The St. Johns herald., 1901-03-30
OPPOSED ON PRINCIPLE.
would Have Moth ing to Do with woek Under Any Cir
 cumstances.

"A tramp or any number of trampe, said a wealthy retired chemicals man. ufacturer, according to the washing ton Star, twill 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 was on the eve of making a great discovery that would revolutionize a whole lot ot 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 a difference between such and those formed ordinarily, and this difference was what my discovery was hanging on, 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 I looked for tramps who were exactly fitted to do the work. I soon had 20 of the clean est ones l could pick up and took them to a nice, well-lighted and venti- lated room in my factory, where had put in lot of comfortable chairs, an old sofa lounge or two, lot of paper back novels and cigars to burn. was to pay four cents a cigar, and calcu- lated that 25 cigars would be a days occupation. The cigars were not bad, as I paid four dollars a hundred for them. Each tramp had lot of checks with his number on them, and every time he got cigar from the overseer he handed in a check and the ashes of the cigar he had smoked. The num- Der of cheeks he had at quitting time represented his earnings for the day. In addition to this, I 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 they not only had the snap of their lives, but that was public benefac- tor and they were going to set aside fund out of their earnings to present me with loving cup. It made ashes come pretty high, but if my discovery amounted to what l thought it would every ounce of ashes l secured would be worth twice its weight in gold, so I 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 @ cushion on his chair, and another asked for a hammock, and another didn't say a word, but sneaked away between two days, and he was fol lowed hy two or three more the next night. l 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 my elysium and couldn't find any com pany for them. These four weakened the following week and my place was empty. However, I had enough ashes to 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- curahle l"