Twenty Years a Detective in the Wickedest City in the World

by Clifton R. Wooldridge

WHAT WILL WE DO WITH THE VAGRANT AND TRAMP?

Raggles—"Why did yer refuse what she offered yer?"

Weary—"Cause I never heard of it before and de name was too much for me. Why when she said 'chop suey' cold chills run down me back, 'cause dat word chop reminds me too much of de time when I had ter chop three cords of wood looking into de face of two shotguns."

The vagrant is the most elusive man among us. He is always with us, yet we can never locate him. No one wants him, yet we always send him to someone else. We make laws to get rid of him, but succeed only in keeping him a little longer in custody at our own expense. Most of us laugh at him and some of us cry over him by turns. We draw funny pictures of him in our newspapers and in our billboard advertisements, but we are really afraid of him. We blame the police for not keeping him off the streets, or at least out of sight, and yet we feed him at our own doors. We fear to meet him after dark, and nevertheless we give him a nickel or a dime to keep him in town over night. He is an object of charity, or a criminal, just as we happen to feel. He is sometimes the hero of our melodrama at the theater, who gets our tearful applause. At the same time he stands for all that we brand as mean and vile. We spend money lavishly to support him without work by charity, or imprison him in idleness by law.

The problem is to understand vagrancy so well that we can deal with it on a large enough scale both to restore the vagrant to the working world or to keep him in custody, and to prevent the accidental or occasional vagrant from becoming a habitual mendicant. The English and European governments have dealt with their problems of vagrancy more effectively than we have. This is due to the fact that they have investigated the causes and conditions of vagrancy more widely than we, and dealt with it on a larger scale by uniform legislation and by more persistently following up the measures in which the public and private resources combine to treat the evil.

Tramp a Railroad Problem.

Thus the tramp cuts no figure as a railroad problem, much less menace, abroad. But with us it is the fact that railroads representing more than half the total mileage operated in the United States and Canada testify almost without exception to depredation, thieving, injuries, deaths, accidents to passengers or rolling stock, enormous aggregate costs to railroads or society, caused by the habitual illegal use of the railroads by vagrants. The number of "trespassers," from one-half to three-quarters of whom were vagrants, who are killed annually on American railroads exceeds the combined total of passengers and trainmen killed annually. Within four years 23,964 trespassers were killed and 25,236 injured, thus furnishing the enormous total of 49,200 casualties, with all the cost they involve.

Only by the co-operation of the railroads with one another and of towns and cities with the railroads can this waste of life and property and this increasing peril to the safety of the traveling public be prevented. Much more stringent laws will have to be both enacted and enforced to prevent the trespassing, which puts a premium on vagrancy.

One of the best effects of the strict prevention of free riding on railroads would be to keep boys from going "on the road" and becoming tramps. It is simply amazing to find little fellows of from 12 to 17 years of age, who have never been farther away from home than to some outlying freight yards, disappearing for several weeks and returning from Kansas City, or Cleveland, Omaha or New York, having all alone, or with a companion or two, beaten their way and lived by their wits while traveling half way across the continent. Once the excitement of the adventure is enjoyed, the hardship it costs does not seem so hard to them as the monotony of home or shop. The discipline of the United States navy has been the only regulation of this wandering habit which the writer has known to be successful. But the habit is more easily prevented than regulated. Massachusetts has taken the most advanced legislative action of all the states to this end. The Wabash and the New York Central railways suggest fine and imprisonment for trespassing upon railway tracks or rolling stock.

Better Lodgings for Homeless Men.

Far better provision for lodging homeless men must be made by cities in municipal lodging houses of their own, such as Chicago effectively conducts, and by far stricter public regulation and supervision of lodging houses maintained for profit or for charity. The anti-tuberculosis crusade shows that this supervision and regulation should be shared by the health authorities with the police. Within a period of five years 679 consumptives were taken from only a portion of Chicago's lodging house district to the Cook County Hospital, most of them in the most dangerously infectious stages of the disease. An investigator of Chicago's 165 cheap lodging houses and their 19,000 beds declares that "the unfortunate man forced to sojourn in them for a while may enter sound and strong and come out condemned to death."

The New York City Charity Organization Society and the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor have rendered a country-wide public service in furnishing the report on "Vagrancy in the United States" by their joint agent, Orlando F. Lewis. It may well be the basis for better public policy here and everywhere.

