New-York tribune., 1880-09-26
THE TRAMP IND HIS RIGHTS.

These sunny, windy days of late September
put new life into the man and woman who
live BY their wits. 1t is too warm to need
the additional clothes and fuel of winter.
Nature is in her most cheerful and cordial
mood. The farmers are in good humOr
and inclined to be charitable. So are the
townspeople coming home from their summers
pleasurng. The world, in short, looks as if
it knew that it owed them a living, and was
willing to pay it. The tramp saunters from
farm to farm across orchards crimson with
fruit, or stubble-ieds IN which the pumpkins
are strewn like Jumps of gold, and fales for
the time on the fat of the land. He seldom
comes as downright beggar. He is out of
work, and eager fora turn in the field or he has
wife and child dying in the next city, and
is going afoot to receive their last breath or
he is sailor with some pieces of silk or
ince to dispose of which he universally brought
in free of duty.
Tn town. he attacks the dwelling houses
where he will meet only tender-hearted
women folks. His role varies every day. The
patience and ingenuity. dramatic force and
pathos with which he plays his part, if turned
into an honest employment would give him
competency. But he does not want u
competency and dull honesty. He has the
yagabond blood which makes him delight III
the risk, the triumph even, the adventurous
misery of his life. The tramp is not nee
essariy n vicious criminal nor lacking in
energy. He simply finds the ordinary
American money making career tedious, and
chooses, with the Indian and the negro, to
supply the lacking picturesque element in our
social life.
The worst harm he has DONE probably, has
been to destroy almost the spirit of true
charity among us. The ordinary American
does not relish this picturesque element when
his pocket pays for it. He is resolved to be
imposed upon no longer. He fences himself
about with organized Societies, Asylums,
Homes, which he puts into the hands of
shrewd agents not likely to be deceived by any
vagabond Good for-NOthing. Really we cannot
wonder at him. Imposture assais him at every
street corner His hardly earned savings would
all 20 to support the idle ana uudeselvIng if
he listened to every piteous tale. But the
mistake ne makes is thar he gives his aims to
agents who believe all poverty to he mposture,
all beggary crime. The great organizations of
charity in many of the cities are not for
charity, but prOfessedly to suppress mendi-
cancy good purpose assuredly, but not the
best. The natural effect upon the paid
agents of such wholesale associations is invari-
ably to harden them into machines. They sns-
pect deceit in every application from the
unfortunate, and the system of question and
espionage they have adopted shows it. They
often become merely the automatic organs by
which certain rules are brought to bear uron
the needy. and if the advocates of organized
charity had their way these agents would be
the only point of contact between the needy and
the well-tO-dO Christians
Now, as q mere defence against impOsture,
this system Is commendable but is that de-
fence all we wantf Christians at least should
consider that in this system the spirit of that
charity which their Master laid upon them as
the chief duty and chief pri vilege in life, is
totally lost. The giver who never sees the
sick, the hungry, or the pensioner whom he
was commanded to visit, buts sends his dole
monthly to the Ward Agent, certainly has not
got it. Whether the Ward Agents or Supern-
tendents of gigantic Homes or Asylums have
it is doubtful. The effect of their work is TO
destroy 1t, as we have seen. Besides, they are
human, like the poor man who begs from
them, and, as Cowley aud others proved last
winter. need close watching that they may not