Notes of an Itinerant Policeman Part 8

Equally amusing, if not so harmless, are the tramp's improvised schools.

In the autumn, when the weather gets too cold for sleeping out, the country schoolhouse becomes one of the tramp's night shelters. He gets in through one of the windows. A wood-pile is near by, and what with a good fire and benches to lie on, he makes a very cosy nest. Let a crowd of ten or twenty appropriate such a place, and there is always a frolic before bedtime. One of the tramps is elected teacher, the scholars'

books and slates are taken from their desks, and school begins. "Moike, oppen yer mug 'n' see if ye kin read," the teacher commands, and the burly pupil begins to paw over the leaves. Later comes a turn at spelling, writing, and "figgerin'," and a wild hobo song ends the session. A keg of beer sometimes helps to enliven things, and then ink-bottles, readers, and spelling-books are scattered about the room in great confusion. The wood-pile also disappears, and sometimes the building itself goes up in flames. I have often wondered whether the real pupils were not glad to find things so topsy-turvy in the morning.

It must take time to put the schoolhouse in order again, and the boys and girls have a vacation meanwhile. The taxpayers grumble, of course, but, as the tramp says, "they ought to fasten things tighter," and until they do he will continue, I fear, to entertain himself at their expense.

An experience that I had not long ago ill.u.s.trates the tramp's unwillingness to have his reading matter regulated by outsiders. I was making an investigation of the tramp situation on certain railroads in the middle West at the time, and one night, in company of some fellow roadsters, I went for shelter to the tramp ward of a poor-house. The room we were sent to was in the cellar, and we all pa.s.sed a very miserable night. In the morning we were given our breakfast in the common dining-room of the inst.i.tution, and while we were sitting at the table the wife of the keeper gave each one of us a "tract," which we carefully tucked under our plates and left there. When we had finished, one of the tramps asked our hostess whether there was a place in the building where we could wash; the hole we had had to stay in over night was so dirty that our clothes and hands were covered with dust, and the tramp knew that any stream we might find outside would be frozen over.

The woman looked at him severely, and said: "There's a brook at the foot of the hill." The tramp's anger was aroused. "Madam," he said, "I have always been taught that cleanliness is next to G.o.dliness. You have given us all tracts, but you won't give us a place to wash. Your religion and mine don't jibe. You'll find the tracts under the plates." We all got another severe look, and the next batch of tramps probably got the tracts.

Of the newspapers that the tramp reads there is but little that is novel to report beyond the fact that he begs for them in the same systematic fashion characteristic of him when looking for his meals. Not all tramps are anxious to keep up to date as regards the world's doings, but a fair proportion of them look for their morning newspaper immediately after breakfast. They go to stores and barber-shops, and do not hesitate to ask even newsdealers. In summer the newspapers which they get also serve them as beds in railroad box-cars; they spread them out on the floor of the car and lie down on them, their shoes and vests doing duty as pillows, and their coats as covering. Their favourite papers are of the yellow kind, but I doubt whether they take them any more seriously than other people do who buy them merely for particular items of news and then throw them away. They like spicy articles and glaring pictures, and scramble with one another for first chance at the _Police Gazette_, but this taste is not unnatural; their life is rough, vulgar, and sensational, and the wonder is that they can appreciate and care for the high-cla.s.s literature which many of them read.

I have said that they get enjoyment out of writing as well as reading.

There are a few well-educated men in tramp life, and they have been surprised attempting to make literature as well as to read it. In Germany it is quite a custom among the _Chausseegrabentapezirer_ to keep diaries in which they jot down notes and comments on their life, and in this country, also, journals and essays by tramps have been discovered. One of the most intelligent criticisms of my tramp papers in _The Century_ came from a Boston tramp, hailing for the time being from Texas. Excepting a few mistakes in grammar which many persons who are not tramps are guilty of, it was a very creditable production.

