The "entrance in the alley" proved to be quite a different affair. In a narrow, little landing,—highly perfumed with the odors of rum, tobacco, and dirt in general,—Ben's age, name, nativity, trade and condition of life were taken down in a big book by a man who occupied a small rough board office, and held communications with the outer world through a diminutive pigeon hole. Having furnished the desired information, our hero was presented with a meal ticket, and informed that the hospitalities of the "Home" were extended to him for three days, if he could not sooner find employment, after which he would have to provide for himself and pay the transient rates of five cents per meal and ten cents for lodging.
These preliminaries having been gone through with, he ascended a flight of narrow stairs, and was ushered into the greatest tramp resort in the United States, and probably the best patronized in the world.
CHAPTER XII.
THE GREAT TRAMP RENDEZVOUS.
A large bare room, steam heated and furnished with several long tables and benches, was already filled by nearly three hundred tramps. They formed a motley crowd. Old and young, of numerous nationalities and every degree of raggedness and trampdom were there. Young novices, just entering upon this degraded life. Occasionals—working men to-day, tramps to-morrow, and drunkards at all times. Professionals, who preferred mendicancy to honest labor. Honest men, reduced by dire misfortunes to this sore distress. Sick men, whose hold upon life was waxing faint. Scorbutic men, bearing on their face and persons the indelible marks that outraged nature had branded them with, for life. Sad men, who felt the degradation of their position. Bold, callous men, for whom this world held no shame; and men whose deportment denoted that they had seen better days, and could not forget them, were all gathered there in a heterogenous mass of rags, hunger, dirt, and profanity.
No notice was taken of Ben's advent among them. Indeed he was immediately swallowed up in the crowd, the members of which were variously engaged. Some paced up and down the floor, in lonely communion with their own thoughts. Some were seated by the wall patching their garments, and sewing up rents; some reading, others tossing coppers, and others asleep in all the hubbub and Babel of voices. Gathered in groups were men discussing the events of the day, or mapping out routes for future travel. What struck Ben as singular was the fact that there were very few old men present. Nearly all were young or in the vigor of manhood. He did not see but one or two old "war-horses" and they moodily held themselves aloof from the crowd. There was a hot, fetid air in the room, and his stomach sickened at this expression of the life he had adopted.
A word of explanation relative to this great tramp "home" will not be amiss. It was built by the contributions of generous citizens of Pittsburg as an asylum for the homeless wanderer. A place where he might rest and recuperate, while he sought employment. One would naturally suppose that those partaking of the charity would be grateful, but the tramps are not. A man with authority is continually employed in preserving the peace among them, and a more ungrateful, querulous, quarrelsome lot of misery it would be hard to conceive.
The building, which is a large one, is divided into two departments:—the "Hotel" and "Bum" sides of the house, as they are locally known. The "Bum" side consists of a single large hall, located in the rear, and separated entirely from the remainder of the house. The "pay" department, is a well arranged, well furnished, and well conducted hotel, principally patronized by permanent guests having occupations in the city. The proceeds of the "Hotel" are supposed to be devoted to the maintenance of the "Bum" department. "Bummers Hall" has an average nightly attendance of two hundred and fifty impecunious men every night in the year. Sometimes the number reaches to near four hundred. Statistics are kept of the attendance. Single men predominate, being above eighty per cent of those seeking the refuge. The nationalities represented stand in the following order as to numbers: Ireland, Germany, America and England; though all Europe has delegates in "Bummers Hall." It has been often questioned if the resort be not a detriment to the city, and an inducement for the fraternity to rendezvous there. But this is not good reasoning. The tramps would come whether the "Home" was there to receive them or no; and it is far better to have two hundred and fifty impecunious—and frequently lawless and reckless men—stowed safely away at night, than have them thrown loose upon the city. It is a difficult matter to make tramping a crime, for it would make poverty criminal. The suggestion that jails and work-houses receive them is pernicious in the extreme. Reformatory institutions turn out finished law-breakers. They generally reform a man of what little good there may be in him when he enters them. The great majority of tramps have not the nerve to commit a crime, though they had the inclination. They are a poor, weak, purposeless, cowardly set of vagabonds, whose most heinous offence consists in "jumping" a train, or, perhaps, purloining some trifle of food. They shrink from committing acts that will bring them before that terror of terrors, a police court. But a term in the state's prison or work house turns out quite a different individual. As tramps they still have latent hopes (however futile) of some day recovering a membership in good society. As prison graduates, this hope has left them, and they look viciously upon life. As an evidence of this, it will be found that three-quarters of the tramps arrested for unlawful acts, are released convicts.
There is a great hue and cry raised every now and then about "what shall we do with them?" Better, if we turn our attentions to the cause that produces the effects, and ask ourselves "what shall we do with the system that makes them?"
Ben had scarcely time to look about and familiarize himself with the place, when supper was announced. It consisted of a tin dish of soup and a piece of bread, and was served up on the long table in the center of the room. The soup was of the "bouillon" order. In it were sliced carrots, stewed potatoes, boiled potato peelings, baked fish, chicken bones, salt mackerel, cabbage, tomatoes, cheese, beef, beans, dried apples, vegetable parings, and a few other articles. To the imaginative mind it suggested the possibility of a small grocery store having gone off on a drunk, and got drowned in a cauldron of boiling water. A more practical view of the matter was that it consisted of the remnants of the "Hotel side," with the kitchen dish water generously added, by way of a flavor.