Tramping with Tramps Part 16

It may interest the reader to know how I lived during the time I traveled as a tramp. Except on one occasion, when my funds gave out, I paid my way regularly so far as food was concerned. A friend sent me a postal order for a few dollars nearly every week, and I managed to live rather comfortably at lodging-house restaurants. Occasionally I would meet a pal of former years, and if he had money, or found that I had, nothing would do but we should celebrate meeting each other again, and at such times my friend in the East got word that my remittance must be hurried up somewhat; but, as a general thing, I dined fairly well on two dollars a week. For sleeping-quarters I had bunks in lodging-houses, benches in police stations, and "newspaper beds" in railroad sand-houses. I chose one of these places as circ.u.mstances suggested. If there was nothing to be gained in the way of information by going to a sand-house or a police station, I took in a lodging-house, if one was handy. Once I slept in the tramp ward of a poorhouse, and never had I spent a more disagreeable night. A crowd of tramps to which I had attached myself had used up their welcome in a town where there were three police stations, and it had been arranged that on the night in question we should all meet at the tramp ward of the poorhouse. A negro was the first one to get there, and a more frightened human being than he was when the rest of us put in an appearance it would be hard to imagine. We found him in a cold cellar, absolutely without light and furnished with nothing but an immense bench, about four feet wide, four feet high, and ten feet long. In Siberia itself I have never seen a gloomier hole for men to pa.s.s a night in.

"I turned up here 'bout five o'clock," the negro said, "'n' they sent me to the smokin'-room, where them luny blokes was smokin' their pipes. I never knew before that they sent luny people to poorhouses, 'n' I couldn't understan' it. I told one of 'em what I was there for, 'n' he told me that this cellar down here has ghosts in it. Well, o' course, I ain't 'feard o' ghosts in most places, but, by jiminy, when the keeper came 'n' put me down here 'n' left me in the cold 'n' dark, somehow or other I got to thinkin' o' that luny bloke's stories, 'n' I jus' had to holler. W'y, I never felt so queer before in my life. Suppose I'd gone crazy; w'y, I could 'a' sued the county for damages, couldn't I? Don't you ever soogest any more poorhouses to me; I don't wonder people goes crazy in 'em." When the crowd first saw the negro he was shouting at the top of his voice: "Spirits! spirits! There's spooks down here!"

We all spent a most miserable night in the cellar, and I doubt whether any one of us would willingly seek shelter there again.

Indeed, when the first month of my investigation was over, and war had been declared with Spain, it seemed to me that I had gone through so much and was so hardened that I could go to Cuba and worry through all kinds of trouble. I have since regretted that I did not go, but, at the time, I had become so interested in the work that, when I returned to my employer for further orders, and he said to me, "Well, now that you have satisfied me in regard to the att.i.tude of the tramp toward the company's property, suppose you satisfy yourself concerning the att.i.tude of the company toward the tramp," I readily fell in with the suggestion. To make my final report complete it was obvious that I ought to get an insight into the workings of my employer's police force, and for the second month he gave me permission to travel on freight-trains, engines, and pa.s.senger-trains, and a letter introducing me to the different employees of the company with whom I was likely to come in contact. With these credentials I was able to circulate freely over the property, to inquire minutely into the work of the police department, to meet the local magistrates, and particularly the jail- and workhouse-keepers. It was also possible for me to make an actual count of the trespa.s.sers who were daring enough to attempt to travel on this closed road.

This work was not so tedious and dangerous as that of the first month, and there were more comforts to be enjoyed; but I had to be up at all hours of the night, and the bulk of my time was spent in train-riding.

After thirty days of almost constant travel I was convinced, first, that the tramps had told the truth about the road, and that it is exceedingly difficult to trespa.s.s on it with impunity; second, that although the police force is not perfect (none is), it was doing exceptionally good work in freeing the community of tramps and beggars. It differs from ordinary railroad police forces in that it is systematically organized and governed. In dealing with tramps and trespa.s.sers the plan is to keep up a continuous surveillance of them, and they are taken off trains one by one, day after day, rather than in squads of fifty and sixty, with no more effort in this direction for weeks and sometimes months, as is the prevailing custom on most railroads. There is consequently very little crowding of magistrates' courts and jails, and the taxpayers are not forced to board and lodge a great collection of vagabonds. I was also impressed with the fact that the force is on friendly relations with munic.i.p.al and village police organizations along the road, and has the respect of communities formerly at the mercy of a constantly increasing army of hoboes.

