St. Paul daily globe., 1889-02-11
Conducted Strictly Upon the
European Plan, Without
Any Trimmings
A Hostelry Without Elevator.
Annunciatop, Turkish Baths
or Rooms En- Suite.
The Beds Are Made Up With
a Hose and Scrub
Brush.
One Hundred Guests Without
Baggage Lodged Over Night
The HObo'S Paradise.

Dirty, ragged. detected ana drunk
whenever they can get SO; tall and short.
fat and thin. old and young. handsome
and ugly. A melancholy. useless, dan
gerous class of unhoiy yagabonds are
the men who apply at the Minneapolis
central station for lodging nightly. Down
stairs is huge, barn-like room with q
cemented floor and plain board benches
around the walls. This is technically
known as the tramp pasture. and every
night it holds half 4 hundred or more Of
dirty, hungry wretches who can't raise
the dime necessary to secure an equity
for one night only i'll cot at cheap
lodging house. They come stringing in by
twOS and threes, beginning at 6 o'clock
and coming in rapidly until about 10
O'Clock, and then there are few arrivals
from that time until a few shiyering.
biear-eyed, hOilow-cheeked, rum-Tacked
wretches come in from the saloons just
after closing time. They may have sue
ceeded in begging drink Or two; if SO.
they simply thirst for more, while if
none has fallen to their lot, the sight Of
other men drinking and the smell Of
liquor has half-craZed them. Each man
as he comes in is asked his name and
residence, which are entered in book
kept for that purpose, and he is then
sent down stairs.
REGISTERING THE GUESTS
They give strange names and places
of residence, and often it IS plain by the
hesitapcy and uncertainty of mans
speech that he is giving a fictitious
name, while John Smith appears more
frequently in the tramp record than
it does in the directory. These men
come from Duluth, Aberdeen, Mason
City, Montana and Wisconsin. Very
few of them are locals, and large num-
ber are men who have been driven out
of st. Paul or other cities.
Very little is learned by questioning
them. They nearly all tell the same
story, if they condeScend to talk at all.
A long, hard summers work In Dakota,
a month in the fall spent in threshing
wheat, the close of the season, a trip
to the city 10 get work. aud from
that point their tales diyerge as some
have lost money, some have been sick.
q few say they were robbed. and still
fewer admit their folly and tell of wild
rOuts in evil resorts, and a years saw
ings spent in Il few days None of them
admit that they are tranps 10y profess
sion, and few come from higher grade
of society than the great herd of uR
skilled labor.
A MARKED EXCEPTION
to the general rules was Ed McKenna,
who applied for lodging a night OF two
ago. He was mau OF middle age
nearly so per cent of the dodgers are
young men-and he had about him GER
tain air of dignity and an evident re
pulSiOn of his surroundings that told OF
his having seen better days. He looked
panied and hurt when asked how he
tf hf. 4 nd ihnn l.
most fiercely: Young man, I'll
tell you how came to be II tramp, for
am one, as you received to infer. lcame
to this country six years ago with sey-
eral thousand dollars in my pocket. My
parents were respectable tradeSpeople
in Dublin and had done very we'll by me
i'll starting me out In the world.
In an Eastern city fell in with a
crowd of gay young bloodS who played
faro and bet on the races. They We're
good fellows. and kept up the acquaint-
ance till my money was gone; then L
suddenly realized what had done and
the weight of my new position. knew
no trade and had no acquaintance with
business; could never bring myself to
inform my parents of the result of my
folly, and so / drifted about, doing
little of this and little of that and
never much of anything, and have been
getting lower ever since. have tried
so far to keep somewhere near TO an
honest life, and never actually stole
anything yet, though l must plead
guilty to having found several articles
where the owners might possibly have
discovered them again if | hadn't ap-
propriated them"
THE USUAL TALK.
Arthur Miller, hailing from Toronto,
swore that he had never been out of
work before and had never found ii
necessary to beg a nights lodging be-
fore. He had worked on the railroad in
Iowa all summer, he said. and been
cheated out of his pay. 1t is very
popular story with tramps. almost as
frequently told as the Dakota and rob
bery fable. but this young fellow had
such a bright. pleasing face and talked
with such an air of conscientious earn
estness that one couldn't help believing
him; but when he had gone down to
take his chances Of securing room to
lie down in the jailer shook his head
sadly, anu remarked sagely: Oh, how
these men do lie. It's awful, man, the
stories they tell. He slept here half of
last winter, SO he did; yes, sir. and now
hear the yarn about hard work and rob-
berry,"
The HOTEL Al MIDN1tIhI.
Just as Arthur's ragged cloth cap dis.
appeared down the stairway two rather
hard-Iooking Scandinavians entered to-
gether. They registered as John Ander-
son, Of Chippewa Falls, and Pete Swan
sou, of rayior's Falls. Both told the
railroad story. Anderson had been sick
and Swanson had wasted his substance
in riotous living. Neither had cent,
and both looked hungry.
And so they come until midnight Or
after. and every morning from
fifty to seventy-fve peEniless
wretches, hungry, cold and weary,
are turned out to wander in the
streets, to sit in the saloons and to beg
or steal enough food of some kind to
keep soul and body together. A more
hopeless, aimless, joyless existence than
theirs is hard to imagine, and yet the
number of this class of men is constant
~ increasing.
What to do with them, how to make
them work and how to protect society
against such class are questions that
have puzzled economists and phil0so.
pliers; but while great men study and
think, the great army of the unem-
ployed receives hundreds Of recruits