The morning call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1878-1895, 1894-04-08
PASSING THEM ON.


The crowd OF unemployed whom San
Francisco helped to Oakland, Oakland
passed on to Sacramento and Sacramento
is now passing on to Ogden, Ogden will
negotiate with the Union Pacific for their
transfer to Omaha. and Omaha will pass
them further east What will be the end
of it On many occasions in the past
when business has grown dull ana work
scarce crowds of unemployed men have
wandered away from their homes in the
hope of finding work or food. The VEN
ture has rarely been successful. and has
sometimes ended tragically. In the four
teenth, fifteenth. sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries periodical dislocations of indus
try OF the continent of Europe threw work
men on their own resources and led to
extensive migrati0ns from place to place.
The wanderers sometimes found oecupa-
ton on lands which had been devastated
by war, and so kept body and soul to-
gether. But quite often they found as lit
tie work in the new regions they invaded
as there was in those which they had de-
serted. The desperate among them would
sometimes steal, the parties whom they
robbed organizing for the defense Of their
property, and the army of the unemployed
was passed on not without loss of life.
There is chronicle of 10000 Frenchmen
who once started out southwark from Paris
to find work; each commune and parish
through which they passed attacked them
and drove them on; when the remnant of
the body reached Languedoc it was mere
handful.
There is so great an opportunity for
labor in this country that such horrors are
not likely to be re-enacted here, at least
for generations to come. Sociology has
made great advances since the middle
ages. But 1t is not TO be denied that as
population grows it is going to be more
and more difficult in times of business de-
preston for unskilled labor to find en-
plOyment. and if unemployed men may
band themselves together in armies and
command transportation from the rail-
roads and commissariat from cities and
counties the problem will have to be con-
sidered by competent authority. 1t may
be a good deal pleasaDter to be trans
ported in crowds. even in boxcars. and to
get a square meal of corn bread. beef ana
coffee at the end of the day than to become
a solitary tramp to be hustled from pillar
to post.
When at the close Of the Napole0nic
wars the restoration Of peace overturned
the English industries which had pros
pered during tie war thousands of English
workmen were thrown out of work and
held threatening meetings demanding the
right to live. Where they -esorted to VIC
ence they were crushed by the military.
But as the British Government could not
go on forever bayoneting the disconnected
unemployed Parliament was compelled TO
adopt a system of pauper laws, under
which the hungry were fed. These laws
relieved the distress. They were so badly
needed that the returns of the Poor Law
Commissioners showed that at one time
every ninth person in England was in
receipt of support from the pauDer fund.
England still has her paupers, but not to
any such extent as then. Society is learn
ing how to deal more effectively with the
problems of poverty, even in the older
and more crowded countries of Europe.
The problem in the United States is far
less formidable. To recur to the question
of what will be the end of the present
migration of the unemployed, the answer
mainly of its own instance and through
natural causes. We have had a year OF
acute hard times owing to a combination
of very many and very powerful ercum-
stances. The silver-miners of Colorado
started the tramp movement when the
mines were shut down. Other Industries
contributed their quota and tramping in
crowds became a temporary fashion.
Coxey gave 1t certain organization and
objective. and the unemployed are herding
after him like sheep after a leader.
Shortly they will find that they are run
ming after nothing. Some will get tired Of
the army and drop out to tramp on their
own hook. Some may get at cross pur-
poses with the communities which they
enter and suffer dispersion The bulk of
them will naturally find work when bust
ness picks up again, and then there will
be an end of the tramp problem"