So much for my personal experience and finding in this latest investigation in "trampology"; it was as interesting a tramp trip as I have ever made, and I learned more about the best methods to employ in attacking the tramp problem in this country than on any previous journey. It is now my firm belief that, if the tramps can be kept off the railroads, their organization will become so unattractive that it will never again appeal to men as it has done in the past. No other country in the world transports its beggars from place to place free of charge, and there is no reason why this country should do so.

The custom has grown up in the United States during the last thirty years. Before the Civil War there were comparatively few tramps in America, and practically no railroad tramps. After the war there suddenly appeared on the scene a large cla.s.s of men who had become so enamoured of camp life that they found it impossible to return to quiet living, and they took to wandering about the country. Occasionally they worked a little to keep themselves in "pin-money," but by 1870 hundreds of them had given up all intention of working, and had founded the organization known to-day as the "Hobo-Push." By that year, also, they had discovered that our turnpikes, particularly in the West, were very poor roads to travel on, and they began to walk on the railroad-track.

If, at this time, the railroad companies had had laws pa.s.sed, such as are in force to-day in Great Britain and on the Continent, forbidding everybody but an employee to walk on railroad property, except at public crossings, we should have learned, ere this, to obey them, and the railroad tramp would not have been developed. These laws not being enacted, however, it was not long before it became very clear to the tramp that it would be much more comfortable to sit in a box-car and ride, than to "drill" (walk) over the ties. An appreciation of this character is acted upon very soon in Hoboland, and by 1875 the majority of the professional vagrants were taking lessons in jumping on and off moving freight-trains. The trainmen, partly because they thought that many of these trespa.s.sers were deserving but penniless out-of-works, and partly on account of the inborn willingness of every American to help a man in unfortunate circ.u.mstances, made practically no serious effort to keep the tramp off their trains, and by 1880 the latter was accepted by railroad companies as an unavoidable nuisance on railroad property.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A BRAKEMAN ON A FREIGHT-TRAIN COLLECTING FARES.]

To-day it is the boast of the hoboes that they can travel in every State of the Union for a mill per mile, while in a number of States they pay nothing at all. On lines where brakemen demand money of them, ten cents is usually sufficient to settle for a journey of a hundred miles, and twenty cents often secures a night's ride. They have different methods of riding, among which the favorite is to steal into an empty box-car on a freight-train. At night this is comparatively easy to do; on many roads it is possible to travel this way, undisturbed, till morning. If the train has no "empties," they must ride on top of the car, between the "b.u.mpers," on one of the car ladders, or on the rods. On pa.s.senger-trains they ride on top, on the "blind baggage," and on the trucks.

Taking this country by and large, it is no exaggeration to say that every night in the year ten thousand free pa.s.sengers of the tramp genus travel on the different railroads in the ways mentioned, and that ten thousand more are waiting at watering-tanks and in railroad yards for opportunities to get on the trains. I estimate the professional tramp population at about sixty thousand, a third of whom are generally on the move.

In summer the entire tramp fraternity may be said to be "in transit."

The average number of miles traveled daily by each man at this season of the year is about fifty, which, if paid for at regular rates, would cost, say, a dollar. Of course one should not ordinarily pay so much to ride in a box-car as in a pa.s.senger-coach, but the ordinary tramp is about as comfortable in one as in the other, and, on the dollar-a-trip basis, he and his 59,999 companions succeed in getting out of the railroad companies sixty thousand dollars' worth of free transportation every day that they all travel. Multiply this figure by a hundred, which is about the number of days in a year when all trampdom "flits," and you have an approximate idea of how much they gain.

Another serious loss to the railroads is that involved in the disappearance of goods undergoing transportation, and in claims for personal injuries. Some tramps steal, and some do not, but every year considerable thefts are made from freight-cars, and tramps, or men posing as such, are generally the guilty parties. Professional thieves frequently become tramps for a time, both to minimize their guilt and to elude capture, and the probability is that the majority of the greater thefts are committed by them. Tramps proper are discouraged thieves, and I have seldom known them to steal anything more valuable than fruit from freight-cars and metal from idle engines. In a year's time, however, including all the thefts committed by both tramps and professional thieves, a very appreciable loss results to the railroads, and I can recall, out of my observation, robberies which have amounted to several thousand dollars.

