Bulls
If the tramp were suddenly to pass away from the United States, widespread misery for many families would follow. The tramp enables thousands of men to earn honest livings, educate their children, and bring them up God-fearing and industrious. I know. At one time my father was a constable and hunted tramps for a living. The community paid him so much per head for all the tramps he could catch, and also, I believe, he got mileage fees. Ways and means was always a pressing problem in our household, and the amount of meat on the table, the new pair of shoes, the day's outing, or the text-book for school, were dependent upon my father's luck in the chase. Well I remember the suppressed eagerness and the suspense with which I waited to learn each morning what the results of his past night's toil had been--how many tramps he had gathered in and what the chances were for convicting them. And so it was, when later, as a tramp, I succeeded in eluding some predatory constable, I could not but feel sorry for the little boys and girls at home in that constable's house; it seemed to me in a way that I was defrauding those little boys and girls of some of the good things of life.
But it's all in the game. The hobo defies society, and society's
watch-dogs make a living out of him. Some hoboes like to be caught by
the watch-dogs--especially in winter-time. Of course, such hoboes
select communities where the jails are "good," wherein no work is
performed and the food is substantial. Also, there have been, and most
probably still are, constables who divide their fees with the hoboes
they arrest. Such a constable does not have to hunt. He whistles, and
the game comes right up to his hand. It is surprising, the money that
is made out of stone-broke tramps. All through the South--at least
when I was hoboing--are convict camps and plantations, where the time
of convicted hoboes is bought by the farmers, and where the hoboes
simply have to work. Then there are places like the quarries at
Rutland, Vermont, where the hobo is exploited, the unearned energy in
his body, which he has accumulated by "battering on the drag" or
"slamming gates," being extracted for the benefit of that particular
community.
Now I don't know anything about the quarries at Rutland, Vermont. I'm
very glad that I don't, when I remember how near I was to getting into
them. Tramps pass the word along, and I first heard of those quarries
when I was in Indiana. But when I got into New England, I heard of
them continually, and always with danger-signals flying. "They want
men in the quarries," the passing hoboes said; "and they never give a
'stiff' less than ninety days." By the time I got into New Hampshire I
was pretty well keyed up over those quarries, and I fought shy of
railroad cops, "bulls," and constables as I never had before.
One evening I went down to the railroad yards at Concord and found a
freight train made up and ready to start. I located an empty box-car, slid open the side-door, and climbed in. It was my hope to win across to White River by morning; that would bring me into Vermont and not more than a thousand miles from Rutland. But after that, as I worked north, the distance between me and the point of danger would begin to increase. In the car I found a "gay-cat," who displayed unusual trepidation at my entrance. He took me for a "shack" (brakeman), and when he learned I was only a stiff, he began talking about the quarries at Rutland as the cause of the fright I had given him. He was a young country fellow, and had beaten his way only over local stretches of road.