My Life

by Josiah Flynt

One of the experiences that I had during this second month in the interests of railroading, so far as its traffic applies to tramps, occurred in Ohio. During my extraordinary privileges as a railroading tramp, and with all my credentials from the general manager's office, I picked up a freight train going west of Mansfield, Ohio, upon which I nevertheless found myself in difficulties. I saw three tramping negroes on this train. I saw them get on the train—largely a coal train so that one could see from the caboose window exactly what was going on—and went after them, car after car full of coal, until I reached the biggest of the three. The train was going at the rate of about twenty miles an hour. I snatched the hat of the biggest one that I could see and said, with some reminiscences in mind, I must confess: "You have your nerve with you, riding on this road. Hit the gravel."

The negro looked up at me, as if all the majesty of the law had been suddenly invested in my humble person, and said, with a truly pathetic tramp touch: "Cap, the train is going a little too hard." He received back his hat, and he and his two companions were asked by me, in no uncertain terms, to leave the train at a certain siding.

I made up my mind that those three negroes should get no train leaving the siding—a resting place for tramps, and for trains that needed coal and steam to go farther on. I went to the signal tower and telegraphed east and west for an officer to get to the signal tower in question and arrest the trespassers as soon as possible. This may seem a hard thing for a man to do, who had been through what I had. But I was responsible to the general manager of that property. I was also responsible to my own idea of integrity, and I believed in my inmost soul that it was the thing to do.

The negroes wanted to fight me. I was carrying a toothbrush at the time. While at the coaling station the negroes lingered around and made every effort to catch every freight train that was going out their way. I rode every one of these going in their direction to within about one hundred yards of their waiting place. Finally, the last "run," as they well knew, had gone. As I dropped off the last freight train that they were not swift enough to catch, I walked toward them, and was greeted with these words: "Do you think you run this road? If you do, you'll get a bullet hole through you so soon that you won't know what struck you."

I thought of my toothbrush as the only weapon I had. I thought also of the willingness on the part of those negroes to revenge themselves, and I thought still more closely about the distance between where I stood and the coaling station. It so happened that my bluff went. I said to the negroes: "If there is any shooting to be done here I'll begin it." The negroes left me alone, and I left them alone. I could not, however, get over the idea that they had infringed on my territory as investigator, police officer, or anything else that you want to call it. The result of the experience was that the police officer that I had telegraphed for toward the east appeared at the coaling station as soon as he could, and that we rode on together to the next village. There I said to him: "I think we will catch those negroes not very far away from here." He picked up the town marshal and away we went down the track to find those negroes. We found them.

Dusk was just coming on, and they were sitting alongside the track. The policeman from the east drew his revolver, went up to them, and said, much to their surprise: "I place you under arrest." The negroes wilted, and all of us went to the station house of the nearest village. They were given an immediate hearing. They said that they had not been seen on any train, other than a passenger train on which they had paid their fares, during all the years of their existence. The justice said: "Do you suppose that that man is going to come here and tell me that he saw you on a certain freight train when he didn't see you on that freight train?"

One of the negroes replied: "I never saw that man before in my life." This was the man whose hat I had taken when I told him to get off the train. The justice gave all three a thirty-day sentence to the Canton Workhouse. The next morning, the negroes were prisoners of the local authorities. By these local authorities they were handcuffed, put on a train, and started for their destination. Foolishly, I not only followed them in Canton, but I went up with them, in the street car, to the workhouse. During that ride I heard all the hard things that can possibly be said about any one.

This experience and my participation in it may not seem so very creditable to one who had himself been a tramp. But what did I learn about those negroes? They had been employees of a circus, had got drunk and into a row, and had left their positions as circus men. So far as I have been able to make out, they had no right to have a free ride anywhere.

This is merely one of the incidents that fell to my lot during the second month. Of course there were many others, which interested me at the time, to think over, but which would not interest the reader.

The main thing I learned to believe in and expect in my general manager was a great efficiency. All through my tramp experiences at his request, I found, even in tramp life, that the great thing is getting there and doing something. My report to him about the general ability of the police force, which he and his subordinates had got together for the purpose of completely ridding the property of the tramp nuisance, was that I thought he had at least got the Fort Wayne road so cleaned up, in that respect, that no "respectable" tramp would ride on it. In making this report I said to the general manager: "They are stealing coal on the Lake Shore Railroad. There is a man who told me that on the Lake Shore Railroad every twentieth train, before it gets forty miles out of Buffalo, gets dug into." On that same expedition for the general manager I ran up against two tramp camps at the end of one of the "Short Lines" at Ashtabula. My interest at that time was not to disturb either camp at all. I went down to the Lake Shore Railroad, toward their coal chutes, and there I found two camps. The fires of these were being bountifully supplied by coal taken from the adjoining railroad company. My position was peculiar. Tramps, and criminals for that matter, do not like to have any one approach what they believe to be their property. I went to one of the camps, and sat down on a railroad tie. Pretty soon a person of unquestionable importance in his own tramp line, said to me: "Have you a match?"