That railroad companies should have to reimburse trespa.s.sers for the loss of a hand or foot while riding unauthorized on trains will strike every one as a very unjust tax on their resources, but such claims are constantly made. Let us say, for example, that a young boy who has been stealing his way on a freight-train loses a leg. There is a type of lawyer who at once takes up a case of this sort, going to the boy's parents or relatives and suggesting to them the advisability of claiming damages, a.s.serting his readiness to serve them in the matter. "All right," says the father; "get what you can." In court the lawyer draws a horrible picture of these engines of death, the railroads, showing how they are constantly killing people. If the boy's father is poor, this fact is also brought graphically to the attention of the jury, and the wealth of the corporation is described as something enormous. If the lawyer manages his case cleverly, making out that the boy was enticed on to the freight-train by the trainmen, or that he fell under the wheels through their carelessness, there are but few juries that will refuse to give the father at least enough damages to pay the lawyer's fee and the doctor's bill, and then there is a celebration over having "squeezed" another railroad company. For a private person to be compelled by a court to pay damages to the father of a boy who fell from an apple-tree in the private person's orchard, where the lad was an obvious trespa.s.ser and thief, would be considered an outrage.

I bring out these facts about the losses to the railroads in some detail because the public is really the railroad company, and consequently the sufferer.

To tell all that the country at large suffers from the free railroad transportation of tramps would take me beyond the limits of this chapter, but there are a few points which must be noted. In the first place, the railroads spread the tramp nuisance over a much greater stretch of territory than would be the case if the tramps were limited to the turnpikes. There are districts in the United States which are so difficult to reach by the highroad, on account of unprofitable intermediate territory, that the hobo would never attempt to go near them if it were not easy for him to get over the disagreeable parts of the journey in a box-car. Take the trip from Denver to San Francisco, for instance. There is not a vagabond in the country who would undertake to walk across the American Desert merely to reach "'Frisco," and if walking were the only way to get to that city it would be left largely to "coast beggars." As matters now stand, however, you may see a beggar one day in Fifth Avenue in New York city, and a fortnight later he will accost you in Market Street in San Francisco. Many tramps can travel as rapidly as the man who pays his way, and I have known those who could even "hold down" the Chicago Limited from Jersey City to Chicago without a break.

All this contributes to the difficulty of locating and capturing the dangerous characters of tramp life; and, as I have said, many professional criminals, who have nothing to do with beggars in other quarters, mix with them in freight-cars.

A remark, in this connection, of Mr. Allen Pinkerton is popular in Hoboland. He is reported by the hoboes to have once said, in a conversation about the capture of criminals, that he thought he could catch, in time, almost any kind of criminal except the tramp, and him he could not catch because it was so difficult to locate him. "One day he is in a barn, the next in a haystack, and the next Heaven only knows where he is, for he has probably got on to the railroad, and there you might as well look for a lost pin."

The railroads also help to keep the tramp element in our large cities.

It very seldom settles in the country, and not for any length of time in provincial towns. New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, San Francisco, Buffalo, Baltimore, New Orleans, and other like places are its main strongholds. The more the criminal element of a country fastens itself upon its cities, the harder it is to break up, and in the United States this is what is taking place. Chicago, for instance, is as much a center in the criminal as in the business world, and almost every freight-train entering it brings a contribution to its criminal population. Even without railroads the tendency of crime to predominate in towns would exist; evil-doers feel more at home in city streets and haunts than in the country; but their present strength in our cities is largely due to the free transportation they get from the railroads.

Another striking fact is that out-of-works who beat their way on freight-trains very easily degenerate into professional vagabonds. I have traveled with men who, in six months' time, had become voluntary vagrants merely because their first stolen rides, while in search of work, had demonstrated to them how easy it is to manage without working and paying their way. The average unemployed man in the United States goes from one large city to another, rather than, as is the custom in Europe, taking in the intermediate towns and villages, where there is no such likelihood of the labor-market becoming congested. In a few weeks, unless he is a man of very strong character, he learns to travel merely for travel's sake, and develops into a "stake-man," who only works long enough to get a "stake" and then go off on a trip again. Among the so-called unemployed in this country there are thousands of this type, and they are the result of this love of side-door Pullman excursions.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A TRAMPS' DEPOT.]

