254 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



witli tlie tramps, like their life, and travel with them. Some of 

 them seem to be actuated by a genuine desire to see the country, 

 others by a simple love of adventure and change. This latter 

 class are liable to degenerate into real tramps, but the former are 

 pretty sure to get tired of the hard life and settle down again. 

 They never regard themselves as tramps, and if they beg do so 

 feeling that they lower themselves by it. As a rule they much 

 prefer to work in paj^ment of their meals, or even take two or three 

 days' work and then pay for what they eat until their money is 

 exhausted. They are uniformly recruited from the working 

 population of cities, men under thirty years of age, who though 

 without education have a desire to see the world and have been 

 emploj^ed in a situation where they have come in contact with 

 ex-roadsters. Under favorable conditions they would develop into 

 such a type as the average "prominent citizen" of our small 

 towns. They possess energy, skill, and intelligence, but lack woe- 

 fully in opportunity. 



The tramp temporarily on the road from a love of adventure 

 can scarcely be distinguished from the dyed-in-the-wool hoboe. 

 He is in most cases recruited from the same city population, yet 

 all classes of society are represented. One night we were coming 

 home from Cadillac to Grand Rapids in a freight car with thirty- 

 three others, and the question of what to do when we arrived at 

 the Rapids was being discussed. 



The day before several of the " lads " had been " pulled " at the 

 Rapids for "bumming the freights," and the news was by tliis 

 time known to all knights of the road for several hundred miles. 

 Plans for evading the " cops " were discussed, and the question of 

 the legal aspect of the case came up. To my surprise, one of the 

 toughest of the lot dropped his tramp dialect and gave a very 

 good discussion of the case. We began to question him, and 

 when he found that we too had seen college days he began to cite 

 cases, quote State laws from several different States, and, in short, 

 gave a regular lawyer's brief. He afterward told us that he had 

 graduated from a law school in New York city. 



Tramps as a class are young men. I do not know what be- 

 comes of them when they are old or whether they ever get old, 

 and, as far as I could discover, they do not know either. Their 

 happy-go-lucky method of living leads them to give very little 

 thought to the future, but the fact still remains that an old man 

 can not live as they do. They uniformly travel by night and 

 sleep by day. It is no uncommon sight to see fifteen or twenty of 

 these lusty fellows asleep in the shade of some watering tank, and 

 if you would take the pains to climb up the ladder and into the 

 tank you would probably find a little room over the water occu- 

 X)ied by four or five more. They are not so universally drunken 