Once upon a time, not to be too particular, two tramps were shut up all alone in a jail in Michigan, and their sentences wore so heavily upon them that they found it very difficult to be patient. Their stories gave out, the jail fare became tiresome, there was very little to read, and they were by nature very restless. At last things looked so gloomy that they decided to spin a coin for a choice of two suggested pastimes,--writing a story, or planning and carrying out an escape. It was "heads" for the story, and "tails" for the escape. Heads won. True to their contract, these two men, one fairly well educated, and the other with a big imagination, sat themselves down to the task, pencil and paper being furnished by the sheriff. For ten days they wrote and wrote, then rewrote, until, as the man with the imagination said, their "poor brains seemed squeezed to death." Indeed, they had worked so hard that the man with a little education thought it would be worth while to try to sell the story; so, after it had been read to the sheriff and his wife, both of whom it pleased, sufficient postage was collected to send it to a periodical thought to be looking for such contributions; and off it went, and with it the solemn prayers of the authors. Three weeks later, lo and behold! a letter arrived in care of the sheriff. The two men opened it tenderly and fearfully, each tearing a little of the end off and then pa.s.sing it to the other, saying, like silly girls: "I don't dare." But what was their surprise, the terrifying little thing once laid bare, to find in it a check for ninety dollars, payable to them jointly or severally, as if the editor had fancied that they might be turned loose at different times. Unfortunately, they were freed together, and two hours afterward the man with the imagination had so inflated it with whiskey that he wanted to storm the jail and free the sheriff. His story, however, was not disgraced. It is still quite readable. He, poor fellow, would probably like to toss up again for pastimes; when last heard of he was "doing" solitary confinement.

CHAPTER XII.

POLICING THE RAILROADS.

Engineers build railroads and are largely represented in their management, but both in building and operating them they are dependent, at one time or another, upon some kind of police protection. Indeed, there are railroads that could not have been constructed at all without the aid of either soldiers or policemen. The Trans-Caspian railroad was built largely by soldiers, and is still superintended by the war department at St. Petersburg rather than by the minister of ways of communication. The Siberian line is, in parts, the result of the work of convicts, who were carefully watched by police guards, and the Russian civil engineers in Manchuria have needed the protection of Cossacks merely to survey that end of the road. In Germany, practically all the railroad officials, from the head of the engineering department down to the track-walkers, have police power. The conductor of a train, for instance, can put an obstreperous pa.s.senger under arrest without waiting until a station is reached, and resistance to him is as serious an offence as is resistance to the ordinary _Schutzmann_.

In Europe, it was seen, when railroads were first coming into use, that police efficiency, as well as that of the technical railroader, would be required, if the properties were to be well managed, and it was secured at the start. Before the railroads were built it had been made plain, after long experience, that even on the public turnpikes policemen were indispensable, and the authorities decided to employ them on railroads as well. The protection of life and property is a very serious matter in Europe, where precautions are taken which in the United States would seem superfluous. It avails nothing in Germany, for example, for a director of a company to excuse the loss of money intrusted to his care on the ground that he thought he was acting in a businesslike manner.

Inspectors, or commissioners, are appointed to see whether his transactions come up to the standard of what is considered businesslike, and if they find that he has not exercised good judgment, although there may have been nothing intrinsically dishonest in the way he has managed, his bondsmen frequently have to reimburse the stockholders for the loss that his mistakes have brought upon them. It is the spirit of carefulness behind such a precaution as this which goes to explain why the Germans have the systematised police surveillance of railroad property referred to. Much of this surveillance is in the hands of the munic.i.p.al police and rural constabulary, but the fact that the majority of the railroad officials have police authority shows how much protection was considered necessary to manage the properties carefully.

In the United States the idea seems to have been that the engineers and managers could be relied on to get out of railroad investments all the profit that was in them, and that the a.s.sistance of policemen could be dispensed with except as watchmen. It is true that, for a number of years, railroad companies have had on their pay-rolls what are called "railroad detectives," but up to a few years ago there was not a well-organised railroad police force in the United States, and yet there is no country in the world, at the present moment, where railroads are more in need of such auxiliary departments. A great deal of money would have been saved to investors, and not a few lives would have been spared, had the American railroads seriously taken up this police matter in the early days of their existence, and until they do, say what one will about the luxuries to be found on American trains, and the speed at which they run, American railroad properties, in this particular at least, are inferior to those of Europe in management.

The purpose of this last chapter is to call attention to the inadequateness of the police arrangements now prevalent on nearly all railroad systems in the United States, to show what has resulted from this inadequateness, and to interest railroad men and the general public in police organisations which will be equal to the work necessary to be done.

