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About The Oregon daily journal. (Portland, Or.) 1902-1972 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 4, 1908)
r JA1 -- 3 I J ..... . ..... . . . . ' ' ., .. . ... . . . , ' A f ! , 4' 4vA A -MI t -: , MJnstrial Labor ' X W 'r i,OgfcJ --V;V .-' .. V-, I J .1 A' WWl H : . , " ; w fe?A -'A' ' j ' A .- Jill aSS3&-ijs-- "t- -' a III 111 f i7x? ' ' ' JtcwjiiJt'' IF l w. ,: ; , , : j - ' , u II-'-'.." . " t , - -"''si Ai'',lV:wwlt,,!w-tfwwmrf!M I . . ! 1 J ; refill A; 4;i 1 . ' ' s' r ; r hi li tfc I Li;A a. . i liL i lift ' f , ... vV- - . A-; ' .A - ; PORTLAND OREGON SUNDAY . MORNING, OCTOBER A Colonies Solve tbe Problem? Ar United States put the tramp out of business t This question has been asked thousands o f times, and .the answer thousands of times has been that the nation is helpless. . 1 i Today more than $00,000 tramps' in a proportion to the total population higher than one tramp for every 200 peo ple constitute 500,000 dangerous int err 0- gatwns. What can every 200 people men, women and children do to eliminate the drain and the dread and tjie oftentimes ter rible menace existing in that one tramp who moves now so furtively, againso murderous-through the forty homes that house their families t Can they, - having failed utterly hith erto, do anything? They can, quite as readily as the sober common sense of Switzerland has enabled the Swiss to clear the whole land of va grants with benefit to the country, benefit to the people and benefit, most of all to the tramps. " . Industrial colonies of continental Eu rope have solved the problem as signally as the steamboat solved the problem of ocean navigation after untold generations, during which all mankind, as its tramps are now, was at the mercy of the most va grant winds that blow. T t EE naked fact that there are 500,000 vagrants in the United States is im pressive enough to ' be thoroughly dis heartening. But it is not merely that one-half of one per cent, of the population, withdrawn from productiveness, persist as a burden upon the backs of all the rest. They become a source of direct injury, to all other classes of citizens. Their damage to the. property of the rail roads alone amounts to $25,000,000 a year. That is, every one of that atavistic horde of 600,000 is responsible, on the average, for $50 worth of damage to railroads annually prac tically $1 a week apiece. - Within five years . they 'proved such a source of danger to themselves in the course of their railroad trespassing .that 23,964 of them were killed and 25,236 were injured. - Various railroads are compelled to maintain private graveyards in which to bury the corpses of tramps whose recklessness' has caused their death. Nobody Jhas yet been able to estimate how many railroad men have been injured and mur dered by tramps, and only guesses can give an idea of the total of destruction of private prop erty, of larceny, murder and assaults that are annually to be set down to the account of thV American tramp. He has earned his transportation during long years of vagrancy,during which his timely warnings of conditions of tracks, rolling stock and other features of railroading have saved, the lines accidents that might have cost hundreds of thousands of 'dollars. He is now a sort of , unlicensed, but highly valued, gen eral inspector of roadbeds and rolling stock. But he is the only one. . All the rest wage a perpetual war on the roads they beat; and every little while the continual series oi sin gle combats is enhanced by a pitched battle such as occurred recently in .New xork or as 1 1 1 y DEPRAVES YOUNG MEN Worse than all, three-fourths of that idle, wandering army is composed of young men be tween the ages ' of 18 1 and 21, 50 per cent.' of whom, it is conservatively estimated, 'are being, steadily transformed into so many human wolves, depending solely upon their cunning and their strength to wrest a living from the society they detest, expeusive at all times and dangerous most of the time. .', So far as any authentic, records go, there is, among the whole 500,000 vagrants of the "land, just one who has proved himself worth his salt in the aimless pursuit of his purposeless profession. lie is known -to railroads the country ever as A No. 1. Nobody knows any other same of his. Born in California S5 years ago, he was 11 years old when his teacher gave him one sound whipping and a note to his father which as sured him of another. : 11 ran away and he has "been running ever since. lie trsvels in clothes good enough for a traveling salesman, worn under a brakeman's Jumper and overalls. . lie is