Startling figures and facts were presented at the State Conference of Charities and Corrections at Albany by Arthur W. Towne, secretary of the Illinois State Probation Commission, regarding the extent of vagrancy and the habits of tramps in this state.

More than 31,000 persons, mainly vagrants, received free lodgings in New York State, in town and city lockups, during 1906, and the number in 1907 was larger. Seventy-five cities and towns thus provide for their wandering visitors. Half of these towns and cities also feed the wanderers free of charge.

A large number of places give lodgings also to boys, many of them as young as 10 or 12 years, thus encouraging the wandering spirit that makes the later tramp. With only one slight exception, not a single town or city required any work at all from the lodgers in return for the lodging or the food provided, thus giving absolutely no incentive to the wanderer to work for his board or meals.

It is urged that the system of allowing the police authorities to give these free lodgings, as well as the similar practice in some jails and almshouses, be abolished as a most direct encouragement to vagrancy, and that in their stead such free lodgings as are necessary should be furnished by the overseer of the poor, but only when repaid by some form of work, such as chopping wood or breaking stone.

Tramps Like Jail.

Mr. Towne also brought out the fact that tramps like to go to jail in winter. Instead of considering a jail sentence for that part of the year as a form of punishment, they welcome it as a chance to keep warm and loaf at the public expense. Forty-three per cent of the commitment of tramps occurs between November 1 and February 1. In short, the jail or the penitentiary becomes a sort of winter vacation resort for tramps. Many chiefs of police with whom Mr. Towne communicated said that tramps in winter would ask to be sent to jail, and that if this were not done they would sometimes commit offenses for the express purpose of being arrested and sent there.

It is declared to be significant that in the tramp's slang the word "dump" is applied to both lodging houses and jails.

With a cold winter the number of vagrants in penitentiaries and jails increases. In 1906 there were more than 10,000 tramps and vagrants in penitentiaries and jails, while in 1904, which was a very cold winter, there were more than 14,000. On the average, about one-third of the prisoners are tramps and vagrants. This means that the public is annually paying several hundred thousand dollars for the avowed purpose of punishing men for vagrancy, but in reality it amounts only to furnishing a free place of winter rest. Most of the chiefs of police believe that jails and penitentiaries do little good, if any, in their treatment of tramps. Another fact is that the sentences for this class of offenders are too short to accomplish any results. About 85 per cent of the sentences are from only one to sixty days.

THE TRAMP OF FICTION

Tore Purse from the Hobo.

Hobos Classified by Races.

In a vague way the veteran hobos, classified by the various nationalities, are fairly representative of the make-up of the whole American nation, in accordance with the number of hobos each nationality turns out. After taking into consideration the fact that certain parts of the United States are dominated by people of one nationality, and the bulk of tramps in that part of the country would necessarily come from that nationality, the following classification was given as doing justice to all:

The Irish and British elements lead in the number of hobos. They are closely followed, however, by the German element. The nations of Eastern Europe, Poles, Bohemians, Hungarians and others, are next in line. Then follow, in smaller numbers, Scandinavians, French, Italians and Jews. The French come mostly from Canada, the Scandinavians from the northwest and the Italians from the largest cities in the country, like New York and Chicago, and also from the southern states. Here and there one finds a stray Servian or Bulgarian who drifted into trampdom and has never been able or has never cared to drift out of it again.

Greeks are seldom found among tramps because they have not yet a "second generation" of Greeks to any extent in the United States. Chinese and Japanese likewise are not found in the hobo class. Of the negro race, many would not be averse to becoming professional tramps were it not for the risk which a negro tramp generally runs. A "stray negro," according to the hobos interviewed, is regarded with apprehension and is apt to be shot on mere suspicion.

New Foreigner Not a Hobo.

You will hardly ever find a foreigner in the first five or ten years of his American life among tramps and hobos. "He may be near tramp, he may be apparently 'down and out,' but he is not a genuine hobo," said one of the men. "You will find plenty of foreigners in the lodging houses, plenty of them who starve and suffer, but they are not hobos. They have had hard luck, and now in their old age they live by doing two or three and some even one day's work a week. But they work more or less. They have not the parasitic philosophy of one who is a full-fledged hobo. They fall more in the class of European vagabonds, such as one finds in Germany or Russia. They work now and then; they have some trade, or know a smattering about a number of trades."

