St. Paul daily globe., 1896-03-15
THE TRAMP AS A PROBLEM,

THE TRAMP AS A PROBLEM.
Recently the good people Of sundry
Wisconsin cities, pricked in their most
sensitive part, the pocket, by the fee
bills of officers incurred in arresting,
trying, failing and boarding that peren-
NAL of civilizations, the tramp, held a
mass convention to sit on him, cor
oner's jurywise, and consider what
should be done with him. Thrifty New
Englanders also, angered that there
should be any who did not earn their
daily bread by the sweat of their brows.
at once shocking their orthodoxy
and disturbing their frugality, have
been sitting on the tramp in mass
meetings, and in both sections there has
developed from these movements an
anti-tramp society, whose mission it is
to abolish him utterly. The fact that
the tramp is as old as civilization. that
he has remained after all others had
ceased being tramps, persisting in re-
tanning his primeval simplicity of ex-
istence, and that all states of society
have Wrestled with him and moved to
his extinction, have exhausted all their
ingenuity in the unavailing effort to rid
the world of him, does not deter these
good people from renewing the cam
paign.
We have followed with some interest
the discussions Of these meetings and
the remedies proposed. One might rea-
sonably expect that in these days Of
anti-toxin serums for the prevention
or cure of diseases both hereditary and
contagious, one might be discovered
for the cure of the bacteria that pro-
duce the tramp. But we find moth
Ing new in them. There is the
remedy of the whipping post; that the
stocks be resurrected. and that the
other problem of good roads be solved
or its solution attempted by putting
the tramps at work on them. This is
but threshing old straw. Every coun-
try that lays claim to being civilized
has had the tramp problem to crack
it's wits on for centuries, and in spite
Of the efforts made the tramp still
wends his careless way over the coun-
try, gaining a livelihood that, if to
others is precarious, is to him salts
factory.
In spite of laws and ordinances the
type persists in being. Warehouses are
punitive. not remedial; and the tramp
serves out his time in them and goes
intn hn q
and adroit evader of winning bread by
work than ever. The solution of the
problem lies not as much in enact
ments Furnishing the offense against the
fundamental law of existence that he
who would eat must work, as it lies
in the hands of the housekeepers of
the land to apply at their kitchen doors.
The tramp exists merely because there
are people who will persist in feeding
him and bestowing Oh him the cast-off
clothing of the male members of the
family. Given food clothing and the
shelter that is easily to be found, and
the encouragement and the means to
continue are provided.
1IO cure, dEu IdulCdl. lies ut
the kitchen doors of society. AS long
as they open to feed every vagrant who
knocks at them, so long we will have
the tramp with us, and no longer Much
as he dislikes work, he fears starvation
more When timidity, sentimentality,
mere good nature, misplaced pity, vast
ed commiseration, get so that they
can slam the kitchen doors in the face
of the beggar. the tramp will become
obsolete. Why kitchen doors open to
pass out food to the suppliant is be-
cause it is thought that there are wor-
thy men, really seeking work, willing to
work and needing food, and it is i'm
possible to distinguish the sham from
the real, the tramp from the unfortun-
ate. In the permutations of chance it
may be true that one lin million of
these fellows is worthy object of char
ity. But the man who is really willing
and anxious to work need not, unless
it be in time of unexampled national
industrial distress, take to the road
to find it, nor the kitchen doors for his
food. If he cannot find work, he makes
it. He never degenerates into a tramp.