition that the sentence be suspended if he would leave town immediately.” Sentences are pronounced, to take effect twenty-four hours later, if the man is still to be found. The Associated Charities of Lawrence, Kansas, report that “ the custom here with vagrants is, (1) arrest; (2) fine; (3) as they have no money they are put to work on the rock pile; (4) no guard; (5) vagrants run off; (6) which is what is planned.”

President James J. Hill of the Great Northern writes that he believes the passing-on of vagrants, or their imprisonment under short sentences, to be absolutely wrong. “ The only penalty that can wipe out or sensibly reduce vagrancy is enforced labor. The stone heap and work on the public highways are the best remedies against roving vagrants,” General Manager Yohe of the Pittsburg and Lake Erie says that “ the jail is merely a place where vagrants clean up and rest at the expense of the taxpayers.”

Minimum sentences or suspended sentences are common; first, because the potential criminality of the vagrant is not sufficiently appreciated, and secondly, because perhaps it seems more just that “ ninety-nine guilty should escape than that one innocent person should suffer.” A common plea before the judge is that the vagrant has a job to go to the next morning. Crowded police courts, throwing off business much as the ten-cent lunch-house projects its customers’ orders during rush hours, cannot wait to verify such statements, but must often give the vagrant the benefit of the doubt. The willingness to work which is professed by the unemployed vagrant cannot be tested in court. Theoretically the jail or the workhouse tests this willingness, but only upon imprisonment. Indeterminate sentences to hard labor, with a five-day minimum, for instance, for those who will “say nothing and saw wood,” are not yet frequent.

Moreover, it costs money to keep tramps in jail, the “ good money of the taxpayers.” Why should the town pay the tramps’ board-bills ? They do not belong to the town; the railroads give, then let the railroads take away. And so, along the Big Four lines, some town authorities warn vagrants not to get off the trains, and along the C. B. and Q. some town officials even assist tramps aboard the trains, to facilitate their departure. False economy and civic unneighborliness cause the vagrant to be run out of town — and into another town. The Associated Charities at Bellingham, Washington, report that all the Puget Sound cities arrest their vagrants and then make them move on. Vagrants inflict themselves upon the next city as long as possible, making the rounds of all the cities, and the only thing attempted is to keep them on the move. “ Nobody here seems able to solve the vagrancy problem.”

The Lodging-Places of Vagrants.

If on the road the vagrant is often a criminal, a menace to property, and sometimes to life, in his lodging-places he does not cease to be dangerous. The farmer’s wife hesitates to refuse food to the demanding tramp, lest the vagrant return at night, sleep in the barn, and fire it on his departure. In the cities, the tenand fifteen-cent lodging-houses are often notoriously menacing to the city’s health, safety, and morals.

The sanitary conditions of such lodging-houses are frequently wretched. Mr. E. T. Lies, formerly of the Chicago Bureau of Charities, reported in 1905 (and conditions change little from year to year in the cheap lodging-houses), that “ some Chicago lodging-houses charge a nickel for shelf, floor, or plank, assembling thus the lowest form of beggars or thieves. In half of the one hundred and sixty-five houses, the sanitary conditions call for immediate radical action by state or city health authorities. Filth of every description; foul and bug-infested mattresses and bedding; absolute darkness in the inmost sections of private rooms; seriously defective plumbing; lack of privacy in toilet facilities; absence of baths — these prevail.

“ The unfortunate man, forced to sojourn in them for a while, may enter sound and strong, and come out condemned to death. The infection he and his fellows carry around the city and state may mean death to many more. Six hundred and seventy-nine consumptives had to go from a portion of the Chicago lodging-house district in the last five years to the Cook County Hospital, most of them in the dangerous stages of the disease. Ventilation is so poor in the lodginghouses that a man sleeping in them night after night becomes saturated with the thick, noxious exhalations, so that he is physically unable to resist disease, and his vital energy for thought and work is slowly sapped away.”