The American hobo falls in an entirely different category from these. Work with him is said to be a disgrace. Neither does he relish crime much if he can get along without it. He will beg from door to door and will commit a crime only as a last resort. The hobo primarily has no will power, or rather, he destroys it.

The majority of hobos became such because of their false conception of freedom and of wrong inter-relations between parents and children. Their parents have been held in many cases in semi-savage conditions by their landlords in the old world. When they come to America they naturally appreciate their freedom. They speak of it to their children. They are lax with them, and this spoils them.

Jew Recruit in Trampdom.

Polish tramps and tramps from other nations of Eastern and Southern Europe were declared to be more apt to turn to petty crimes when pressed to it by want. They are, however, according to statements of tramps, easily found out. They somehow are hasty in their actions, and just as they brandish their knives and pistols thoughtlessly they fall into the hands of the police simply and easily.

The Jewish tramp was a rarity until recently. However, the large number of Jews which poured into this country from oppressed countries in Europe since 1881 have also furnished a "first generation," many of whose members have found their way to the barrel houses and slums of all large cities. The Jewish tramp, however, was declared to be entirely of the class of the petty criminal. Out of the penitentiary for some petty crime committed, or having been a go-between for thieves and the person who buys the goods stolen, the Jewish youth for the time being takes to trampdom.

His commercial instinct, however, together with the wide system of charity which the Jews maintain in every city where they are found, soon enables him to get out of the hobo class. He becomes a trader of some sort and soon leaves the barrel house and his hobo companions behind him.

Talks of the Tramp—Why Dilapidated Gentleman Does Not Give Up Wandering and Settle Down—Likes the Care-Free Life—Mingles Among the People and Gets to Know Them Well—Changes in Community.

"Why don't I give it up and settle down in city or village and become a respectable member of the community?" echoed the dilapidated gentleman as he pocketed his usual fee. "I have been asked that question a thousand times, it seems to me, and my answer has always been the same. I tramp as a profession, and I stand at the head of it. I like it. There's a good living in it. I come in contact with human nature at every turn. I am respectable as it is. The cities and villages are overcrowded, and the man who butts in has little chance of success. I have less to worry about and sleep more soundly than any business man in America. You newspaper fellers think you know it all, but you'd take a drop to yourselves if you were on the tramp for a month. You'd see more human nature with the bark on in that time than you can find on the East Side in New York in five years.

"Say, now," continued the man, "can you name me one single newspaper in the state of New York that felt sure of Roosevelt's election as governor? No, you can't. I hit his majority within 2,000. Why? Because I was among the people and knew how they talked. Plenty of politicians and newspapers said he'd be elected as president when he ran, but no man or no newspaper came within a thousand miles of the popular majority. I don't say that I hit it, but I could have given pointers to a hundred editors.

SHOWING A "MEMBER" GETTING INTO THE FIGHT LAST NIGHT.

Roaming Rowley—"I've just gotter break inter that nice, warm jail fer de winter. Here goes dat old shell I found on de battlefield."

(Bang! Flash! Boom!)

"Yes, Mr. Sheriff, it wus me did it! I'm a desprit dynamiter and jail bird."

Sheriff—"Git out of this township, quick! I won't have you blowin' up my nice, clean jail! Gwan, git!"

Get Out Among the People.

"Before the next national convention of either party meets I'll have tramped over three or four states, and I'll be ready to wager my life ag'in a nickel that I can name the victorious candidate. I'll wager that I can predict it far closer than any newspaper in the land. If you want to know what this country is thinking about, my boy, don't box yourself up in a sanctum and read a few exchanges. Get out and rub elbows with the people. It isn't the few big cities that settle the great political questions. It's the farmer and the villager, and they come pretty near being dead right every time. When I had tramped across seven counties of New York state I shouted for Hughes. A politician in Syracuse who heard me had me thrown out of a meeting and wanted the police to arrest me. I heard that he had a bet of $5,000 on another candidate and was predicting Hughes' defeat by 50,000. But enough of this. I' ll switch off and tell you something that has hurt me for the last three or four years.

Barns Now Locked.

