PERVERSION AMONG THE TRAMPS
All studies indicate that homosexual practices among homeless men are widespread. They are especially prevalent among men on the road among whom there is a tendency to idealize and justify the practice. Homosexuality is not more common among tramps than among other one-sex groups. In the prison and jail population, the authorities are forced to wage a constant warfare against it. The same condition prevails also in the navy or merchant marine, and, to a lesser extent, in the army.[52]
Among tramps there are, it seems, two types of perverts. There are those who are subjects, in the words of Havelock Ellis, “of a congenital predisposition, or complexus of abnormalities.” Ellis contends that certain individuals, different temperamentally and physically from the rest of us, are not attracted by the opposite sex but are easily attracted by their own sex. Most of them are men who have developed from childhood feminine traits and tastes, and they may be regarded as predisposed to homosexuality. The second group is composed of individuals who have temporarily substituted homosexual for heterosexual behavior. Most of these perverts by conversion are men who, under the pressure of sex isolation, have substituted boy for woman as the object of their desires. This is chiefly because boys are accessible while women are not.
THE BOY TRAMP AND PERVERSION
The boy does not need to remain long in hobo society to learn of homosexual practices. The average boy on the road is invariably approached by men who get into his good graces. Some “homos” claim that every boy is a potential homosexual. This is without doubt an exaggeration as well as a defense, for not all boys are subject to persuasion. Sometimes boys will travel alone or with other boys to avoid the approaches of older men. Often boys will refrain from traveling with adults, even well-behaved adults, because they realize that they will be under suspicion. It is not uncommon to hear a boy who is seen traveling with an older man spoken of as the “wife” or “woman.” It is only natural that many boys fear to be alone with adult tramps.
53. The case of M. is typical. He is a sixteen year old boy who travels alone. He is a handsome lad; small for his age and neat in appearance. He is just the type of boy that would attract the average “wolf” who idealizes pink cheeks and an innocent appearance. He travels alone because of his fear of “wolves.” He had not been away from home three weeks and he says that he has been accosted several times. Although he had been in Chicago but a day he had received advances from two men who tried to persuade him to go to a room.
Many devices are employed by them to place the lad in their debt or under their protection. If methods of persuasion do not work, force is sometimes used. One man gave a brakeman a dollar to put a boy off the train at a lonely siding. Another man learned which direction a certain boy was traveling and followed him from town to town, “accidentally” meeting him at each place. The lad was without funds, and so was the man, but the latter was able to beg and usually had a “lump” when he met the boy and he always divided. Another man led a boy a mile or so out in the country to a place where he claimed he had worked during the previous year and where he knew they could both get something to eat.
Another common ruse is to take a boy to a room or a box car to sleep. The man suggests that he knows a clean car in a safe place with plenty of straw or paper on the floor. In a big city the boy is often enticed to a room for the same purpose. There are many cases on record in the Chicago courts.[53]
54. A. F., a boy sixteen years old, was being held in a room on West Ohio Street to which he had been enticed for immoral purposes by John M. J. M. was arrested on complaint of one F. He was found in company with another boy in a room in the E. Hotel on South State Street. John was held for trial on $3,000 bonds which he could not furnish. He died in jail waiting for trial.