The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1876-05-20
Correspondence of the Baltimore County Union.
IFampisns and the Whisky jug.

MessrS. Editors 81 noticed the report Of the
Grand Jury Of your county the other day on
the subject of the "tramp nuisance" The
country everywhere seems infested with these
miserable, halfclad, half-starved and aban-
doned paupers, known as Cramps" and every
where they preambulate they seem to carry
terror to the inhabitants, because of their dam
ger to personal and private property, and also
personal safety.
Now if these Cramps" are such menace to
communities and to the tranquility and peace
of neighborhoods, both in city and country,
would it not be we'll to inquire as to the cause
of their very great prevalence throughout the
country?
Some may say that the "hard times" have
had the tendency to increase the number of
CRAMPS" employment being scarce; but |
think this will hardly solve the question, for
| Cramps are usually made of that sort of stuff
that does not possess much industry to work at
any time. SO then here is one cause-laZineSS
in the individual.
But this does not account for the whole pre-
valence of the evil or nuisance, and | want to
call attention to another and perhaps more
prolific cause, viz: Whisky.
In our cities at every corner and in every
block almost are places where whisky and other
beverages that destroy manhood and produce
idleness and dissoluteuess of habits are dealt
cut both night and day, to the unsuspecting
victim, until every moral faculty and his rea-
son have been beclouded and weakened, his
manhood gone, his habits of industry and self
reliance destroyed, his purse rided, until not a
penny remains with which to buy more drink
or bread, and his reputation and occupation
also at the same time destroyed; his clothes,
after he has become debauchee, are in tatters,
and he is longer respected and has no
friends, employment or home.
Is not this man, deprived of all these, ready
to become tramp" or pauper?
He does so. Thrown out from friends that
no longer recognize him, and from the home
that sheltered him, and degraded and OF no re-
pute, as he now is, aud as the rum-seller has
made him, he goes forth pauper, a "tramp,"
to beg or steal his bread, for bread he must
have.
Wbe will employ him as he travels through
the country-perhaps both unwilling and by
reason of his debauched condition, unable to
work and driven to steal, when all other
sources of a disreputable or reputable kind fail,
to get bread? His shelter he finds as he may
by the side of hay-stacks, in hay-mows,
barns or elsewhere. He usually steals or per-
haps begs a few tattered garments to wear
His money, alas if he has any, is spent in
whisky-to buy more of he"FeH Destroyer" that
has already so degraded him. This is his condi-
tion--a ptiable and helpless one!
| said in our cities there are places where
drunkards and. "tramrs" are produced, but
they exist also everywhere in the country;
though perhaps the great number OF the tramps
come from the cities.
l think that if the whisky traffic was got rid
of there would be great many less cramps"
travelling through the country to annoy and
terrify the people. It is certainly one of the
fruitful causes of the evil. Whisky drinking
produces dissoluteness of habits, idleness, de-
stroys capacity for business, causes poverty,
and certainly much of the "trampism" preva
lent in the country; and if people and cemmu-
mites want TO get rid of the latter, think it
would be well to try to get rid of the former.
1t is useless to pass laws against "tramps,"
and to punish them, perhaps, by incarceration
a short time in jails, if as soon as they escape
therefrom they can find whisky shep near by
to which they can again resort to drink Of that
which has already so degraded them that they
arc "loathed upon the earth" and are pest to
society.
Appended below l send you few poetical
lines distracted from q newspaper, entitled
"The jug of Whisky" destroy which and you
have destroyed one of the main causes OF
"trampism" and pauperism everywhere, as well
as great part of all the crimes.