"Do you know that a few men, comparatively, have almost changed the nature of the country and village population? No, you don't, but you'll learn of it some day through some magazine writer who gathers up his points in the way I have. Time was when not one farmer in ten in the land locked his house or barn at night. Now ninety out of a hundred do it. When a stranger came along they welcomed him. When a man talked with them they accepted his statement. What they saw in the newspapers they believed without cavil. Well, they have got over all this. The patent medicine faker, the mine exploiter, the bucketshop man and the hundreds of other swindlers have destroyed the confidence of the farmer and villager in human nature. They have been bitten so often and so hard that they come to doubt if such a thing as honesty exists. They won't take a stranger's word for anything. They have got through believing that there is an honest advertiser. They have even become distrustful of each other. It has become the hardest kind of work to sell a windmill, piano or other articles direct.

Victims of Fakers.

"You can't get out into the country and walk five miles without finding a victim of the fakers. The farmer has invested in bogus mines, bogus oil wells, bogus stock and bogus other things, and not only lost his money, but come to know that he was as good as robbed of it. The villager has been trapped the same way. It has hardened their hearts and given them the worst view of mankind. You can know nothing of this by telling, nor of the ruin wrought until you get among the people.

"Up to a year or so ago it was seldom that a farmer turned me down. If he had nothing for me to do to earn a meal or lodging he would not turn me away. He most always took me on trust and had no fear that I was a rascal in disguise. It's all changed now. This last summer I was paddling the hoof in Connecticut and Massachusetts, making a sort of grand farewell tour, and it was hard work for me to even get a few apples of the farmers. They used to be full of 'chin' and gossip. They used to hold me for an hour in order to hear all the news. I found them last summer sullen and sulky and calling to me from the fields to move on. In other years the village landlord would set me at work in the stables or with a pail of whitewash in some of the rooms, and in that way I'd pay for my stay. I found a change there.

Hardened by Losses in "Prosperity" Times.

"Three years ago, if you had started out for a day's tramp with me along a country road every farmer we met would have had a 'Howdy' for us, and perhaps stopped for a chin. You'd have heard whistling or singing from every man at work, and the farmer's wife would have called to you that she had some fresh buttermilk. Take such a tramp today and you'll find a tremendous change. I can't estimate the sum the farmers and villagers have been robbed of during the past years of prosperity, but it is something appalling for the whole country. As much and more has been taken out of victims in the cities, but the case is different. The man in the city doesn't pin his faith to an advertisement. He speculates on chance. He is where he can use the law, if needs be. If he loses here he goes at it to get even there. With the other class it is a dead loss, and the swindler can give them the laugh. Take almost any highway you will, leading through almost any state, and eight farmers out of ten have been made victims. Even the man who has not lost above $10 has been hardened by it.

His Feelings Hurt.

"I said that this change hurt me, and so it does. You may be surprised to hear that anything can hurt the feelings of a tramp, but that is because you don't know him. He is looked upon as an outlaw in the cities, but ever since he took the road there has been a sort of bond between him and the dwellers outside. He has paid his way or been willing to. He has asked for little and done little harm. The newspapers have made thousands of farmers tell hard stories about the tramp, but it has been in the newspapers alone. The two have worked together harmoniously.

"Have you got any idea of how the professional conducts himself on the road? No? Well, it won't happen once in a week that you will find one without a little money. It has been earned by hard work. When he stops at a farmhouse he offers to work for a meal. If there is no work he pays cash for what he gets. If he has been padding along for three or four days he will stop and work for half a week if the chance is offered him. In his work he keeps up with the hired man. He washes before he eats. He knows what forks are made for. He carries a clean handkerchief oftener than the man he works for. The average tramp can dress a chicken, kill a pig, empty and fill a straw bed, whitewash a kitchen, paint the house or fence, hoe corn, dig potatoes, run a cultivator, drive a team, split fence rails, dig a well, shingle a roof or rebuild a chimney. He is a handy man. He eats what he gets, sleeps where he is told to and brings the farmer a bigger budget of news than any two of his county papers. When his work is finished he slings his hook and is told to stop again. That's the tramp and that's the farmer just as they have been for the last forty years, and that's the reason I bemoan this change in the farmer. He has been victimized by men he thought were honest, he has been robbed where he trusted, and in changing his feelings toward mankind he must include the tramp, who has never wronged him.

