Tramping with Tramps: Studies and Sketches of Vagabond Life

Another kind of ragamuffin, also born on the road, and in many ways akin to the ambulanter, although wanting such classification, is the one found so often in those families which every community supports, but relegates to its uttermost boundary-lines. They are known as "the McCarthys," "the Night-Hawks," or "the Holy Frights," as the case may be. I have found no town in the United States of twenty thousand inhabitants without some such little Whitechapel in its vicinity, and, like the famous original, it is often considered dangerous to enter unarmed. Speaking generally, there is a great deal of fiction afloat concerning these tabooed families, a number of them being simply poor or lazy people whom the boys of the vicinity have exaggerated into gangs of desperados. There are, however, some that are really very bad, and I have found them even in new little villages. They are not exactly out-and-out criminals whom the police can get hold of, but moral lepers who by public consent have been sentenced to live without the pale of civilization.

Some years ago I had occasion to visit one of these miniature Whitechapels. It was situated in a piece of woods not far from St. Paul, Minnesota, and belonged by right of appropriation to three families who were called "the Stansons." A tramp friend of mine had been taken sick in their camp, and I was in duty bound to go out to see him. I managed to find the settlement all right, but was stopped about a hundred yards from the log shanties by a bushy-bearded man, barefooted and clad only in trousers, who asked my errand. My story evidently satisfied him, for he led the way to the largest of the shanties, where I found my friend. He was lying in the middle of the floor on some straw, the only furniture in the room being a shaky table and a three-legged chair. All about him, some even lying in the straw beside him, were half-clothed children of both sexes, playing "craps" and eating hunks of bread well daubed with molasses. I counted nine in that shanty alone, and about as many again in the other two. They belonged severally to six women who were apportioned after Mormon custom to three men. The tramp told me in his dialect that they really were Mormons and came from Utah. He was passing by their "hang-out," as he called it, when taken ill, and they hospitably lodged him. He said they had not been there long, having come up the river from Des Moines, Iowa, where they had also had a camp; but long enough, I discovered on my return to St. Paul, to acquire a reputation among the city lads for all kinds of "toughness." I suppose they were "tough" when considered from certain viewpoints, but, as the tramp said, it was the silliest kind he had known. They were not thieves, and only luke-warm beggars, but they did seem to love their outlandish existence. The children interested me especially, for they all spoke a queer jargon which they themselves had invented. It was something like the well-known "pig Latin" that all sorts of children like to play with, but much more complicated and difficult to understand. And, except the very youngest, who naturally cried a little, they were the jolliest children I have ever seen in such terrible circumstances. The mothers were the main breadwinners, and while I was there one of them started off to town on a begging trip, with a batch of children as "guy." The men sat around, smoked, and talked about the woods. The tramp told me later, however, that they occasionally raided a hen-roost. Since my visit to the Stansons I have seen three of the children in different places: one, a cripple, was begging at the World's Fair; another was knocking about the Bowery; and the third, a girl, was traveling with an ambulanter in the Mohawk valley.

Not all of these families are like the Stansons. A number are simply rough-and-tumble people who haunt the outskirts of provincial towns, and live partly by pilfering and partly from the municipal fund for the poor. Somehow or other the children always dodge the school commissioners, and grow up, I am sorry to say, very much like their usually unmarried parents. On the other hand, there are several well-known organized bands, and they thrive mainly, I think, in the South and West. Near New Orleans there used to be, and for aught I know they are still there, "the Jim Jams" and "the Rincheros"; near Cairo, Illinois, "the River Rats"; near Chicago, "the Dippers"; and not far from New York, in the Ramapo Mountains, I knew of "the Sliders," but they have since moved on to new fields. Each of these families, or collection of families, had its full quota of children. Very often the public becomes so enraged at their petty thefts that an investigation is ordered, and then there is a sudden packing of traps and quick departure to a different neighborhood, where a new name is invented. But the family itself never dies out entirely.

There are a few children who are born in Hoboland. Now and then, as one travels along the railway lines, he will come to a hastily improvised camp, where a pale, haggard woman is lying, and beside her a puny infant, scarcely clothed, blinking with eyes of wonder upon the new world about him. I know of no sadder sight than this in all trampdom. Not even the accident of motherhood can make the woman anything but unhuman, and the child, if he lives, grows up in a world which I believe is unequaled for certain forms of wickedness. Fortunately, his little body usually tires of the life ere he comes to realize what it is, and his soul wanders back to regions of innocence, unsoiled and unscarred.

