Daily Arizona silver belt., 1909-03-12
TRYING TO PUMP THE OCEAN DRY

Jas. s. McRea, president of the Penn syivania system, has begun an agitation sf the tramp evil. He bases his appeal epon humanitarian considerations, and not on the annoyance of railway man st the ever present hobo stealing ride So he has written to Orlando F. Lewis sf the New York charity organizations, urging assistance in putting stop to tke widespread evil of trespassing on railway property, and the ghastly roll of deaths and maimings from it. The fact that in two years his railway killed 1,479 people, who were trespassing, gives kcCrea right to speak out.
 A part of McCrea's remedy consists in keeping card index of tramps, and a system of keeping them in prison. Considered purely as matter of dis comfort, most of us would rather be killed by one of McCreas s trains than to be put in prison permanently. Tramps, no doubt, feel the same way about it. Humsnitarianism being found cd on the desire to decrease human suf- fering, it is difficult to see the true hu- nsnitarianism in this well-meant at tempt to stop vagrancy and train "fip- ping" by filling the jails with the ho- bees.
 Once well-meaning and earnest worker with no great amount of sense was set to work to pump out the center board of catboat. He pumped, and pumped, and pumped, but the water re- mained at the same level He wondered at the amount of water yielded by so small well. He did not know that it went right down in the ocean, and that he had been trying to drain the Allan tic by pumping it into itself.
 McCrea's scheme will succeed, he doubtless thinks, by making the hobo s life so disagreeable that he will go to work.
 But there are now more men willing to work than there are jobs for. If all the tramps became all at once work crazy, they would only shove others in to idleness as fast as they got jobs. McCrea would pump dry the ocean of Unemployment by either pumping it back into itself, or bottling it up in jaiis.
 Naithay ul xxyill uyarL
 Beggary is an institution in all na- tions in which opportunities to work are fenced up and monopohzed. We may as well make up our minds to our tramps as permanent class, like the Italian lazzaroni and the British pau pers-or we must free opportunities for self employment.
 When land was free in America there were no tramps.
 McCrea's railway system is one of the concerns which holds millions of acres of coal lands out of use, paying only nominal taxes on them as waste lands.' If these lands were taxed into use, many thousands more people than now would find employment, and to that extent the tramp evil would begin to be abated.
 All over the nation lands are held out of use for speculative purposes-agri, cultural lands, mining lands, city lands If they were so heavily taxed that they would have to be used or given up to those who would use them, we should have renewed era of building and a revival of industry. Gradually the tramp evil would be cured. The tramp s stock in trade is the probability that he really cannot get work. Fix things 80 that all can get work if they desire, and then McCrea's proposal will not be such shock to ones sense of justice. The tramp is a man out of work. He has in many cases assumed idleness as . psSfessior. But as long as many must