To bring out clearly the defects of the prevailing railroad police methods in the United States, it seems appropriate to take a concrete case, and describe the situation on a railroad which I have been over as a pa.s.senger and as a trespa.s.ser. It employs about sixty men in its police department, and is one of the most tramp-infested roads in the country. The maintenance of the so-called detective force costs the company about forty thousand dollars a year.

By way of ill.u.s.tration, I will give a resume of conversations that I had respectively with a detective, a tramp, and a trainman that I encountered on the property. Each of these men was representative of his cla.s.s, and spoke his mind freely.

The detective had started out in life as a brakeman, but his eyesight became faulty after a few years, and he got a position on the police force. He had just pa.s.sed his fiftieth year when I met him, and was heavy, unwieldy, and inclined to be lazy. His beat consisted of forty miles of track, and he generally went over it in a pa.s.senger train.

I asked him whether he found many tramps on pa.s.senger trains. He was not supposed to devote all of his time to watching trespa.s.sers, but they were so obviously a nuisance on the property that it struck me as peculiar that he did not ride on trains where they were more likely to be found.

"No," he replied, in a drawling voice, to my query, "I don't find many tramps in pa.s.senger coaches; but I know where their camps are, and several of us raid 'em every now and then."

"I should think you would want to ride more on freight-trains," I went on, "and catch the trespa.s.sers in the act, so to speak."

"I'm too heavy to fool around freight-trains; besides, I don't want to have a knife put into me. Some o' them tramps are mighty quick on their feet, and if I went at 'em they'd have a razor cut in me before I could turn round."

I asked him why, in view of his age and heaviness, he did not try to find employment in some other department of the road more suited to his abilities. Railroad companies are often very lenient with employees of long standing, and give them easy positions in their old age.

"This is the easiest department the road's got," he returned. "Besides, I'm my own boss."

"Don't you have to make regular reports to any one?"

"I go to the trainmaster's office every morning for orders, but he don't know much about the business, and generally tells me to do as I think best. We men haven't got a chief the way the regular railroaders have."

"Who is responsible for what you do?" I inquired.

"n.o.body, I guess, but the pres'dent o' the road."

"How do you spend your time?"

"Well, I go to the trainmaster in the morning, and if he hasn't heard of anything special, like a car robbery or an accident where there's likely to be a claim for damages, I stay around the station a while, or go down into the yards and see what I can see. Sometimes I spend the day in the yards."

"What do you do there?"

"Oh, I loaf around, keep the kids away from the cars, chin-chin with the switchmen 'n' the other men, keep my eyes open for fellows that there's rewards for, eat my dinner, an' go to bed."

"Why don't you try to break up the tramp camps?"

"We do try it, but they come back again."

"Don't you think you would probably be more successful if you raided them oftener?"

"Yes, I guess we would; but, you see, there ain't any one who's running the thing. When an order comes from the superintendent to make raids we make 'em, but he don't send in that order more'n once in three months, an' the rest o' the time we do pretty much as we like."

"How do you think things would go if you men were organised and had a chief? Would better work be done?"

"Better work would be done, I guess, but it would be a darned sight harder work," and he smiled significantly.

My tramp informant was an old roadster of about forty, who had "held down" the railroad in question for a number of years. I asked him how long it had been an "open" road,--one easy for trespa.s.sers to get over.

"As long as the memory of man goes back," he replied, with a suggestive flourish of his hand.

"Are not some divisions harder to beat than others?"

"Once in awhile a division'll get a little horstile, but only fer a few weeks."

"How many tramps are riding trains?"

"I don't see all the trains, so I can't tell you; but I never seen a freight yet that wasn't carryin' at least five b.u.ms, 'n' I've seen some carryin' over a hundred In summer there's most as many b.u.ms as pa.s.sengers."

"Is there much robbing of cars going on?"

"Not so much as there might be. The blokes are drunk most of the time, 'n' they let chances go by. If they'd keep sober, 'n' look up good fences, they could do a nice little business."

"Do the police trouble you much?"

"When they round up a camp they're pretty warm, but I don't see much o'

them 'cept then. 'Course you wants to look out fer 'em when a train pulls into division yards, 'cause 'f yer handy they'll pinch you; but they ain't goin' to run after you very far. I've heard that they have orders to let the b.u.ms ride, so long as there ain't too much swipin'

goin' on. The company don't care, some people say."