Mr. Lies’s observations can, in the main, be duplicated any night in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, or Washington. On August 20, 1907, I visited the notorious Bismarck lodging-house in Mulberry Street, New York, finding there men in drunken stupor, sleeping with their clothes on, upon canvas hammocks stretched from beams; the atmosphere of the room was intolerable. One rusty, filthy sink served for perhaps fifty “ guests.” The toilets were inadequate and foul. No towels or soap were at hand. “ What do you expect for seven cents a night ? ” asked the proprietor. “ These men furnish their own towels! On the ten-cent floor, downstairs, there are four towels an hour in the morning.” Think of four towels for perhaps twenty-five men, when the average man sleeping in these lowest-priced lodgings is so dirty that one towel should be a minimum supply per person! On previous visits to this tramps’ hostelry, I have found scores of drunken men stretched stupefied upon the floor, sleeping here and there amid filthy rags and half-eaten food.

In cities where the Board of Health is particularly lax in its supervision, overcrowding is common. Mr. H. K. Estabrook of the Philadelphia Society for Organizing Charity reported that on November 19, 1905, he counted one hundred and twenty-one lodgers in a house licensed to receive forty-three lodgers. “ The man in charge said he usually had over a hundred. Fourteen men were on cots, crowded into one room; eight sat on chairs; all the others lay on the floor, or on shelves around the walls; there were two or three tiers of shelves above the floor; forty-seven men lay in the cellar. For a cot, ten cents is paid; for space elsewhere, five cents. The attitude of the Board of Health was toleration and indifference.”

The Missions and the Vagrant.

Is it strange that after a night’s stupefied sleep in such quarters, the first and often overpowering craving of the lodger is for a drink ? In what condition is he to undertake the search for work, or to work if he has found employment ? How futile and ineffective must often be the reclamation efforts of missions and charitable societies, in the face of the debilitating, demoralizing effects of the common lodging-houses of the cheapest class! Missions nightly exhaust their energies in exhortations to the class that is “ down and out ” to be saved by faith; yet those missions which distribute bed-tickets to the converts are generally but sending them back to these very lodging-houses, where the foul atmosphere, the uncleanliness, and the moral contamination tend to ruin the physical and the spiritual man.

The mission has a distinct place in charitable work for the homeless, in conveying religious stimulus to overcome temptation, — a field purposely avoided by most charitable societies. The use of meal-tickets and bed-tickets to attract “ down-and-outers ” may result in occasional actual converts; the practice certainly results in creating the so-called “ mission rounder,” in fostering mawkish, hypocritical testimony, in antagonizing relief societies, and in clouding the vision of the mission-leaders themselves. Missions often maintain curbstone breadlines and free midnight coffee-stands, on the theory that hundreds of homeless men are nightly starving upon the streets. Yet this free treat keeps from the night’s bed and from the day’s work the man who is thus tacitly urged to depend upon the bounty of indiscriminate charity. Mission efforts to save men’s souls are often pitifully regardless of the necessary physical and industrial salvation that must go hand in hand with any enduring religious conversion. To dole out the suggestions of a square meal, in bread and coffee, and to stop there, invites the criticism of being a ridiculous commentary upon salvation. In the spring of 1906 I found on the top floor of the largest mission in Washington, a foul-smelling ten-cent dormitory, which, later in the evening, would be filled with homeless men, many of whom, while I was standing there, were undoubtedly in attendance on the mission meeting on the lower floor. “Let’s get out of here,” said the plain-clothes man who was accompanying me from police headquarters. “ This is the limit for smells! ”

The Efforts of Organized Charities.

The aid given the homeless by charity organization societies in our larger cities is naturally more consistent than that of indiscriminate charity. Recognizing that every able-bodied man should earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, the “ charities ” regard lodging and meals as but means to an end, instead of the great central deed of charity itself. The homeless applicant is directed to hospital or dispensary or convalescent home; transportation to home or work is often furnished him, if investigation proves that it is more advantageous that he should be elsewhere. Temporary employment in woodyard or industrial building is available to every able-bodied man; if he is not able-bodied, or is unaccustomed to manual work, meals and lodging are given, while the reports of visitors, or of coöperating societies in other cities, are awaited.

