The migratory worker is not saddled with responsibility for law and order. As he makes his way about the country, he is unincumbered. He has nothing to lose and nothing to protect but his person, and that he protects best by constantly moving. The homeless man has no interest in common with the settled man of the community who has attachments and property, and at whose expense he often lives. The migratory worker, for a time, may be physically a part of a community, but he actually does not become absorbed into its social life. The wanderer who fails to win a place in the life of a community often takes his own course. This course is sometimes in harmony with the interests of the community, but more often counter to them, and he fails under the surveillance of the law.
To the tramp and the hobo the police are the guardian angels of organized society, created to protect the community against criminals and migrants. To him there are two varieties of police—civil and private. The uniformed upholder of the law, the civil police, is given the uncomplimentary epithet, “harness bull.” The plain-clothes men are called “dicks,” “fly cops,” and “stool pigeons.” The private police who protect the property of the railroad are held in even lower contempt.
THE PRIVATE POLICE
The chief job of the “dicks” is to keep the “bos” off the trains. The private police are unpopular, not only among homeless men, but also among the employees of the railroads. Brakemen and switchmen will often aid tramps in their effort to avoid the police. Railroad police must often contend with a lack of co-operation by the civil police. The town police, or “town clown” as he is called, may order the tramps to leave on the “next train,” while the railroad police may be making every effort to prevent their riding the trains. The town police are not anxious to fill the jail; they prefer that the transients move on; they reason that the railroad should take away what the railroad brought.
The railroad policeman shows results, not by the number of convictions as the civil police, but by his ability to keep at a minimum the number of offenses against railroad property. His endeavor is to put fear into the hearts of all trespassers on the right-of-way. He becomes a hunter of men, not to seize and detain them, but to pursue and terrorize them. He is to the railroad property what the scarecrow is to the cornfield.
Railroad police sometimes drive men off fast-moving trains by throwing stones or shooting at them. Not infrequently they catch and maltreat a tramp; however, they are seldom able to get hold of a veteran tramp. The inexperienced man or the boy is more likely to be caught. These means of putting fear into men do not stop tramping. As they become fearful of the railroad “bull,” they become more cautious, and the “bull’s” problem is increasingly difficult.
WHAT THE TRAMP THINKS OF THE PRIVATE POLICE
To migrants the railroad is “the tramp’s traditional highway.” The tramp, however, expects opposition from the railroad police and even from the train crews; nevertheless he measures his success as a “boomer” by his ability to outwit this opposition. Encounters with the railroad police are a favorite theme of conversation in the “jungles” and along the “stem.”