THE BORDER LAND OF TRAMPDOM. 253 



clothes clean wliile traveling and were worn underneatli while 

 selling goods. These tricks are common property among road- 

 sters, being the outcome of stern necessity. We soon learned 

 that if a person looked as though he needed to sell his goods it 

 was very hard to do so, but if he looked as though he was simply 

 doing it for the pleasure of the thing it was very easy. By try- 

 ing successively various ways of selling we soon became experts 

 and could sell at nearly every house we tried. 



Probably there exists nowhere a stranger medley of people 

 than the inhabitants of that indefinite place known as "on the 

 road." Their numbers are constantly lessened by desertion and 

 as constantly augmented by fresh arrivals. As far as I could 

 learn by personal inquiry, there are two classes of reasons which 

 throw these persons on the road one a subjective one, restlessness, 

 and the other an objective one, misfortune. 



As for the proportion between the two, my opinion would not 

 carry much weight, as I was with these people only one summer, 

 and hardly learned any more than that the proportion varies 

 greatly. At the time I did not make any classified study of each 

 person, although I learned as well as possible from personal con- 

 versation the causes of their condition. The cases which I can 

 recollect now seem to be about evenly divided between those who 

 go on the road from choice and those who do so from necessity. 

 I have reason to believe, however, that this is not the normal 

 proportion, those who had to travel being more numerous than 

 usual. Whenever I found veterans I found them complaining of 

 the great number of recruits. As one tramp expressed it, " It^s 

 gittin' so a respectable 'boe [hoboe] can't get a hand out any- 

 where no more. This whole d country is on the bum." 



I. Tlie class ivho are on the road from preference is by far the 

 more complicated. Perhaps I could describe it better by dividing 

 it into two subheads the tramp and the roadster proper. With 

 each of these two classes we had about equal experience. At dif- 

 ferent periods we could be classed with each ; we traveled, ate, and 

 slept with them and were received into their number. I will dis- 

 cuss them separately. 



(a) Tramps. The first characteristic that strikes me as I re- 

 call my experience with them is their indefiniteness. Josiah 

 Flynt, in his articles on tramps, has taken only the elite of the 

 " profesh " the tramp whose habits are born and bred into him 

 and can hardly ever be entirely overcome. Besides these there 

 is another class, last summer more numerous than the regular 

 tramp, who would be placed on the border land of trampdom. They 

 are traveling merely for the time being, and for the time being 

 are no less distinctly tramps. They are men thrown out of work, 

 who go on the road at first perhaps to find work. They get in 



