He said to me: "What I wish you would do is to go over the property under my management, and make such a report as you see fit about the tramp conditions."
I said to him: "What do you think that will be worth?"
He said: "Well, what do you think it will be worth?"
I needed the money, there was not much more in sight at that time, whether I went on tramp or not anyhow, and I replied: "Well, I suppose that ten dollars a day would be an even price."
The general manager replied: "I think that's fair. I suppose you know how to proceed?"
"I think that I can get back in the old line without much trouble," I returned.
The general manager said: "Go ahead, and find out whatever you can. Whether the police force that I have instituted has been successful or not in stopping the tramp evil, I do not know. I say that I do not know because I cannot possibly be personally on every spot, covering five States, including thirty thousand men. It is pretty hard to keep track of all that you order to be done. I am speaking to you purely from the point of view of a railroad manager. It's pretty hard to run a railroad as you would like to have it run. This tramp business, this riffraff, this slum population that I find on my lines is, of course, a detail in the work that has been set before me.
"In my endeavor to keep my lines as clean as possible, not only as a citizen, but also as a railroader, I have tried to build up a railroad police. The States through which my lines run protect me only incidentally. I find that when your friends, the tramps, are arrested by town or village officials they are easily turned loose. I wanted to know how the situation could be changed, and I proceeded to look into the matter. The result was that I made up my mind that the railroad company must protect itself. I found that certain men, called detectives, were, at times, endeavoring to keep tramps off trains on our lines. I found, furthermore, that these men, or detectives, were not attending to their duty as I believe it should be attended to.
"Consequently I got to wondering how this matter could be better attended to. I looked over the expense accounts for police purposes, and found that our people were paying what seemed to me an exorbitant sum for very poor service. It seemed to me that police matters on a railroad, on account of the negligence on the part of villages and towns, should be organized and given a standing, which, on account of our lackadaisical procedure against crime in this country, was justified.