One of the latest undertakings of two of the largest charity organization societies in this country has been the establishment of special employment bureaus for the handicapped, which aid those suffering from physical or social disability to obtain a respectable livelihood. The special employment bureau of the Charity Organization Society of the City of New York placed, during September, 1907, sixty persons, of whom fifty-two found permanent employment.

The homeless applicant for aid is regarded as socially sick; almost without exception he is in much need of sagacious direction, adequate relief, and often of radical treatment, if he is to be restored to the ranks of industry; hence the systematic use in our larger cities, of visitors, investigators, letters, telephone, telegraph, and even of the cable, in affording adequate diagnosis and adequate treatment to homeless wanderers.

Yet all charitable societies testify to the unwillingness of many homeless applicants for relief to be thus aided through careful diagnosis. The same applicants would submit to a thorough medical examination, but the necessity of a similar social diagnosis is not apparent to them, and often not to the persons who direct them to the charitable societies. A large proportion of able-bodied applicants are not willing to work in return for lodgings, meals, or cash. There is often a frank assumption that the charitable society exists to dole out money, clothes, and groceries, “and no questions asked.” Street-giving to mendicants encourages this attitude of mind. The insistence by the charitable society upon a disciplinary “ quid pro quo ” leads to widely circulated rumors among the homeless and the vagrants that there is no real charity in the “ charities,” and that the officials do nothing but enjoy large salaries. “ Charity,” to many homeless men, means as much of something for nothing as can be obtained; charity to the charitable society means something for something, results for money spent, restoration to industrial efficiency, treatment of the case until results are had, unless the applicant ceases to appear.

Refusal of the applicant to do his share is very frequent. The Joint Application Bureau of New York, maintained by the Charity Organization Society and the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, to aid and advise homeless persons, has during the last four winters distributed about sixty thousand cards on the Bowery, at bread-lines, and in lodging-houses, giving to the homeless men of New York a frank offer of effective aid and assistance in the ways above indicated. Yet only a scant two per cent of the cards were presented at the Bureau. Of the persons applying, the strikingly large proportion of sixty-three per cent made only one call.

Hence woodyards and the accompanying wayfarer’s lodges, where men may receive bed and board in return for work, can be at the most but temporary or deterrent measures in relieving or solving the general problem of vagrancy and homelessness. Occasionally a wanderer’s reform may, at a crisis in his life, be distinctly traced to the methods of the charitable society, but far too many of the homeless are willing simply to pass through the Bureau, the woodyard, or the lodge, and out again into the unknown. The intentionally idle find it easier to beg in our cities than to work. Eighteen hundred and sixty-three beggars, arrested in 1905 in New York City by officers under the direction of the Charity Organization Society, revealed when searched $4099.34, an average of $2.20 per person. Two beggars had over $500 upon their persons; seven hundred and fifty-seven had no money; eleven hundred and four had sums ranging from one cent to $500. These mendicants were arrested while plying their trade, not when the day’s work was over. What would have been the grand total then ?

What We Should Do.

We are at present making and perpetuating vagrants by inconsistent and inadequate methods of dealing with them. We regard them in turn as humorous or terrifying. They furnish copy for weekly jokes and for daily headlines. Abroad, long-tried efforts have been made to relieve the unemployed, of which class the vagrant is the substratum; in this country, passing-on, short or suspended sentences, jail-idleness, demoralizing lodging-houses, indiscriminate charity, and unenforced laws, all tend to perpetuate and render more acute our problem.

The conditions here outlined are but certain phases of the vagrancy problem, but these conditions are such as to be readily recognized, and they can be changed when we make up our minds to change them. Here are certain very apparent cases of society’s neglect. We cannot say that society is wholly responsible for vagrancy, for about vagrancy we know too little. We cannot say that the tramp is the product of his own free will, for we know really very little about him. But we can say that conditions which demoralize, or cripple, or kill, or infect with disease a human being, shall be remedied and done away with. That, it seems to me, is society’s first duty in the better treatment of vagrancy.

