Part 14

"It is the press of the country that has got the farmer down on the tramp. You may drive for fifty miles and interview each farmer as you come to him and you won't find five to say that a tramp ever caused them any trouble. In summer the tramp may steal a few apples or turnips. Anyone driving along the highway is free to do that. Should he steal an ax, shovel, plow, sheep, calf or break into the house and steal a watch or clothes, what is he going to do with his plunder? The instant he tries to realize on it he is nabbed. The tramp who entered a house and stole $50 in cash would be worse off than if he hadn't a cent.

"I can walk into that bakery over there and say that I am hungry and the woman will give me a stale loaf. I can tackle most any man passing here for a dime for lodgings and get it. I can wander down most any residence street and raise a hat, a coat or a pair of shoes. How is it out in the country? We'll say I've hoofed it all day, making about fifteen miles. I've stopped to rest now and then and view the scenery. Don't you make any mistake about that scenery feature. If any art company wanted to publish a thousand views it couldn't do better than to ask the tramps where to find the best ones. For lunch I pull two turnips from a field. My drink is from a brook. Along about 6 o'clock I hunger for cooked victuals, and as it looks like rain I would like to get lodgings in a barn. I turn aside to a farmhouse. The farmer is washing his hands at the well to go in to supper. Out of the tail of his eye he sees me approaching, but he pays no heed until I stand before him and say:

"'Mister, I can milk a cow, chop wood, mow weeds or hoe If you will give me supper and lodgings on the haymow I will work an hour at anything you wish.'

SUSPICIOUS OF CALLER.

"'When did you get out of jail?' he asks.

"'I have never been in jail.'

"'But you look like a durned skunk who stole a pitchfork from me last year.'

"'Last year I was in California.'

"'Want to set my barn afire with your old pipe, do you?'

"'I don't smoke.'

"He stands and thinks a moment and then grudgingly tells me to take a seat on the kitchen doorsteps. The wife brings me out a stingy supper. There's an abundance on the table and part of it will go to the hogs, but she cuts me short, thinking to get ahead of me. I have cleared my plate in ten minutes and then I am set to work and buckle in until too dark to see longer. My bed is on the hay, and twice during the night the farmer comes out to see if I haven't stolen the shingles off the roof. In the morning if I want a meager breakfast I must put in a good hour's work for it. That means an hour and a half, and when I thank the farmer for his generosity and get ready to go on, he says:

"'Goin', eh? Well, that's the way with you durned critters. I've filled you up and lodged you, and now you want to play the sneak on me.'

"My friend, don't look for much sentiment in humanity these days, and don't look for a bit of it out in the country. You won't find it. The farmer can't afford it. He has been beaten by sharpers and squeezed by trusts until he has lost faith in everyone. He has buttermilk, but it's for sale, and before selling it to you he wants a certificate that you have never stolen a haystack or run away with a field of buckwheat."

It was hard to suspect that the clean-cut, energetic and rapid-fire talker was a tramp, but when he produced credentials from one end of the country to the other, and promised and threatened to produce them from Brazil, Hungary, New Zealand and the Klondike regions to prove his statement, it had to be credited.

"I'm A No. 1, the well-known hobo, tramp, author and traveler," he said, in a speed of diction that would have made the late lamented Pete Daily or Junie McCree green with envy. "Everywhere you've seen the marks 'A. No. 1,' on railroad fences, in railroad yards, or anywhere else, and you must have seen them if you've been over this country much; you'll know I've been there."

HOBO LOOKS LIKE BUSINESS MAN.

A No. 1 had uttered this sentence in almost one breath, and was proceeding with such rapidity that it was impossible to follow his flow of ideas. He was a medium-sized but lithe and powerfully built man, attired in a neat tailor-made brown suit, with highly polished shoes, and looking something like a prosperous business man in a small way. Under his arm he carried a pair of blue overalls, and as he laid them on the table he remarked: "My traveling rig."

"Maybe I don't look like a tramp to you," he continued, "but I'm the genuine article, not the tomato-can or barrel-house bum type, but a real, up-to-date, twentieth-century tramp who respects his profession. Why am I a tramp? Because I like it. When did I start? When I was 11 years old. What is my name? None but myself knows it. I call myself A No. 1 because I'm an A. No. 1 tramp."

He had a most convincing way with him and proceeded to spin off a tale of his adventures which differed somewhat from the ordinary story that the average tramp will tell you; how he had been hounded by the police, or released from jail and couldn't get work, or had bad luck in business, being crushed out by the heartless trusts until he had to tramp or starve, ending up with an appeal for the "price of a bed, mister."

