Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 October 1895 — Not a Joke. [ARTICLE]

Not a Joke.

Led on by the comic papers and the humorous paragraphdr for .the daily press, our people have been inclined to take a light and facetious view of the American tramp. In point of fact, he is personally sodden, impudent and intolerable; while, taken in the aggregate, he presents a really.nerlous problem. Prof. McCook, who has made a thorough study of the matter, says that there are about forty-six thousand tramps now in this country, and that the number is constantly increasing. To support this horde of vagabonds costs the country something like $8,000,000 a year. Indirectly they probably cause the loss of a still larger amount. Worse than tl’s, they form a peripatetic school of vice and idleness. The real tramp is easily to be distinguished from the unemployed man. He is not

cast down or despondent -He doe* not w*nt to rise In the world; be has found his real level in the gutter. He desires only to eat, to drink—l» be drunk, perhaps, would be the more accurate phrase—and to be let alone. When he fails to satisfy his wants, he becomes a dangerous criminal. In Indiana last spring tramps took actual possession of an entire village and drov* its inhabitants to the woods. It is time to look at this subject serb oualy. The tramp Is a public enemy.