Briefly, then : vagrancy must be recognized as a national problem, and for the present the treatment of vagrancy should be deterrent. Able-bodied vagrants must work, or be imprisoned at hard labor. It follows that opportunities for temporary work must be provided for the vagrant who is willing to work in return for food and shelter. The wayfarer’s lodges of the city must become suggestions foxsimilar small lodges (dubbed “ tramphouses ” in Massachusetts) in rural centres. Vagrancy laws must be enforced, if adequate; amended, if inadequate. Sentences of vagrants should be cumulative, to deter repeaters, or those who gladly winter in jail, and vagrants trespassing on railroads should be arrested and imprisoned at hard labor.

Greater cooperation is necessary between towns and railroads in prosecuting vagrants. The cost of the prosecution and maintenance of vagrants should be made a state charge. Railroad-trespass laws should be adopted, or strengthened and enforced. Special state police officers should be appointed to aid in prosecuting vagrants. In cities troubled with vagi-ants and beggars there should be at least one special mendicancy officer, in plain clothes. Beggars are wary of a blue uniform or a helmet. The Department of Health in city or state should prescribe adequate rules to govern the maintenance and supervision of common lodging-houses. Missions giving food and lodging to destitute men should, except in special cases, require a reasonable amount of work in return.

The Future.

These suggestions are not constructive in the sense of advocating new agencies or methods of treating vagrancy. At first we do not so much need new laws as strict enforcement of the laws we have. I have laid stress therefore on the necessity of greater consistency and coöperation on the part of existing agencies, in using means already at hand. Before we advocate far-reaching plans for the future we need to know how many unnecessary vagrants we have at present. Easy-going treatment evidently does not remedy, and it does demoralize; let us try rigorous measures, which are at once humane and disciplinary.

At the last National Conference of Charities and Corrections, the initial steps were taken for the formation of a national vagrancy committee. Its field of work will be as wide as our land. It is probable that among the aims of the committee will be the following: —

Uniform vagrancy and trespass legislation; the abolition of police-station lodgings; the substitution of municipal lodging-houses in the cities, and of socalled “ tramp-houses ” in rural communities; the improvement of jail, workhouse, and almshouse conditions; the separation and separate employment of vagrants in almshouses, apart from paupers; the coöperation of state boards of charity, state lunacy commissions, state prison commissions, and other charitable bodies in effecting these changes; the establishment of state vagrancy committees, to do in the states what the national vagrancy committee will endeavor to do in the whole country; legislation for state compulsory labor colonies, where habitual vagrants may be confined under indeterminate sentences, for long periods of enforced labor; the establishment of state hospitals for inebriates (it is estimated that at least twenty-five per cent of all cases of poverty can be traced to intemperance. Inebriety is curable in early stages, less frequently so in advanced cases); studies and investigations of the causes of vagrancy, including the collection of much statistical information; educational work, through the collection of accurate information about vagrancy, and the wide dissemination of the same throughout the country.

The facts set forth in this article emphasize three things: (1) the extent of vagrancy; (2) its terrible cost in life, health, property, money, and misery; (3) the needlessness of much of it. We must attack the vagrancy problem, both for the sake of the vagrant and for our own protection.

In the Paris Journal of August 18, there is a two-column review, based upon an American article in which the loss of life from railway trespass was shown in detail. The review concludes thus: —

“ Never would a legislator venture to propose that five thousand vagrants should be annually condemned to death, at an average rate of thirteen per day. We would be horrified at the proposal of such massacres. Yet these massacres happen annually in the United States. They continue to recur from year to year, and it is stated that vagrancy is not thereby diminished. The massacres simply put out of the way a certain number of vagrants who are then replaced by others. This ought to give the criminologists food for reflection.”