I wonder whether there are still men in Hoboland who remember that interesting little fellow called "the Cheyenne Baby"? Surely there are some who have not forgotten his grotesque vocabulary, and his utterly overpowering way of using it. There are different stories concerning his origin, and they vary in truthfulness, I have heard, as one travels southward from the Northern Pacific to Santa Fé. I give the one told in Colorado. It may be only a "ghost-story," and it may be true; all that I know is that it is not impossible. According to its teaching, his mother was once respectable and belonged to the politest society in the Indian Territory. When quite a young girl she carelessly fell in love with a handsome Indian chief, and, much to the disgust of her friends, married him and went away into his camp. It must have been a wild life that she led there, for within a year she was separated from him and living with another Indian. It is the same pitiful story for the next five years; she was knocked about from tent to tent and camp to camp. Her enemies say that she liked that kind of life, but her friends know better, and claim that she was ashamed to go home. However it was, she went over to the cow-boys after a while, and it was then that the baby was born, and she met the man, whoever he was, that introduced her into Hoboland. She appeared one night at a hang-out near Denver, and there was something so peculiarly forlorn about her that the men took pity on her and pressed her to stay. This she did, and for some time traveled with the hoboes throughout the districts lying between Cheyenne and Santa Fé. The boy became a sort of "mascot," and was probably the only child in Hoboland who was ever taught to be really good. The mother had stipulated with the men that they should never teach him anything bad, and the idea struck them as so comical that they fell in with it. Though they swore continually in his presence, they invariably gave him some respectable version of the conversation; and while about the only words he knew were curses, he was made to believe they signified the nicest things in the world. He died just as unknowing as he had lived, but it was a cruel death. He and his mother, together with some companions, were caught one night in a wreck on the Union Pacific, and all that the survivors could find of him to bury was his right arm. But that was bravely honored, and, unless the coyotes have torn down the wooden slab, the grave can still be found on the prairies.

I cannot leave this division of my theme without saying something about that large army of unfathered children who, to my mind, are just as much born on the road as the less known types. True, many of them are handed over at birth to some family to support, but the great majority of these families are not one whit better than the ambulanters. They train the orphans put into their care, in sin and crime, quite as carefully as the hobo does his beggar boy. These are the children who make up the main body of the class I have been considering, and it seems to me that they increase from year to year. At present the only legitimate career for them is that of the outcast, and into it they go. Few, indeed, succeed in gaining a foothold in polite society. Their little lives form the border-land of my second class, the children driven to the road.

II

Concerning the children who are forced upon the road there is a great deal to be said, but much of this talk should be directed against the popular belief that their number is legion. Socialists particularly think that hundreds upon hundreds of boys and girls are compelled by hunger to beg and steal for a living. In England I once heard a labor agitator declare that there are a million of these juvenile "victims of capital" in the United States alone. I do not know where the man got his information, but if my finding counts for anything it is deplorably unsound. I cannot claim to have studied the subject as carefully as is necessary to know it absolutely, but in most of our large cities I have given it close attention, and never have I found anything like the state of affairs which even the general public believes to exist. For every child forced by starvation to resort to the road I have met ten who were born there, and nearly the same number who were enticed there. In saying this, however, I do not want to draw emphasis or sympathy away from that certainly existing class of children who really have been driven into outlawry. But it is an injustice to our sober poor to say that they exist in those large numbers that are so often quoted. Not long ago I made it my special business for a while to look into the condition of some of these compulsory little vagabonds in New York city. I picked out those children whom one sees so often pilfering slyly from the groceryman's sidewalk display. It is an old, old trick. The youngsters divide themselves into "watchers" and "snatchers"; the former keeping an eye on the police as well as the owners of the things coveted, and the latter grabbing when the wink is given. The crime itself is not a heavy one according to the calendar, but it is only a step from this to picking pockets, and only a half-step farther to highway robbery. I chose this particular class because I had often noticed the members of it in my walks through the city, and it had seemed to me the least necessary of all. Then, too, there was something in the pinched faces that made me anxious to know the children personally on grounds of charity. The great majority of youthful travelers on the road are comparatively well fed, to say the least, and, much as one pities their fate, he will seldom have cause to weep over their starved condition. But here was something different, and I fancied that I was to get a glimpse into the life of those people to whom the socialist points when asked for living examples of human woe caused by inhuman capitalists.

It was not hard to "get in" with the children. Finding that I was willing to play with them at their games in the alleys and on top of their rickety tenement-houses, they edged up to me rather cordially, and we were soon "pals." There was nothing very new in their life, but I was struck with the great interest they took in their petty thefts. In the midst of the most boisterous play they would gladly stop if some one suggested a clever plan by which even a can of preserves could be "swiped," as they called it, and the next instant they were trying to carry it to a finish. They were not what I could call instinctive criminals – far from it; but a long intimacy with the practices of outlawry, though small in their way, had so deadened their moral sense that sneak-thieving came to them almost as naturally as it does to the kleptomaniac. Even in their games they cheated whenever it was possible, and it seemed to me that the main fun was seeing how cleverly and yet boldly they could do so without being detected. I recall distinctly one afternoon when we were playing "Hi spy." A little fellow called Jamie took me aside, and in the most friendly way advised me not to be so "goody-goody." I had been very unlucky in getting caught, and he said that it was because I gave in too quickly.

