The St. Johns herald., 1900-07-28
OPPOSED ON PRINCIPLE.
Would Have NOtb ing to Do with Work Under Any Cir
 cumstances.

| "A tramp or any number of tramps,"
 said a wealthy retired chemicals man. ufacturer, according to the Washing
 ton Star. will not work, however many and good are the opportunities afforded them, and I speak from ex-
 perience. The comic pictures and
 jokes make the tramp out to be per
 fectly happy if he has plenty to smoke
 and drink and nothing to do except to
 eat and sleep and be comfortable
 But it isn't true, as proved. A dozen
 years ago I thought I was on the eve
 of making a great discovery that
 would revolutionize a whole lot of
 things in my business, and one of the
 necessities of the discovery was cigar
 ashes. And cigar ashes made by be.
 ing smoked by the mouth. There is q
 difference between such and those
 formed ordinarily, and this difference
 was what my discovery was hanging
 on, I thought. Anyway, it became
 necessary for me to secure ashes, and
 though there were thousands of them
 about they were not obtainable, and
 so I concluded to hire smokers and
 get what I wanted. The job was not
 to be a steady one, so 1 looked for
 tramps who were exactly fitted to do
 the work. I soon had 20 of the clean
 est ones I could pick up and I took
 them to a nice, well-lighted and venti-
 lated room in my factory, where I had
 put in lot of comfortable chairs, an
 old sofa lounge or two, lot of paper
 back novels and cigars to burn. I was
 to pay four cents cigar, and I calcu-
 lated that 25 cigars would be a days occupation. The cigars were not bad, as l paid four dollars a hundred for them. Each tramp had lot of checks with his number on them, and every time he got a cigar from the overseer he handed in a check and the ashes of the cigar he had smoked. The num- Der of checks he had at quitting time l represented his earnings for the day. In addition to this, 1 bedded and | boarded them at the factory boarding | house and allowed them beer with | each meal, and three meals a day. | Could human beings ask more than | this? They could not, and at first the | tramps did not, and they said that l they not only had the snap of their lives, but that I was a public benefac- tor and they were going to set aside 8 fund out of their earnings to present me with a loving cup. It made ashes come pretty high, but if my discovery amounted to what thought it would every ounce of ashes secured would be worth twice it's weight in gold, so l wasn't losing anything by being a public benefactor. Everything went beautifully for the first three or four days, and to look at those chaps in their smoking room, lounging around reading, talking or just smoking and dreaming you would have thought an earthly elysium had been reached at last, but they couldn't stand it. First one kicked, on the quality of the cigars, and then another wanted a cushion on his chair, and another asked for a hammock, and another didn't say a word, but sneal1ed away between two days, and he was fol lowed hy two or three more the next night. 1 got extra men to take their places, but it didn't help the first corners any, and at the end of two weeks l had only four tramps in Iny elysium and I couldn't find any com pany for them. These four weakened the following week and my place was empty. However, had enough ashes 10 go on with my discovery business, which never amounted to much except to prove conclusively that a tramp is a born vagabond and legitimately in- curable"