Omaha daily bee., 1899-06-29
BREEDING PLACES OF CRIME
Haunn Of the Hobo Along the Railroad
Lines Of the Country,
toUeHS or ALL GRADES TURNED oy1
siums OF Distinctive American Origin
MenacinR Life ard Property-yie-
orous Demand for Their
Suppression.

To the average person, writes Josiah
tlynt in the Independent, the word Stun"
means congested quarter in one OF our
large cities, where people are closely
packed together and where poverty suffer-
ing, drunkenness and crime are the most
characteristic features OF the life. In nearly
all American cities Of the first rank dis
tricts OF this description are to be found,
and they ere an eyesore to the general pub
lie and cause of great concern to phil
anthropists and policemen; but they are
not the only slums in the country and in
my humble opinion, they are also not the
worst. 1t Is, furthermore, to be remarked
concerning them that there Is nothing typ
tcally American about them, except in a
few minor and external details. London.
Paris and Berlin have colonies OF poor peo-
pie. vaRabonds and criminals very similar
20 those in New York, Chicago and San
Francisco and although New York carries
on the palm for the most densely populated
poor quarter known, the actual environ
ment is not very different from like quar-
ters in all places OF a truly metropolitan
character.
There are slums in the United States
however. which are distinctly American In
origin and arrangement and which no other
country in the world Is troubled with. I
refer to the tramp hang outs" and camps
situated on almost all of the trunk rail-
road lines In this country, and to the va
grant and criminal rabble which infests
them. All countries are plagued with wan
dering bands of beggars and thieves, but
ours Is the only one whose railroads are
overrun with professional out-of-work gangs
Of hold up men" and a constantly increas-
ing army OF hoboes. In Europe 1t would be
utterly impossible for such state OF af-
fairs to exist. and European railroad men
as well as European vagrants find nothing
in our railroad life more surprising than
the fact that 1t exists in the United States.
Factories for Tramps.
1t seems to be high time that public at
tention should be directed toward the slums
on our railroads. They are not like the
bewildering slums of our cities, where the
most that can be done is frequently to al
leviate the suffering little and where
even the most enthusiastic reformers realize
the improbabllty to overhaul them en-
tirely. On the railroads, on the contrary,
the obvious thing to do is to utterly wipe
out the slums, to clean up evew property
on which they are found, and the purpose
of this short paper is to indicate their pres
ent significance and to make plain the ne
cessity OF doing away with them en- bloc.
The railroad companies are really the pub
lie. and II the public becomes interested in
this matter the companies cannot afford to
disregard it. The railroad slums have de-
veloped with the tramp class. Some one
has said that since the civil war America
has evolved both her millionaires and her
tramps, and it is certainly true that the
hoboes have come among us during the last
thirty years They have been travelling on
the railroads for the past twenty years. and
today they have camps and "hang- outs"
on nearly all the trunk lines of the country.
The significance of these camps and "hang-
outs" is that they afford refuge for as
iawess a collection of ne'er- -do-wells and
criminals as can be found anywhere, and
that on account of them it is possible for a
tramp and thief TO roam at will through :
out the land and have a stopping place
where the police cannot bother him and
whence he can start out on his plundering
raids There are lodging houses, tntelli-
gence Offices and railroad stations in one,
and they may also be called outcasts' clubs
Any one can be put up" at them and the
tramp spends his days wandering from one
to the other. They are lodging houses
mainly in summer. because at this time OF
the year tramps, professional out-of works
and wandering criminals often find it more
comfortable to sleep out-of-d doors than in
and the hang out" particularly IL little
cabin made OF railroad ties constitutes a
part OF 1t, quite sufices for their purpose
At some ''hang-outs'' in the east I have
seen as many as seventy-fve professional
vagrants and thieves sitting around the fire
and on number of railroads. there are often
five and six camps on a division. AS in
teligence Offices they invaluable Ia
men who have to keep up to date concerning
the latest happenings in the outcast world
and TO know about the movements OF the
police and the public in general
Centers of "News."
The great majority of American criminal
offenders, in the open at least know how
10 read and see the newspapers regularly
but II It was impossible for them to get
the newspapers they could secure all the
news that is necessary in their business al
their railroad camps 1t is one OF the mos
remarkable things in outcast life that the
people in II can gather and distribute
news as rapidly as they do, and / car
only think OF the methods of signaling by
fires on hilltops, popular among certain In