"When ye hear yer name," he continued, "jus' lie low, 'cause like as not the catcher ain't seen ye, 'n' if he has he can't prove it; so ye 'r' all right anyhow. Ye'll always be 'It' if ye don't do something like that; 'n' there ain't no fun in that, is there?" he added, winking his left eye in a truly professional manner.

So much for their native endowment. Their accomplishment in thieving, I have no doubt, kept them often from going hungry, notwithstanding the fact that there was honest industry at home, generally that of the mother, while the father's earnings went almost bodily into the publican's till.

I found it much more difficult to make friends with the parents, but succeeded in several cases – that is, with the mother; the father I usually found drunk at the saloon. I shall not try to give an account of the squalor and sorrow that I encountered; this has been done in other places by far more able pens than mine; but I cannot forbear making a note of one little woman whom I saw sewing her very life away, and thinking all the while that she was really supporting her hungry children. I shall never forget the picture she made as she sat there by the alley window, driving the needle with lightning-like rapidity through the cloth – a veritable Madonna of the Needle. Her good cheer was something stupendous. Not once did she murmur, and when her brute of a husband returned, insanely intoxicated, she took care of him as if he were the best man in the world. I was careful that she did not hear from me about the tricks of her wayward children. Some day, however, I fear that one of them will be missing, and when she goes to the police station to make inquiries I should rather not confront her. The main reason why hungry boys and girls are found upon the road is drunken fathers.

There are also children who, instead of being forced to steal, are sent out into the streets by their parents to beg. From morning till night they trudge along the busy thoroughfares, dodging with cat-like agility the lumbering wagons that bear down upon them, and accosting every person whom their trained eyes find at all likely to listen to their appeals. Late at night, if perchance they have had the necessary luck during the day, they crawl back to their hovels and hand over the winnings to their heavy-eyed fathers. Or, as often happens, if the day has been unsuccessful and the pennies are not numerous enough to satisfy their cruel masters, they take refuge in some box or barrel, and pray to the beggar's Providence that the next day will go better.

They come, as a rule, from our foreign population. I have never found one with American-born parents, and in many instances the children themselves have emigrated from Europe, usually from Italy. There is no doubt that they have to beg to live; but when one looks a little further into their cases, a lazy or dissipated parent is usually the one to blame. Then, too, mendicancy is not considered disgraceful among many of our immigrants, and they send their children into the streets of our cities quite as freely as they do at home. They also are mainly at fault for that awful institution which some of our large towns support, where babies are rented to grown-up beggars to excite the sympathy of the passers-by. I looked into one of these places in San Francisco, while traveling with the hoboes, and it was the very counterpart of an African slave-market. A French-Canadian woman, old enough to be the great-grandmother of all her wares, kept it. She rented the babies from poverty-stricken mothers, and re-rented them at a profit to the begging women of the town. There were two customers in the place when I entered, and the old wretch was trying in true peddler style to bring out the good points of four little bits of humanity cuddled together on a plank bed.

"Oh, he's just the kind you want," she said to one of the women; "never cries, and" – leaning over, she whispered in a Shylock voice – "he don't eat hardly anything; half a bottle o' milk does him the whole day."

The woman was satisfied, and, paying her deposit of two dollars, took the sickly thing in her arms and went out into the town. The other could find nothing that suited her, but promised to return the next day, when a "new batch" was expected.

Such are the main avenues by which boys and girls are driven to the road in the United States. Hunger, I candidly admit, is the whip in many instances, but the wielder of it is more often than not the drunken father or mother. It is the hunger that comes of selfish indulgence, and not of ill adjusted labor conditions.

III

Of my third class, those who are enticed to the road, – and their number is legion, – I have been able to discover three different types. The old roadster knows them all. Wherever he goes they cross his path, and beg him to stop awhile and tell them of his travels. They seem to realize that they have been swindled – that the road is, after all, only a tantalizing delusion; but they cannot understand why it appeals to so many of their elders, and it is in the hope that these will in the end put them on the right track for the fun they are seeking that they hail them, and cry, "What cheer?" It is a pitiful call, this, and even the "old stager" winces at times on hearing it; but he cannot bring himself to go back on "the profession," and quickly conquering his emotion, he gives the tiny traveler fresh directions. The boy starts out anew, hoping against experience that he is at last on the right route, and plods on eagerly until stopped again at some troublesome cross-road where he does not know which turn to take. Once more he asks for directions, once more receives them, and so the ceaseless trudge goes on. It is mainly at the cross-roads that I have learned to know these children. Notwithstanding my alien position, they have hailed me too, and inquired for sign-posts. I have seldom been able to help them, even in the way that I most desired, but surely there are others who can.

