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.