Driven to the Cities.

"Take a walk and you will find those same green meadows, those same brooks, those same lambs, but you won't find Uncle Josh and Aunt Mary any more. A city like this seems a hard-hearted and cruel place, and you shiver at the idea of being dead broke. Let me just tell you that tramps are driven into the cities to recuperate. All the clothing I have had for the last five years has been begged in the city. All the money I have had has come from the dwellers therein. The only kind words I have heard have come from the hurly-burly. Makes you open your eyes, doesn't it? You are still clinging to the old-fashioned ideas of the country.

"My friend, let me tell you something. There isn't today a harder man to deal with than the average farmer. There isn't a woman with less sentiment than his wife. There's been a mighty change in the last twenty years. Indeed, it is a change that was forced on the farmer to protect himself. In years gone by, in tramping over the highways, I have met lightning-rod men, windmill men, piano men, hay-fork men, commission men, peddlers, chicken buyers and horse traders. All were after the farmer. Each and every one intended to beat him, and did beat him. He was beaten when he sold his produce and he was beaten when he bought his goods. He was considered fair game all around. It was argued that his peaceful surroundings made him gullible, and I guess they did.

Maud Muller on a summer's day
Raked the meadows sweet with hay;
This heavy work upon the farm
Gave Maud a very strong right arm.

In Chicago just the other day
She raked the muck heaps without pay.
"Near food" and "curealls" went up in smoke.
Maud deserves credit, and that's no joke.

Things Are Changed Now.

"Well, Uncle Josh and Aunt Mary died twenty years ago, and their children took hold. The babbling brook babbles for cash now. The green meadows mean greenbacks. The lambkins frisk, but they frisk for the dough. The watchdog at the gate can size up a swindler as well as a man. The farmer holds on until he gets the highest price, and the merchant who sells him shoddy has got to get up early in the morning. Say, now, but I'd rather start out to beat ten men in a city than one farmer. I'd rather be dead broke here than to have a dollar in my pocket out in the country. If taken ill here I'm sent to a free hospital; if taken sick in the country, the Lord help me.

"I'm not blaming the farmer in the least. For a hundred years he was the prey for swindlers and was taken for a fool. If he's got his eyes opened at last and is taking care of himself, and I assure you that such is the case, then so much the better for him. It is the dilapidated gentleman who suffers most from this change.

"Why is a sailor a sailor? Nineteen times out of twenty it is because he wants to rove the seas. Why is a tramp a tramp? Nineteen times out of twenty it is because he wants to rove the land. It is a nervous, restless feeling that he cannot withstand. He wants to get somewhere, and he is no sooner there than he wants to get somewhere else. The majority of them are sober men. They are as honest as the average. Not one in twenty will refuse to work for a meal or for pay. Not one in twenty commits a crime for which he should be jailed. You can't make statistics talk any other way. The whining, lying, vicious tramp has his home in the city and stays there.

Farmers Down on Tramps.

"It is the press of the country that has got the farmer down on the tramp. You may drive for fifty miles and interview each farmer as you come to him and you won't find five to say that a tramp ever caused them any trouble. In summer the tramp may steal a few apples or turnips. Anyone driving along the highway is free to do that. Should he steal an ax, shovel, plow, sheep, calf or break into the house and steal a watch or clothes, what is he going to do with his plunder? The instant he tries to realize on it he is nabbed. The tramp who entered a house and stole $50 in cash would be worse off than if he hadn't a cent.

"I can walk into that bakery over there and say that I am hungry and the woman will give me a stale loaf. I can tackle most any man passing here for a dime for lodgings and get it. I can wander down most any residence street and raise a hat, a coat or a pair of shoes. How is it out in the country? We'll say I've hoofed it all day, making about fifteen miles. I've stopped to rest now and then and view the scenery. Don't you make any mistake about that scenery feature. If any art company wanted to publish a thousand views it couldn't do better than to ask the tramps where to find the best ones. For lunch I pull two turnips from a field. My drink is from a brook. Along about 6 o'clock I hunger for cooked victuals, and as it looks like rain I would like to get lodgings in a barn. I turn aside to a farmhouse. The farmer is washing his hands at the well to go in to supper. Out of the tail of his eye he sees me approaching, but he pays no heed until I stand before him and say:

"'Mister, I can milk a cow, chop wood, mow weeds or hoe If you will give me supper and lodgings on the haymow I will work an hour at anything you wish.'

