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per cent, of the population, withdrawn from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'