"I've kept a record of the towns I've been in ever since I've been on the road," continued A. No. 1. "and up to date I've traveled 445,405 miles, and it's cost me just $7.61. Out of that distance there's been 92,000 miles of it by water. In 1906 I traveled 19,335 miles for 26 cents, and in the year 1907 I traveled between Stamford and West Haven, Conn. I jumped a street car and the conductor made me pay my fare. Oh, I always have a little money, and I'm honest, too, and that's saying a good deal for a tramp. Of course, once in a while I go hungry, but that's when I can't get a potato."

"Is that your staple article of diet?"

"No, I don't eat them except in restaurants," said A. No. 1, seriously. "Here is what I do with them." He pulled a good-sized tuber from his pocket, opened a large clasp knife and speedily had it peeled. Then he proceeded to cut and carve, and in about three minutes had fashioned a grotesque human face on the potato, the lines coarse, to be sure, but nevertheless well outlined.

TRAMP AN ARTIST.

"I make these and can carve anyone's face, and I can sell them anywhere from 25 cents to $2," said the tramp. "I'm the only man in this country who can do such work, and there's a demand for it everywhere I stop long enough to do it. I only stop to do it when I have to, so that I can get a little money for a meal and pay little expenses, although my living doesn't cost me much. Then, again, I never drink or smoke, so that item is cut off. They don't know so much about me in Chicago as in other places, because I never stopped here long enough to get acquainted; but they know me back East, all right, and out in the West."

Then A. No. 1 paused long enough to draw his breath and showed a medal certifying that in 1894 he had hoboed his way across the continent in eleven days and six hours in company with the representative of an Eastern paper and had been given $1,000 for doing it.

"That's how I first became famous," he said, "but I took good care of the money. I went and bought myself a lot in a graveyard at Cambridge Springs, Pa., so I could be buried respectably when I die, and I paid part of the premium on a sick benefit so that I can be taken care of in case I fall sick suddenly. I'm a member of the Chamber of Commerce of that town, too. I believe in looking out for A. No. 1, and that's why I've been so prosperous in the tramping way."

Then A. No. 1 launched into a long and picturesque description of the ways of tramps in general and himself in particular.

"I've always been particular about some things," said he, "and one is to keep clean. I find that in asking for a handout the man who looks up-to-date is the man who gets it. I always wear a suit of overalls when I'm tramping, for I find that it prevents me from being annoyed by watchmen in railroad yards. I am generally taken for an engineer. While I was down in a yard here in Chicago one man came and asked if I had a car lock, thinking I was a railroad man. I told him I did not have one and walked off. I have prevented a number of train wrecks, tramping about, probably at least one every year. The last one, as you see by this letter, was a few months ago. I saw a freight running along with a broken truck dragging. I jumped aboard and gave the warning, as you can see by this clipping. I have also been in a number of wrecks myself, and have never been injured. I always carry a little bottle of cyanide of potassium in my pocket so that in case I am ever fatally injured and in great agony I can take it and end all my trouble in about 20 seconds."

COLONIES FOR TRAMPS.

Teaching Vagrants a Trade.

The vagrancy problem, growing so great in every part of the country, has caused the authorities of Massachusetts to make a trial of the German plan of farm colonies for quasi-criminals. Vagrants are sent to such farms under indeterminate sentences, forced to support themselves by honest labor and made to stay there until they give evidence that upon release they will become useful and self-respecting citizens.

This is a modification of the penal colony idea, which is to send confirmed criminals to such a place for life. It is a great advance upon the plan in use in Chicago, which is to send vagrants to the Bridewell for a stipulated time and let them out again. While they are confined they are an expense to honest citizens, they acquire more extensive knowledge of crime, and when released they are less likely than they were beforehand to go to work and support themselves.

The Massachusetts scheme promises well, so far as it goes. The trouble with it is that in this climate a farm provides work for only a small part of the year. From November to March other work would have to be found for inmates, and up to this time society has failed to agree upon any that would be satisfactory.

Persons interested in charities and prison reforms are indorsing a plan for "tramp colonies," "forced colonies" and "free colonies." Into the one put criminals, or incurable tramps who are unwilling to work. The other would contain tramps who are unable to find work, neuropaths, cripples and those who are judged to be curable. Both kinds of colonies would be strictly agricultural, and their products would pay all expenses of operation and relieve the country of the enormous sums now required to be spent.