"WHEN DID YOU GET OUT OF JAIL?" HE ASKS.

Suspicious of Caller.

"'When did you get out of jail?' he asks.

"'I have never been in jail.'

"'But you look like a durned skunk who stole a pitchfork from me last year.'

"'Last year I was in California.'

"'Want to set my barn afire with your old pipe, do you?'

"'I don't smoke.'

"He stands and thinks a moment and then grudgingly tells me to take a seat on the kitchen doorsteps. The wife brings me out a stingy supper. There's an abundance on the table and part of it will go to the hogs, but she cuts me short, thinking to get ahead of me. I have cleared my plate in ten minutes and then I am set to work and buckle in until too dark to see longer. My bed is on the hay, and twice during the night the farmer comes out to see if I haven't stolen the shingles off the roof. In the morning if I want a meager breakfast I must put in a good hour's work for it. That means an hour and a half, and when I thank the farmer for his generosity and get ready to go on, he says:

"'Goin', eh? Well, that's the way with you durned critters. I've filled you up and lodged you, and now you want to play the sneak on me.'

"My friend, don't look for much sentiment in humanity these days, and don't look for a bit of it out in the country. You won't find it. The farmer can't afford it. He has been beaten by sharpers and squeezed by trusts until he has lost faith in everyone. He has buttermilk, but it's for sale, and before selling it to you he wants a certificate that you have never stolen a haystack or run away with a field of buckwheat."

It was hard to suspect that the clean-cut, energetic and rapid-fire talker was a tramp, but when he produced credentials from one end of the country to the other, and promised and threatened to produce them from Brazil, Hungary, New Zealand and the Klondike regions to prove his statement, it had to be credited.

"I'm A No. 1, the well-known hobo, tramp, author and traveler," he said, in a speed of diction that would have made the late lamented Pete Daily or Junie McCree green with envy. "Everywhere you've seen the marks 'A. No. 1,' on railroad fences, in railroad yards, or anywhere else, and you must have seen them if you've been over this country much; you'll know I've been there."

Hobo Looks Like Business Man.

A No. 1 had uttered this sentence in almost one breath, and was proceeding with such rapidity that it was impossible to follow his flow of ideas. He was a medium-sized but lithe and powerfully built man, attired in a neat tailor-made brown suit, with highly polished shoes, and looking something like a prosperous business man in a small way. Under his arm he carried a pair of blue overalls, and as he laid them on the table he remarked: "My traveling rig."

"Say, Jack, have some more nice hot coffee."

"Gee, Bill, I was jus' thinkin' o' that myself. Talk about great minds—"

"Come on, Jack, be game. Please have some more o' this nice turkey."

"Turkey! Great Scott! When have I heard that word before? Hain't it a country out in Asia some place?"

"No. Jack, turkey is vittles. You get it if you love your teacher. Better let me give you a few nice slivers off the breast."

"Say, Bill, on the dead, you're sure generous, all right, all right. Here you are, sharin' your last turkey."

"Old man, don't you know it's Thanksgivin' day? Don't you hear the bells ringin'? Do you reckon I'd dine alone on a day like this? No, siree, not much. Pass your plate fer some more o' this nice hot turkey, and some nice hot scolloped oysters, an' some o' these nice hot biscuits, an' some nice cranberry sauce, an'—"

"There you go. Bill, robbin' yourself. You won't have any left."

"O, there's plenty here. I like to see a man eat till he's plum foundered.... When I used to go home fer Thanksgivin' mother wasn't happy unless I et enough to stall a hired hand. If I didn't eat four helpin's of everything she thought I didn't like her cookin'. Had to try ever'thing—choc'late cake, turkey, sage dressin', hot gravy, mince pie, an'—"

"Say. Bill, you might gimme a piece o' that mince pie while you're about it. I got a nice, cozy little place fer a piece o' mince pie."

"Sure, Jack. I'll give you a whole quarter section. How do you like this celery? Awful hard to get good celery these days."

"Yep, celery and servants. One's hard to get an' the other's hard to keep."

"Say, Jack."