intelligent, honest. expert' in carving, speaks, four languages and makes his way almost unopposed over nearly every railroad in the country. " ; - When a trainman who doesn't know him tries to put him c2 the train he seed usually do no more than appeal to tho conductor. If the whole crew fail to recognixo his prerotrt tivea, hm hanghtHy tells thus to wiro t tho terminal office. happens when . the yi train crews out West throw off 100 -tramps, in a run of as many miles. - '. - Now is approaching the time of the year when the farmers of the nation who suffer most from the tramp in petty larcenies, fires that are little short of arson and assaults that ' bring out whole countrysides' in vengeance' enjoy the first relief from their national nuisance that they get in months. '? . With the approach of the winter the armies of . tramps ' betake themselves to the cities, where the police stations, poorhouses and jails are suddenly overcrowded and the streets experience a sudden increase in the number of highway robberies. ' Yet it would be a mistake to -suppose that all tramps' are either criminal or irredeem able. Experts agree that society itself, with its almost culpably indiscriminate charity on the one hand and its inanely inefficient penal systems on the other, is more to blame than the tramp. lie may take to the road in a spirit of adventure which is innocent enough of all evil design; but society confirms him in it by feed ing him so long as he chooses to beg. and helps turn him into a thief and thug by sentencing him to prison terms that are long enough to brand him with criminality, but too short tr- break' him of the habits of vagrancy. Sooner or later, if the tramp life be per sisted in, the most industrious of mechanics, who has set forth afoot to find employment, will end by being the habitual loafer, all the more dangerous wherever bo goes because ho , poc4se the brains and the technical skill to ' handle tools welL , These men aro not tramps or hoboes st first; they havo every worthy claim to ht'p. from -any community. But if they get enough kelp and too little work, it is a foregone con- clajion thst they, like millions of their prede- 4 eessora, will end by being hoboes and not in- .. dujtrious, sf -supporting artisans. -The tracfo crobku. differing in no tisls from ours, iris attacked in Switrerland , which, by the way. is a real republio like the j United Statee--wita a rait lot of common sense 1 and vast lack of sentimental . gush. Edmond Kelly, after years of investigation, tells about v it in his monograph, "The Elimination of tha Tramp." A V The Swiss laws begin by separating the " honest unemployed from the thieves, loafers and V habitual tramps who make the question so hard w V to settle here. . ' ? ' The Swiss Intercantonal Union investi-i gates the wanderer, and, if he proves to be an ' honest workingman seeking employment, issues to him a traveler's relief -book, which permits him to travel without Leing compelled to work in any of the cantons to which the union's rules pply. . 1 ' Without that means of proving he means business, every vagrant is arrested, wherever ' found. But he is not necessarily jailed. He goes to one of two labor colonies one forced labor colony, to which all vagrants are committed who are adjudged culpably vagrant; the other a free labor colony. for all who are not in any way culpable. I NO THIRTY-DAY FOOLISHNESS There is no thirty-day foolishness about . the sentence. Its prime jurpose is to cure the . vagrant of being a vagabond, and only pro longed residence in one place and continuous occupation at some form of labor can possibly restore the civilized attitude of mind to the . victim of man'a atavistio tendency to vaga bondage. At the forced labor colony 'of WitewyV in Berne, where the work is chiefly agricultural as it is in all the Swiss colonies in order that -the state labor may not be in competition with general labor the vagrants work as farm labor ers side by side with their custodians. Their jailers therefore do not present tbe afpect of armed guards; their place of deten tion has no appearance of a prison or even of convict pen; their very clothes are such as could be worn by any farm laborer without at tracting odious attention. They are, indeed, not rated as crimlna'i. They are considered simply citirns with tJ habits which must be cured, whether they want to be cured or not; and tbey have to ray for their medicine, work, by rroJuciiyr crop worth more than their keep and cages. For they get wares tl a mon't. if ttr prove worth anythirwr workmen. WLfa ), t term is up it Jy be in e:-3 tuontLi ct a 7? , . CCOJfTIXCE OM I5:rE TAGtL s I .J'