But why confine this plan, admirable and satisfactory as it is, to tramps? Why not extend it so as to include criminals? Criminals cost honest taxpayers millions of dollars every year. Why not reorganize a system of confinement in such a way as to compel criminals to support themselves?

But financial relief is not the only advantage. If habitual criminals--that is to say, criminals who have served two terms in the penitentiary, and then have committed another crime--were placed in a penal colony, remote from society and kept there for life, the moral tone of the country would at once be raised. The bad example of such men, which leads youths into crime, would be removed. The knowledge that there was no escape, that return was impossible, once an offender was sent to the penal colony, would deter many would-be criminals. The possibility that hardened criminals might propagate themselves would end.

The penal colony is the one rational solution of the crime problem, which becomes more difficult and menacing each year. It will be adopted, sooner or later.

THE YOUNG CRIMINAL

HOW HE IS BRED IN CHICAGO.

Chicago Raises Its Own Criminals.

There is material in this subject for earnest thought. Men under twenty-five are responsible for 75 per cent of crimes committed in Chicago, and 50 per cent of robberies and burglaries are done by boys under nineteen.

If that is true, then the idea many people have had that crimes in this city are mostly committed by a roving army of criminals, alien to Chicago and attracted hither by one cause or another, must be abandoned. If it is true, then Chicago itself is responsible for most crimes committed here. The men who are guilty have grown up in this environment, which has given them the evil impetus under which they act.

The thought that Chicago boys are the criminals who terrorize the city, rob houses and flats, hold up citizens on the streets and assault women is distressing. It was much pleasanter to attribute these crimes to desperate men from elsewhere, descending upon Chicago like raiders and leaving the city again as soon as possible. But that is a misconception. We ourselves have reared most of our criminals. They are a Chicago product. They have received their notions of right and wrong here among us. We are responsible for them.

What is the matter with Chicago? What are the elements in its life that breed criminals? What causes thousands of young boys to take up a criminal life? What must we do to change conditions?

These are questions that should engage every good citizen in anxious endeavor to find answers to them. If we are to reform criminals and lessen crime, we must first learn how to reform our own city.

PREVENTING CRIME BETTER THAN CURE.

Instead of attempting to prevent crime, we wait until after the crime is committed, then burden ourselves with the expense of apprehending, trying, convicting and imprisoning the criminal.

Our first duty is to adopt those measures that will prevent the further commission of crime.

Among the problems of Chicago there is no one, perhaps, that is more baffling than that of the vicious boy.

His years protect him from the rigors of the law, and it is a difficult matter to know just what to do with him.

There are all sorts of organizations formed for his aid and his reformation. There is the Juvenile Court, for instance, and there are innumerable homes and shelters, and still the problem is not solved. The boy looms large in the public eye these days, when he is sent to prison for life for murder and spends long years in durance for burglary and other serious crimes.

The story of the car-barn bandits and their tragic end is too recent to need more than a passing reference.

The car-barn bandits met an ignominious death on the gallows. Rudolph Gamof will spend the remainder of his years behind prison bars and it is quite likely Alfred Lafferty will know what hard work means in Pontiac or some other such institution before he is once more at liberty.

THE END OF THE GAMIN.

It will be remembered that little Gavroche, the gamin in "Les Miserables," came to his death on a barricade in the streets of Paris. It was during the fatal insurrection of 1830. The lad allied himself with the insurrectionists and found he was in his element. He did prodigies of valor and was robbing the dead bodies of the enemy of cartridges when he was shot. Even after he had been shot once and had fallen to the earth he raised himself to a sitting posture and began to sing a revolutionary song.

"He did not finish," says Hugo. "A second bullet from the same marksman stopped him short. This time he fell face downward on the pavement and moved no more. This grand little soul had taken flight."

Thus it is to be seen that Hugo has made a hero of this lad. But what of the little gamins that throng Chicago's streets? Will they find any such glorious end? It is not likely.

Jacob Leib is but 17 years old, and Alfred Lafferty, accused of twenty-three burglaries, is only 16. The John Worthy School is full of boys who have been gathered in by the police; the Junior Business Club, another reform organization, has a big membership, and the Juvenile Protective League is hard at work trying to do something to arrest the boy in his mad race to the reform school, prison and the penitentiary.