The children of this third class that one meets oftenest are what the older travelers call "worshipers of the tough." They have somehow got the idea that cow-boy swagger and the criminal's lingo are the main features of a manly man, and having an abnormal desire to realize their ideal as quickly as possible, they go forth to acquire them. The hunt soon lures them to the road, and up and down its length they scamper, with faces so eager and intent that one is seldom at a loss to know what they are seeking. There are different explanations of the charm that this wild life has for them. A great many people believe that it is purely and simply the work of the devil on their evil-bent natures; others, that it is the result of bad training; and still others, that it is one form of the mimicry with which every child is endowed in larger or smaller degree. I favor the last opinion. In the bottom of their hearts they are no worse than the average boy and girl, but they have been unfortunate enough to see a picture or hear a story of some famous rascal, and it has lodged in their brains, until the temptation to "go and do likewise" has come upon them with such overwhelming force that they simply cannot resist. Each one has some particular pattern continually before his eyes, and only as he approaches it does he feel that he is becoming tough. Now it is "Blinkey Morgan" that fascinates him, and, despite his terrible end, he strives to be like him; then it is "Wild Bill," whoever he may be; and not unfrequently it is a character that has existed only in dime novels, or not even so substantially as that.

I remember well a little fellow, about thirteen years old, who appeared in Indian-scout attire one night at a hang-out near McCook, Nebraska. He dropped in while the tramps were cooking their coffee, and seldom has there been such a laugh on the "Q" railroad as they gave on seeing him. It was impolite, and they begged his pardon later, but even his guardian angel would have smiled. He was dressed from head to foot in leather clothes each piece made by himself, he said, and at his belt hung an enormous revolver, which some one had been careful enough to make useless by taking out an important screw. It was in the hope of finding one at the camp that he visited it, but the men made so much of him that he remained until his story was told. It was not remarkably new, for all that he wanted was a chance to shoot Indians, but his hero was a little unusual, – Kalamazoo Chickamauga, he called him. When asked who he was and where he had lived, all that the youngster could say was that he had dreamed about him! I saw him again a week or so later, not far from Denver, tramping along over the railroad-ties with long strides far beyond his measure, and he hoped to be at "Deadtown," as he miscalled Deadwood, in a few days. He had not yet found a screw for his "gun," but he was sure that "Buffalo Charley" would give him one.

Of course this is a unique case, in a way, for one does not meet many lads in such an outfit, but there are scores of others just as sincere and fully as innocent. If one could only get hold of them ere they reach the road, nearly all could be brought to reason. They are the most impressionable children in the world, and there must be a way by which this very quality may be turned to their advantage. What this way shall be can be determined only by those who know well the needs of each child, but there is one suggestion I cannot forbear making. Let everything possible be done to keep these sensitive boys and girls, but particularly the former, from familiarity with crime. Do not thrust desperadoism upon them from the shop-windows through the picture-covered dime novels and the flaring faces of the "Police Gazette." It is just such teaching by suggestion that starts many an honest but romantic boy off to the road, when a little cautious legislation might save him years of foolish wandering, and the State the expense of housing him in its reformatories later on. I write with feeling at this point, for I know from personal experience what tantalizing thoughts a dime novel will awaken in such a boy's mind. One of these thoughts will play more havoc with his youth than can be made good in his manhood, and lucky is he whom it does not lure on and on until the return path is forever lost.

Something like these children in temperament, but totally different in most other respects, are those lads that one meets so often on our railroads, drifting about for a month or so from town to town, seldom stopping in any of them over a day, and then suddenly disappearing, no one knows where, to appear again, later, on another railroad, frequently enough a thousand miles distant. Occasionally they are missed from the road for over a year, and there is absolutely no news of their whereabouts; but just as they are almost forgotten they come forward once more, make a few journeys on the freight-trains, and vanish again. There are cases on record where they have kept this up for years, some of them coming and going with such regularity that their appearances may be calculated exactly. Out West, not very long ago, there was a little chap who "showed up" in this way, to use the expression that the brakemen applied to him, every six weeks for three years, but this was all that was known concerning him. When asked who he was and where he belonged, he gave such evasive answers that it was impossible to come to any trustworthy conclusion about him. He would have nothing to do with the people he met, and I have heard that he always rode alone in the box-cars. In this last respect he was a notable exception, for, as a rule, these little nomads take great pleasure in talking with strangers, but they are careful not to say too much about themselves. They ask questions principally, and skip from one subject to another with a butterfly rapidity, but manage to pick up a great deal of knowledge of the road.