"What?"

"Shall we have our cigars and coffee here or in th' drawin' room?"

"O, let's have James bring 'em in th' drawin' room."

"Maybe I don't look like a tramp to you," he continued, "but I'm the genuine article, not the tomato-can or barrel-house bum type, but a real, up-to-date, twentieth-century tramp who respects his profession. Why am I a tramp? Because I like it. When did I start? When I was 11 years old. What is my name? None but myself knows it. I call myself A No. 1 because I'm an A. No. 1 tramp."

DID YA SEEN IT HEN?
NAW—WHAT WAS IT?
(HONK!)

He had a most convincing way with him and proceeded to spin off a tale of his adventures which differed somewhat from the ordinary story that the average tramp will tell you; how he had been hounded by the police, or released from jail and couldn't get work, or had bad luck in business, being crushed out by the heartless trusts until he had to tramp or starve, ending up with an appeal for the "price of a bed, mister."

"I've kept a record of the towns I've been in ever since I've been on the road," continued A. No. 1. "and up to date I've traveled 445,405 miles, and it's cost me just $7.61. Out of that distance there's been 92,000 miles of it by water. In 1906 I traveled 19,335 miles for 26 cents, and in the year 1907 I traveled between Stamford and West Haven, Conn. I jumped a street car and the conductor made me pay my fare. Oh, I always have a little money, and I'm honest, too, and that's saying a good deal for a tramp. Of course, once in a while I go hungry, but that's when I can't get a potato."

"Dese awnings is handy t'ings.

"Wot's de matter wit' fixin' one up on meself?

"It would be a good umbreller——

"An' if a cop bothered yer——

"Youse could let de water off de top.

"It makes a bully tent, or——

"A screen for yer fire.

"But when it's windy——

"Yer wanter look out cause——

"Yer might go sailin'!"

"Is that your staple article of diet?"

"No, I don't eat them except in restaurants," said A. No. 1, seriously. "Here is what I do with them." He pulled a good-sized tuber from his pocket, opened a large clasp knife and speedily had it peeled. Then he proceeded to cut and carve, and in about three minutes had fashioned a grotesque human face on the potato, the lines coarse, to be sure, but nevertheless well outlined.

Tramp An Artist.

"I make these and can carve anyone's face, and I can sell them anywhere from 25 cents to $2," said the tramp. "I'm the only man in this country who can do such work, and there's a demand for it everywhere I stop long enough to do it. I only stop to do it when I have to, so that I can get a little money for a meal and pay little expenses, although my living doesn't cost me much. Then, again, I never drink or smoke, so that item is cut off. They don't know so much about me in Chicago as in other places, because I never stopped here long enough to get acquainted; but they know me back East, all right, and out in the West."

Then A. No. 1 paused long enough to draw his breath and showed a medal certifying that in 1894 he had hoboed his way across the continent in eleven days and six hours in company with the representative of an Eastern paper and had been given $1,000 for doing it.

"That's how I first became famous," he said, "but I took good care of the money. I went and bought myself a lot in a graveyard at Cambridge Springs, Pa., so I could be buried respectably when I die, and I paid part of the premium on a sick benefit so that I can be taken care of in case I fall sick suddenly. I'm a member of the Chamber of Commerce of that town, too. I believe in looking out for A. No. 1, and that's why I've been so prosperous in the tramping way."

Then A. No. 1 launched into a long and picturesque description of the ways of tramps in general and himself in particular.

"I've always been particular about some things," said he, "and one is to keep clean. I find that in asking for a handout the man who looks up-to-date is the man who gets it. I always wear a suit of overalls when I'm tramping, for I find that it prevents me from being annoyed by watchmen in railroad yards. I am generally taken for an engineer. While I was down in a yard here in Chicago one man came and asked if I had a car lock, thinking I was a railroad man. I told him I did not have one and walked off. I have prevented a number of train wrecks, tramping about, probably at least one every year. The last one, as you see by this letter, was a few months ago. I saw a freight running along with a broken truck dragging. I jumped aboard and gave the warning, as you can see by this clipping. I have also been in a number of wrecks myself, and have never been injured. I always carry a little bottle of cyanide of potassium in my pocket so that in case I am ever fatally injured and in great agony I can take it and end all my trouble in about 20 seconds."