My Life

by Josiah Flynt

"You will find on our property a certain number of qualified policemen. Perhaps I should say 'patrolmen.' We do not use the word detective on this property. They are divided up according to divisions, and the moral deportment of the different communities in which they are placed. My idea has been to try to police our property just as a city is policed.

"What I should like to have you do is to go over our property and see whether our police force has been successful in ridding our lines, and, to some extent, the communities which they touch, from tramp immigration. How do you feel about the matter?"

Here was a problem which led right back into all that land of Wanderlust which I supposed that I had given up in so far as it applied to tramp life. However, as so many well-known people say: "Beggars cannot be choosers," I undertook the job of finding out for the general manager exactly what the tramps had to say about his lines as protected by his police. Eighteen years before this interview, the general manager's lines, to my own knowledge, were so littered up with tramps, and tramp camps that the Fort Wayne road in particular then was known as an "easy" road to beat between Chicago and Pittsburg. It was as bad as the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, which in those days was called "The Dope."

These roads were ridden promiscuously by all kinds of men, women and children who did not pay fare. When they got into a box car they thought much nonsense. The things that were done and said among all these people at that time would make too scandalizing reading now. If there are slums in our cities, there are no greater slums anywhere in the world, barring no crime, passion, or idiosyncracy, than were found on the "Dope" and the Fort Wayne roads in my tramp days.

I looked over the general manager's property. Dressed as a tramp, acting as a tramp, living and sleeping as a tramp, I surrounded his lines until I knew what the tramp world had to say about his railroad police idea. I found wherever I went, in Cleveland, Chicago, Cincinnati, Wheeling, or Pittsburg, that tramps said: "There are easier roads to beat than the Fort Wayne."

It was hard work to go back into tramp life. I had some hard knocks, as regards storms and other misadventures in various places. Yet, with it all, it brought back to me a number of remembrances of earlier tramp days.

At the end of one month on the "Road" I went to the general manager and told him that I had no desire to ride his trains—that there were so many other trains and roads that were easier. I believed that, in order to complete my investigations, if he cared to have me proceed further, I should have a pass, good on every movable thing that he had on his property. We discussed this matter in some detail. Eventually, the general manager consented to my proposition, and I was given a pass, good over all his lines, and I had with me the moral support of his position.

I tackled the tramp problem from a new point of view. It was my privilege to ride on practically every passenger train, every freight train, and on all engines that it should be my fate to meet. The general manager also gave me a letter instructing his employees to let me pass. I now know that it puzzled the general manager's police force to comprehend my compromising position on the road. The police force said: "Who is this young fellow out here looking us up?"

I was called to order one night, in Ohio, by a captain of the newly instituted police force, for riding on a caboose of a freight train. I was getting off the caboose to find out about something which was a matter of detail at the time, and had got back to the steps of the caboose, when the captain stepped up to me and said: "What are you doing on this train?" I looked at him. He looked at me. We then and there decided that there was no particular disagreement between us. But I have to say that during the second month of my investigations for the general manager, his police force could not make out why I was on the property with all my credentials, and my confusing diminutive form and face. One of my best friends to-day, who was then at the head of the police, was interested in my proceedings.

As an illustration of how men keep track of each other, he had his men keep track of me. At the same time, I think he must have realized that our superior officer was behind such an errand as I was on. He had the good sense to say to himself: "Well, if that is the Boss's work, I'd better leave it alone." But he kept his men looking out for me, which is only human nature.