The St. Johns herald., 1892-05-05
The Tramp,

1OOkluB LOT WOTk. OO6S HOG Wdu
 work, and will not touch work wher
 he can fill his stomach without 1t
 There always have been tramps, but
 they have multiplied of late years
 not because there is no work fol
 them or no opportunity for them to
 lead frugal and industrious lives,
 but because the tramp can pick up
 a better living and get about from
 place to place more easily and com
 fortably now than in former years.
 The spread of settlement, the mul-
 duplication of railroads, the general
 prosperity of the people, all make
 conditions more inviting to the tramp than existed in thls country
 fifty years ago. The bigger the dog the more feas he can carry, and the
 more extended the populous dis tricts and the greater the general prosperity, the more inviting be- comes the life of the tramp to naturally indolent and improvident yagabond.
 There was a great demand for workers in the agricultural districts last year. No tramp could travel fifty miles in any direction without finding an opportunity to work if he desired it; and yet the record of the police courts of our rural cities will show thousands of tramps ar- rested as vagrants. In view of this 1t may seriously be asked if there be not better means than soup houses, free lodgings and even pub- lie wood piles to cure the tramp evil. eff a man will not work, neither shall he eat," is reversible into "If man must eat, so must he work" /" The tramp never starves. It is the unfortunate man or woman "too proud to beg, too honest to steal" who goes without food until the fountain of life is dried. Inas- much as the tramp does eat, under all circumstances, the only thing that remains to be done is to make him work. Offering him work is like rendering sour grapes to a man with his teeth on edge. Arresting him as a vagrant, keeping him in the city lookup over night, or even working him in the chain gang a day or two and then telling him to leave the city does not make the tramp cease 10 be vagabond. It simply compels him to move on j" but he would move on without it.
 Until the vagrant is offered some that even he will recog- nize as more unpleasant and disa- greeable than work, the tramp nul- sance can never be cured. Such an is the working of the upon the public highways, not for a day or two at time, but ! for six months or year. He should be dealt with by the county author ities, so that the vagabond in the country would be equally in danger of arrest and sentence to the road gang with the vagrant in the city; and so that there would be no es- cape from the operation of the law by going from place to place. Dur ing this time, his food and lodging should not be such as to make him think he had struck a snoft snap," and the consolation of the pipe and flask should be denied him. At the end of six months he would be apt 10 entertain a better opinion of honest labor and the virtue of in- iustry. If he did not he would soon have an opportunity to study the subject again during a protract- ed season in the gang, The chief cause of failure of present severe ,ity ordinances to have any effect upon the tramp evil, is that they Ire too limited in their application. They may chase a tramp out of own, but he remains a vagabond still. Laws of this nature must be general and equally binding and (