The Minneapolis journal. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn.) 1888-1939, 1903-08-07
TRAMP SEASON ON
Workers Are Readjusting Them
selves to Harvest Conditions
and Tramps Come, Too.
Police Are Enforcing vagrancy Or
i dinances Strictly to Restrain
the Black Sheep.

Minneapolis is experiencing the annual
invasion Of tramps and Migrants. Scarcely
a day passes but that a number or COM
plants are received from various parts OF
the city of the presence of these charac-
ters The police are exercising every care
to handle the tramps, and every day sew
eral of them are arraigned as Migrants In
police court.
t To a student of the habits of American
Is proetarians it is not strange that the city
should be flooded with them at this season
of the year. 1t is the annual readjustment
period. The great army of transient Ia
borers is floclSing to the city from railroad
dumps, steel gangs, pineries and wherever
they may have been employed thru the
summer months, to ship out to the farms
of the Dakotas and northwestern Mime
sofa to work in the harvest fields.
When this great army of laborers reaches
the city, many of them succumb to temp
tation, and few days later instead of
being honest laborers on their way to the
harvest fields, they become penniless
tramps. They have spent their money
and find themselves in serious straits.
They are unable to procure beds, altho the
free lunch counters afford them food.
They sleep out nights and beg on the
streets. The police pick them up and
they are sent to the workhouse under the
vagrancy ordinance.
=; If all that these black sheep did was TO
beg until they secured money enough to
get out of the city, they would be tolerated
by the police and an effort made to aid
them but in many instances they become
dangerous members of society. They hang
about the saloons until they see drunken
man, when they lead him into alley and
rob him, or they become bold and go out
the streets to hold up men or assault
those who refuse aims. The police have
learned their habits and dispositions, and
t1,o l. o<,;f1
the vagrancy ordinances are strictly en-
forced.
r. The police consider the vagrancy ques-
ton to be the most difficult with
which they have to deal Among these
tramps are many who attach themselves
to the moving mass and prey upon it's de-
serving members and upon the COM
munty. Just how to take care of the bad
ones without doing an injustice to the
worthy ones, is a problem the police have
failed to solve. They have even given up
trying to solve it and leave all such mat
ters to the court by arresting all Migrants
and compelling them to explain matters
to the Judges Of the police court.
In carrying out this plan it results that
hundreds of arrests are made every sea
son there being no fewer than 615 va
grants arrested in the city last year. Many
zof these were given workhouse sentences
while many others were allowed to leave
the city Among the number were sew
eral criminals who were compelled to
move on.
4s There is always one thing that is no.
ticeable as the vagrancy season arrives
each year. and that is that crime in the
city increases. A few weeks ago, when
there were practically no tramps in the
city. there were only few hold-ups and
burglaries of residences but now since the
complaints about tramps coming ir
the number of hold-ups increases and as
many as three have been reported in one
day to say nothing of numerous cases Of
petty thieving. Not all these crimes car
be charged to the tramps but it is true
that they are responsible for a large mum
Der Of them.