People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 January 1895 — Deffinition of a Tramp. [ARTICLE]

Deffinition of a Tramp.

A tramp is any rough looking stranger. Set the dog on him. A tramp is any person seeking work away from home. Arrest him. A tramp is any foot sore traveler freezing at your door. Don't admit him. A tramp is any person who asks for bread. Give him poison. A tramp is any person who can't “give an account of hinself.” Ten days and cost. A tramp is always a liar and a loafer. Send him up. A tramp, beirg a stranger, is a professional burglar. Shoot him. A tramp is any person without home, friends or money. Hang him. A tramp, like the slave, has no standing in court. Tar and feathers. A tramp can legally freeze or starve to death if he otherwise escapes. Plant him. A tramp is not a human, the tramp laws, being inhuman, are ample proof of that. Slone him. A tramp never had a mother, father, sister, brother, wife, sweetheart or child. Cat o' nine tails. A tramp never was an honest man, else he would have been dead long since. Death loves a shining mark. A tramp is in fact any industri ous laboring man, because his “visible means of support” are liable at any time to become invisible. Watch him. A tramp is not a bank cashier, though the latter does tramp off with the deposits frequently. A tramp is not a railroad president, the illegitimate father of thousands of tramps. A tramp is not a bond holder but the bond with all the coupons clipped and the face marked paid. A tramp is not a protected manufacturer, but the finished product of unprotected labor. A tramp is not a coal baron, but the over product of the under production squeeze. Tramps cause all the bank failures, no question about that. Tramps cause wheat to sell at 46 cents per bushel with fret soup and beds under the shadow of over loaded mammoth eleva t ors.

There are about as many tramps as there are farmers, Tramps burn down houses to get jobs iu building new ones, but then tramps won't work. Tramps commit all the robberies, murders, outrages, arsons, etc. They are a convenience to have in stock for scape goats occasionally. The recent action of Russia in preparing to use a half billion of silver lias developed the fact that it wll not be possible for the mines of the world to supply and maintain so large an amount in addition to the present large consumption. Silver coinage has to be rest >cked every 17 years, wear and loss consuming it in that time. It is the common people, the men and women of little individual, but limitless community influence, that we must, look to for the power to turn backward the approaching cloud of darkness, and each of us has influence in his or her community.

England has repeatedly asked theUrited States postoffice authorities for an exchange of “parcel post” business, but our express companies have been “so strong as to paralize the action of the United States government.” Russia is to replacd £500,000,000 of paper money with silver. There being no such stock of silver in the world's combined market, Russia will be about twenty years getting what she needs. With 4 cent postage the farmers wife could do her shopping in New York or San Francisco if she desired. If gold were not used for money everybody could afford a solid gold watch, they would be so cheap. The final demonetization of silver is to be followed by the destruction of the remaining greenbacks. Mexico and all the Central and South American nations use silver as the standard money. Fifty-eight million dollars of silver is the annual product of the United States. Demonetize gold and there wouid not be 60 cents’ worth of gold in a dollar. The republicans of Pennsyl vania demanded a circulation of S4O per capita.