Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 April 1890 — A SOBERING MACHINE. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

A SOBERING MACHINE.

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Backs County, Ft., Has a Scheme for Be. forming the Jolly Good Fellows. The winter crop of tramps in Backs and Montgomery Counties is so abundant this year that ordinary measures for driving them out have proved futile, and the county authorities are studying how best they may dispose of the troublesome vagrants. On account of the extremely mild winter the tramps who usually seek a warmer clime in the cold months are hovering about the comfortable barns and haystacks in BnOka and Montgomery Counties, and are lodging also in the railroad stations and conveniently open freight-cars. The sobei vagrants are troublesome enough, hut the hundreds of intoxicated tramps are even worse to deal with, and they not only defy the orders to "move on," but also threaten violence to country folks whosa farms they invade. An old-time Backs County farmer has suggested that a revival of the sobering machine that did effective work in Doylestown thirty or forty years age might have a wholesome influence on the hordes of tramps and make them shun Bucks County as they would flee in terror from soap and water. Not many of the present generation in Doylestown are familiar with the sobering machine, but men who lived there in the’sos and early '6os readily remember the unique apparatus, and probably there is more than one man in Doylestown to-day who would hesitate to tell how well he recalls the old sobering machine. Thfe famous mechanism was nothing more nor less than the shafts and front wheels of a light wagon gear, with a big Wooden box fastened firmly upon the axle, making a rough kind of a cart. The machine was kept in a convenient dark alley, and whenever obe of Doylestown’ 8 good citizens came home so filled

with ardent spirits that he could nol handle himself the machine was run out from its hiding place, the tipsy man was seized and dumped upon his back in the box, and with three «r tour burghers al the shafts he was given a ride over the rough streets that was enough to shake every drop of liquor out of him and make him a soberer and wiser man. This heroic treatment was oftenest applied to intoxicated strangers, but the moral influence of the machine was allpowerful in preserving the sobriety o! the townspeople. The circumstance* now are such that many Backs and Montgomery County men believe it would be well to revive this old-time a,oral institution. —Philadelphia Record.

A BUCKS COUNTY SOBERING MACHINE.