The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1921-05-09
TOPEKA STATE JOURNAL
Information Bureau
FREDERIC J. HAsKIN, Director,
washington, d, C.
RETURN OF THE HOBO.


Washington, D. c., May AFTER
disappearing almost completely for
several years. the hobo is back again.
Reports from all over the country
show that the army of men which
moves across the country as the I'M
invited guests of the railroads and the
public is once more modifying. Again
! is heard the request at the back door
for a f1andout. The water tank has
again become the waiting room for
these non-paying passengers, and it's
strange collection of cabalistic writ
ings, which are of so much value to
the wandering fraternity, is being re-
newed. Theft of freight is again
mounting to an enormous figure, jails
and warehouses are filling up, petty
offenses are on the increase.
Popular opinion in this country has
always held the tramp to be a man
who would not work under any cir
cumstances. This theory was dealt a
blow by the fact that during the war
the army and industry seems to have
absorbed nearly all of the tramps, and
that they have 2'eappeared only with
the return of hard times. The tramp
then, must be man who will and can
work if the inducements are strong
enough, but who prefers a wandering
life when employment is hard to get
or unremunerative.
The tramp is n large and significant
study. The size of it it you can realize
when you are told that several differ
ent estimates made by officials of
railways placed the number of tramps
in this country before the war at half
a million. This estimate is based on
the number of Migrants who are killed
every year stealing rides on the rail-
roads. More Migrants are killed this
way in a normal year than trainmen
and passengers put together. In one
year it was estimated that these va
grants cost the railroads $1S,500,0O0
This included what was paid for pro-
lection from them, and the thefts of
freight which were attributed to them.
For tramps often get food as well as
transportation from the railroads.
They break into shipments of food
stuffs and take what they can eat or
carry away, often making it impossi-
BILE for the railroads to deliver a case
of canned goods. for instance, altho
perhaps only a few cans have been
stolen.
Varieties of Migrants.
The estimate of half million which
the railroads place upon the normal
tramp army of America does not of
course include only tramps properly So
called. 1t includes all those who steal
rides on the railroads Among these
is small number of men who are
ordinarily steady workers but are
temporarily out of funds and ride the
break beams or the blind baggages to
get to some new job. One young man,
for example, who was a native of a
far western state and worked his way
thru college, employed this method of
crossing the continent four times a
year.
Such cases are few. Besides the
true tramps, the greater number of
these Migrants belong to the class of
seasonal workers. The tramps and
the seasonal workers are of close kin.
Many man drifts into tramping by
way of seasonal work. and the tramp
| may occasionally become a seasonal
| worker.
The seasonal workers are a large
and well defined class. They make
their Hvings at such work as cutting
ice and telling timber in the winter
and working on lake boats and in the
harvest fields in the summer When
not employed thes men congregate in
large cities such as Chicago, where
there are great numbers of CHEAP
lodging houses that cater to them.
Ihey soon learn to live for a year on
the earnings of a few months, and will
not take an-tfme employment if they
can get it unless actually starving. A
man who is used to making a living
out OF the harvest fields in the sum-
mer has been known to refuse work
at 1ce-cutting in the wintor on the
ground that he did not need the
money and would be merely taking
bread out of the mouth of some habit
ual winter worker.
The lives of these men lack all
comfort and stability but they have
change, adventure and leisure. Hence
IL IS comprehensive that men of
certain type come to prefer it. Free
dom and wandering are the things
that we all dream of, and the man
Tor whom the alternative is ten hours
day at some monotonous mechanical
task cannot perhaps be altogether
blamed If he prefers a life in which
labor and leisure alternate and there
IS change of scene and occupation.
Unfortunately society makes no al
IoWance for men of that temper. The
seasonal worker out of work is re-
garded as a vagrant. He is hunted
| by the police and pitied bv charity
He and his pocketful of savings are
| the proper prey of all kinds of vice
and fraud. No place is open to him
but the lodging houses, which are
dirty and comfortless places. breeders
of the drug habit and OF other habits
which unfit men for normal social re-
| lations. Hence the seasonal worker
generally deteriorates into con-
firmed tramp, beggar. or thief
A Study of Tramps.
| There has been much romance writ
| ten about tramps, and also several
| honest realistic books The best of
j
| Flynt, both of whom tramped with
the tramps. These books bring wildly
home to one the social waste and de-
terioration that go with vagrancy, but
also the lure of freedom and adven-
| ture which leads men into it.
| When it comes to scientific study
| of vagrancy, remarkably little has
been done. considering what a large
| fraction of the nations labor supply
| 1t absorbs. Perhaps the best thing
that can be found in this line is a
study of one thousand homeless men
| made by Mrs. Alice Willard Solen
berger for the Russell Sage Founda-
| ton. She studied carefully a. thousand
men who applied for aid to a certain
| organization in Chicago She found
that of this thousand only 220 could
| be properly classed as tramps-that is.
men who wandered for the sake of
wandering.
The distinguishing thing about the