The Jackson standard. [volume] (Jackson C.H., Ohio) 1847-1888, 1875-06-03
[From the Scientific Americana
A Practical Cure for Vagrancy.

When Count Rumford became the
friend of the King and virtual ruler of
Bavaria, he found the country swarmin e
! with beggars. In the large towns, beg
gary was an organized imposture, inso-
lent, clamorous, persistent. The rural
| districts were overrun with tramps of all
ages and every nationality, who levied
contributions, robbed and tyrdnnized eve
rywhere; and not only their impudence
| and clamorous opportunity were bound :
less, to use the Counts own words, but
they had recourse to the most diabolical
arts and the most horrible crimes in the
prosecution of their most Infamous trade.
All the regular machinery for the re-
preston of vagrancy was unavailing. The
people were disheartened. Industry was
well nigh paralyzed by the parasitic null
titude and the honest peasantry had be-
come so corrupted by bad example that
they would leave their work in the fields
to beg of travellers on the highway. Beg
gary had become so common and Gus
tomary that it no longer seemed shame
ful or infamous.
Yet the whole system fell in day
when attacked by the Counts resolute
will and sterling sense. His remedy was
work, fairly rewarded, so presented as to
make industry as attractive as possible,
but vigorously insisted on. His plans
for housing, feeding, and employing the
beggar class were quietly perfected; then,
on the first day of January, $780, every
beggar was arrested and set to work.
The law was: No idleness, no begging,
no dirt or debauchery; but work for all,
good food, kind treatment, and instruc-
ton in the ways of honest living In one
day the plague of beggary was stopped.
And it was not long before the majority
learned to prefer the comfort, decency,
and respectfully of honest industry to
their former squalor, idleness, debauch-
cry, and crime. And the experiment
paid financially.
Count Rumfords report of the expert
ment, written after it had been five years
in operation, shows that it had not only
banished beggary and effected an entire
change in the manners, habits, and APP
pearance of the class which had been so
abandoned and degraded, but that it had
made them self-supporting. The saving
effected in cutting off a great source Of
crime was beyond estimation.
In every part of the Eastern and Mid |
die States, especially within walking dis
tance of our chief cities an order of
things is growing up the precise counter
part of that which the Count found in
Bavaria. The tramp is everywhere
male, female, limp, lazy, insolent. Every |
country road swarms with them and the |
country people begin to look upon them
as an inevitable inHiction, less danger |
Gus when fed and sheltered than when |
hungry and at large. Refuse them food,
and your hen roost pays the penalty. |
Deny them a bed in the barn, and they |
set it on fire. They travel in gangs and
disperse to forage, levying contributions
right and left Their vagrant life suits
them and miserable as they seem to be,
no proffer of honest wages for honest
work will induce them to leave the road.
Every season their number increases,
and competition only increases their
audacity. Unless the evil is differently
dealt with, it will soon become as intol-
cradle as it was in Bavaria.
No method of treatment involving
large preliminary outlay for workshops,
concert of action, or central authority
can be looked for here; we need not one
but ten thousand Rumfords. Every town
must apply it's own remedies; neverthe-
less it would not be hard to devise plan |
by which the whole system of tramping |
could be as quickly broken up as it was
in. Bavaria, and that without taking the |
tramps from the roads they love so
dearly.
Any town can inaugurate the plan by