In looking about for the causes of crime among boys I found that poverty, liquor, divorce, yellow newspapers, cigarettes and bad company played important parts. Certain streets of Chicago are schools of crime, where boys are taught the rudiments of larceny and soon become adepts.

Hardened criminals use the more agile youths they find idle to do work they are unable to do. Certain sections of the city swarm with boys who are steeped in vice and crime and are in embryo the murderers, the burglars and the forgers of tomorrow.

CHICAGO HAS HER CHILDREN.

Turning again to the pages of "Les Miserables," the story of Gavroche, the gamin of Paris, may easily be found, and the tale of this youth is not far different from that of the "kid" of Chicago. Here is what Victor Hugo says of Gavroche in that section of his great novel called "Marius": "This child was muffled up in a pair of man's trousers, but he did not get them from his father, and a woman's chemise, but he did not get it from his mother.

"Some people or other had clothed him in rags out of charity. Still he had a father and a mother. But his father did not think of him and his mother did not love him.

"He was one of those children most deserving of pity, among all; one of those who have father and mother and who are orphans nevertheless.

"This child never felt so well as when he was in the street. The pavements were less hard to him than his mother's heart.

"His parents had dispatched him into life with a kick. He simply took flight.

"He was a boisterous, pallid, nimble, wideawake, jeering lad, with a vicious but sickly air. He went and came, sang, played, scraped the gutters, stole a little, but like cats and sparrows. He had no shelter, no bread, no fire, no love. When these poor creatures grow to be men the millstones of the social order meet them and crush them, but so long as they are children they escape because of their smallness."

This is a true picture of the urchin of Chicago. These tiny atoms of humanity are sponges that absorb all the filth, the vice, the sin and the crime of the streets. They pick up all that is evil and nothing that is good. They are nurtured at the breast of poverty and viciousness, and are reared on a diet of depravity and degradation. There is nothing they do not know of crime and of wickedness. They are thoroughly saturated with everything that is evil, unprincipled and debased.

Is it any wonder, then, that the city brings forth an appalling annual crop of criminals? There may be heroes among the gamins in Chicago, but most of them are only heroes so long as they remain uncaught.

When they fall into the hands of the police and are taken to jail they are sorry-looking heroes.

And in the meantime the problem of the boy is still unsolved.

GRADUATE OF THE STREETS.

This, then, is a good specimen of the kind of boy the schools of the street graduate. From these petty classes of crime they go to the high school, the prison, where they are further grounded in the knowledge of wickedness, and as like as not return to Chicago once more, full-fledged criminals, ready for anything. But this is only one of hundreds of such cases that are brought to the attention of the police and the public every year.

Most of the boys who come here are either orphans or half orphans. Drink has wrecked their homes, perhaps, and they are thrown out on the world to shift for themselves. If they get into bad company they soon make their appearance in the Juvenile Court or in jail.

10,000 BOYS WORSE THAN HOMELESS.

A charitable worker who has come in touch with the young of the poorer districts, whence comes the tough lad, estimates that there are over 10,000 boys in Chicago who are worse than homeless. In other words, they are in direct line of becoming criminals or public charges, under the teaching of the trained criminal who makes the city his refuge.

Anderson, the stickup youth who operated extensively on the north side, choosing women for his victims, is but 23 years old. The men who relieved Alderman C. M. Foell at the point of a gun are less than 20, and thus it goes down the line.

They laugh at the efforts of the police to catch them. For the most part they live at home or with relatives, and in the neighborhoods are known as dissipated and tough boys, but not as hold-up men. With companions they sally out at night to isolated sections of the city where they know the police protection to be inadequate. They choose secluded spots offering the protection of darkness and lay in wait.

Then, with plenty of time deliberately to stop the victim and take from him valuables, they operate until it is time for the policeman to be in the vicinity, or until the profits of the expedition are sufficient to satisfy their spirit of revelry and riot.

SCHOOLS FOR PICKPOCKETS.

There are numerous places in Chicago where boys are taught to become pickpockets. Poolrooms are gathering places for such young criminals and certain saloons of a low order harbor others. There is one saloon in West Madison street, for instance, not far from Canal street, where a lot of pickpockets are in the habit of congregating. They are young fellows for the most part and adepts in their particular field.

They find a sort of home in this saloon, where they can get a big glass of beer and a generous free lunch for 5 cents. They are in and out of this place day and night and manage to keep out of the clutches of the law through their sleekness and cleverness. There is one young man in there at least who has made a good living by forging orders for goods. So far he has escaped detection.