There is one more fact which cannot be overlooked--the temptation which the railroads have for a romantic and adventuresome boy. A child possessed of _Wanderl.u.s.t_ generally wanders for a while, anyhow, but the chance he now has to jump on a freight-train and "get into the world quick," as I have heard lads of this temperament remark, has a great deal to do in tempting him to run away from home. Hoboland is overrun with youngsters who have got there on the railroads, and very few of them ever wander back to their parents. Once started "railroading," they go on and on, and its attractions seem to increase as the years go by.

Walking has no such charms for them, and if it were their only method of seeing the world, the majority of those who now keep on seeing it, until death ends their roaming, would grow tired. The railroad, however, makes it possible for them to keep shifting the scenes they enjoy, and, in time, change and variety become so essential that they are unable to settle down anywhere. They are victims of what tramps call the "railroad fever," a malady for which a remedy has yet to be prescribed.

Can the tramps be driven off the railroads? It was to satisfy my own curiosity in regard to this question, and to find out how successful my employer, the general manager, had been in his attempt to answer it in the affirmative, that I undertook the investigation which I have described. Previous to his efforts to keep tramps off railroads, it had been thought, as he has stated, that it was cheaper to put up with them than to pay the bills which a crusade against them would occasion.

It has at last been demonstrated, however, that they can be refused free transportation, with a saving of expense to the company, and with great benefit to the community; and the time has come when the public should demand that all railroads take a similar stand in regard to this evil.

If all the companies would take concerted action, in a few years very few tramps, if any, would try to beat their way on trains; an appreciable number would give up tramping entirely, because their railroad privileges are to many the main attraction of the life; a few would try to become professional criminals again, partly out of revenge and partly because tramping on the turnpikes would be too disagreeable; and a large number would take to the highways, where some at least might be made to do farm-work. The reader may take exception to the third possibility, and think that great harm would come of an increase in the professional criminal cla.s.s; but, as I have said, tramps are really discouraged criminals, and a return to the old life, of which they had made a failure, would only land them in the penitentiary.

It is probably impossible ever entirely to eliminate the vagrant element in a nation's life, and no such hope is held out in connection with the reform advocated in this article; but this much is certain: had all the railroads been as closed to tramps, during my first excursions into Hoboland, as one of them has recently become, one man, at least, would not have attempted any free riding, and would not have found so many tramps to study.

PART III SKETCHES

PART III SKETCHES

PAGE I. OLD BOSTON MARY 317 II. JAMIE THE KID 336 III. ONE NIGHT ON THE "Q." 355 IV. A PULQUE DREAM 366 V. A HOBO PRECEDENT 372

I

OLD BOSTON MARY

On the southern outskirts of the city of Boston, hidden away in a field, and reached by streets that gradually degenerated into straggling lanes, stood until a few years ago an old shanty, noted for nothing but loneliness and spooks. No one in the neighborhood knew to whom it belonged or what was its history. It was almost too forlorn to be interesting, and few went near it. The children in the district claimed that queer noises were heard in the shanty at night, and their mothers threatened them with its sheltered ghosts when they were especially naughty. But this was the extent of the shanty's reputation in its own parish.

Its history, or at any rate so much of it as is known, is anything but romantic. When first built, it belonged to a "Paddy" on the railroad; and after various generations of this proprietary family had pa.s.sed on to the better quarters that Boston provides for its ambitious Irish citizens, it became so dilapidated and forlorn that it was turned over to some cows pastured near by, as shelter for stormy days. It was still used for this purpose, I am told, when Old Mary rented it. How she discovered it, and why it attracted her, are questions which even her best friends found difficult to solve. But there was something about it which appealed to her, and for several months she lived her queer life in this uninteresting old building. Her neighbors knew almost nothing about her, except that she was an eccentric old woman, and that she harbored a strange cla.s.s of friends who might with greater propriety have lodged in the city almshouse. But otherwise she was a foreigner in her own province, and no one could tell what she did or how she lived.

