After he gets to his feet he is given a chance to wash his face and stick paper on the cuts; then he is “frisked,” that is, ordered to donate all but one dollar to the jungle. Then he is sent out of camp with orders not to show up in any of the diggings along the line for it would be murder if anyone should spot him.
By eleven o’clock the excitement is over. Different men announce that they were headed for so and so and that the freight starts at such a time. To this someone replies that he is going that way too so they start off together. Others walk back among the trees to the places where they have prepared to sleep. Others who have insufficient clothes to stand the night chill bunch up around the glowing camp fires. Soon everything is quiet except for an occasional sound out of the darkness of men mumbling in conversation. Occasionally the sound of groans and snores or sighs, or curses are heard. These betray the dreams of men living like hunted animals.
I look at my watch and note that it is near midnight and that all is over for the night, so I curl up on some papers beside a bed of coals.[5]
THE MELTING POT OF TRAMPDOM
The part played by the jungles as an agency of discipline for the men of the road cannot be overestimated. Here hobo tradition and law are formulated and transmitted. It is the nursery of tramp lore. Here the fledgling learns to behave like an old-timer. In the jungles the slang of the road and the cant of the tramp class is coined and circulated. It may originate elsewhere but here it gets recognition. The stories and songs current among the men of the road, the sentiments, the attitudes, and the philosophy of the migratory laborer are all given due airing. In short, every idea and ideal that finds lodgment in the tramp’s fancy may be expressed here in the wayside forum where anyone who thinks may speak, whether he be a jester or a sage.
Suspicion and hostility are the universal attitudes of the town or small city to the hobo and the tramp. Accordingly, the so-called “floater” custom of passing vagrants on to other communities is widespread.[6] The net effect of this policy is to intensify the anti-social attitude of the homeless man and to release and accentuate criminal tendencies. The small town is helpless to cope with the situation. As things are, its action perhaps cannot be different. Agriculture, as it becomes organized upon a capitalistic basis, is increasingly dependent upon seasonal labor, in harvesting crops for example. The report of the Commission on Industrial Relations states:
The attempts to regulate movements of migratory workers by local organizations have, without exception, proved failures. This must necessarily be true no matter how well planned or well managed such local organizations may be. The problem cannot be handled except on a national scale and by methods and machinery which are proportioned to the enormous size and complexity of the problem.[7]
FOOTNOTES:
[3] It is interesting here to note that there is a striking parallel between the rules of the jungles and the rules of cow camps and other camps of the hills. It is the custom of the cow men of the west to maintain camps in the hills which are stocked with provisions and equipped with utensils and furnishings. These camps are usually left open and anyone who passes is welcome to spend the night, provided he puts the place in order when he leaves.
[4] The documents from which extracts have been taken are numbered consecutively in the text. For complete list of documents used in each chapter see pp. 281-88.