Strange, too; for in some respects this old creature was a most notorious character, and had perhaps as many acquaintances and friends as any citizen of Boston. Almost every evening, after dark, had there been curious eyes on watch, stragglers of many sizes and conditions might have been seen wending their way, stealthily and cat-like, to her shanty, and ears alert might have heard a queer pa.s.sword tapped on the wooden door, which, as of its own free will, swung back on noiseless leather hinges, and, closing, hid the strangers from view. This went on night after night, and no resident of the neighborhood knew or cared much about it. Whatever was done in the shanty pa.s.sed off so quietly and un.o.btrusively that public curiosity was not awakened.

My first knowledge of the place was on this wise: One afternoon, while studying tramp life in New York, I dropped in for a moment at a popular resort of vagabonds in the Bowery. I had already had several months'

experience in their company, and was casting about for some new feature or phase of the life; naturally enough, I turned to the saloon to hear of something which would put me on a fresh track. As luck would have it, I chanced to overhear two Eastern beggars discussing the customs and inst.i.tutions of Boston. Their conversation interested me, and I drew nearer. During their talk, reference was made to Old Mary's place, which I had never heard of elsewhere, and I determined to see it.

It was not long before I had found a companion and persuaded him to accompany me to Boston. He also had heard of the place, and was fairly well acquainted with its mistress, who, he declared, had been a well-known hobo out West some years before. Her history, as he recollected it, and which I know now to be quite true, was something like this:

About forty years ago, a Gipsy girl in England, who had wandered about with her tribe through France as well as Britain, came to America, hoping to find her Rom friends here strong enough to afford her society and protection. But for some reason she failed to meet with the welcome she had expected, and as there was nothing else in the New World more akin to her old life than the tramp's peripatetic existence, she joined the brotherhood, and for over thirty years was recognized as a full-fledged member. Her specialty, the hobo said, was "ridin' the trucks"; and in this dangerous business she became an expert, and was probably the only woman in the world who ever made a practice of it. It may surprise some that a woman reared in Gipsy society, and accustomed to the rigorous social divisions which obtain there, should ever have entered trampdom, composed almost entirely of men. It must be remembered, however, that there are women in all cla.s.ses of society who are men's women, not women's women, and at the same time none the worse for their peculiarity. There is a certain comradeship in their relations with men which even a stunted sense of honor will not abuse, and which adds piquancy to their friendship.

The Gipsy girl was one of these, and had her friends as well as her lovers. The lovers failed as she grew older, but this strong-souled companionship stood her in good stead, and held the friends she made.

She who had been so poorly cared for all her life long had developed somehow a genius for taking care of others, and so, after thirty years of hard riding and hard faring of all sorts, her head not quite clear about a good many things that human justice calls crime, she set up a poor, miserable home for the brotherhood of tramps. It was a crazy idea, perhaps, but the woman herself was pretty well "crippled under the hat,"

my friend declared, and was known from Maine to California, in true tramp dialect, as "Bughouse Mary," or, as politer folk would say, "Crazy Mary."

She settled herself at first in a tumble-down old tenement-house in the very heart of Boston, and her place soon became known--too well known, in fact--to certain officious and official personages who had on more than one occasion found dangerous characters sheltered there. After some weeks she thought it necessary to move on, and pitched her tent on the spot already described. It was here that my companion and I first tested her sisterly welcome. A town tramp put us on the right road, and gave us explicit directions. He advised us not to go by daylight, and asked, "Does you blokes know the rules out at Mary's? I guess she'd take you in anyhow, but mos' the blokes, when they goes out there, takes along a handful o' terbakker an' a chunk o' beef or somethin' else ter chew. She allus 'xpects her half, too. It's a sort o' law out there, 'n' p'r'aps you lads 'u'd better do as I tells ye."

We followed his advice, and I looked for some beefsteak, while my companion found the tobacco and bread. About nine o'clock we started, and spent fully an hour in finding the place. At the door, as we knew of no especial knock, I whispered through one of the cracks the word "Hobo," knowing that this was the usual tramp call. We soon heard a queer voice asking our names.

"Cigarette," I replied.