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an obligation.

   "Here y'are, mate," he said cordially. "I owe you some

fag ends. You stood me a smoke yesterday. The Tramp

Major give me back my box of fag ends when we come

out this morning. One good turn deserves another-here

y'are."

   And he put four sodden, debauched, loathly cigarette

ends into my hand.

                       XXXVI

I WANT to set down some general remarks about

tramps. When one comes to think of it, tramps are a

queer product and worth thinking over. It is queer that a

tribe of men, tens of thousands in number, should be

marching up and down England like so many Wandering

Jews. But though the case obviously wants considering,

one cannot even start to consider it until one has got rid

of certain prejudices. These prejudices are rooted in the

idea that every tramp,

ipso facto, is a blackguard. In

childhood we have been taught that tramps are

blackguards, and consequently there exists in our minds a

sort of ideal or typical tramp -a repulsive, rather

dangerous creature, who would

1 I have been in it since, and it is not so bad.

die rather than work or wash, and wants nothing but to

beg, drink and rob hen-houses. This tramp-monster is

no truer to life than the sinister Chinaman of the

magazine stories, but he is very hard to get rid of. The

very word "tramp" evokes his image. And the belief in

him obscures the real questions of vagrancy.

   To take a fundamental question about vagrancy: Why do

tramps exist at all? It is a curious thing, but very few

people know what makes a tramp take to the road. And,

because of the belief in the tramp-monster, the most

fantastic reasons are suggested. It is said, for instance,

that tramps tramp to avoid work, to beg more easily, to

seek opportunities for crime, even-least probable of

reasons-because they like tramping. I have even read in a

book of criminology that the tramp is an atavism, a

throw-back to the nomadic stage of humanity. And

meanwhile the quite obvious cause of vagrancy is staring

one in the face. Of course a tramp is not a nomadic

atavism-one might as well say that a commercial traveller

is an atavism. A tramp tramps, not because he likes it,

but for the same reason as a car keeps to the left;

because there happens to be a law compelling him to do

so. A destitute man, if he is not supported by the parish,

can only get relief at the casual wards, and as each casual

ward will only admit him for one night, he is

automatically kept moving. He is a vagrant because, in

the state of the law, it is that or starve. But people have

been brought up to believe in the tramp-monster, and

so they prefer to think that there must be some more or

less villainous motive for tramping.

   As a matter of fact, very little of the tramp-monster

will survive inquiry. Take the generally accepted idea

that tramps are dangerous characters. Quite apart from

experience, one can say

a priori that very few

tramps are dangerous, because if they were dangerous they

would be treated accordingly. A casual ward will often

admit a hundred, tramps in one night, and these are

handled by a staff of at most three porters. A hundred

ruffians could not be controlled by three unarmed men.

Indeed, when one sees how tramps let themselves be

bullied by the workhouse officials, it is obvious that they

are the most docile, broken-spirited creatures imaginable.

Or take the idea that all tramps are drunkards-an idea

ridiculous on the face of it. No doubt many tramps would

drink if they got the chance, but in the nature of things

they cannot- get the chance. At this moment a pale watery

stuff called beer is sevenpence a pint in England. To be

drunk on it would cost at least half a crown, and a man

who can command half a crown at all often is not a tramp.

The idea that tramps are impudent social parasites

("sturdy beggars") is not absolutely unfounded, but it is

only true in a few per cent. of the cases. Deliberate,

cynical parasitism, such as one reads of in Jack London's

books on American tramping, is not in the English

character. The English are a conscience-ridden race, with

a strong sense of the sinfulness of poverty. One cannot

imagine the average Englishman deliberately turning

parasite, and this national character does not necessarily

change because a man is thrown out of work. Indeed, if

one remembers that a tramp is only an Englishman out of

work, forced by law to live as a vagabond, then the tramp-

monster vanishes. I am not saying, of course, that most

tramps are ideal characters; I am only saying that they are

ordinary human beings, and that if they are worse than

other people it is the result and not the cause of their way

of life.

   It follows that the "Serve them damned well right"

attitude that is normally taken towards tramps is no

fairer than it would be towards cripples or invalids. When

one has realised that, one begins to put oneself in a

tramp's place and understand what his life is like. It is an

extraordinarily futile, acutely unpleasant life. I have

described the casual ward-the routine of a tramp's day-but

there are three especial evils that need insisting upon. The

first is hunger, which is the almost general fate of tramps.

The casual ward gives them a ration which is probably not

even meant to be sufficient, and anything beyond this

must be got by begging-that is, by breaking the law: The

result is that nearly every tramp is rotted by malnutrition;

for proof of which one need only look at the men lining up

outside any casual ward. The second great evil of a

tramp's life-it seems much smaller at first sight, but it is a

good second-is that he is entirely cut off from contact with

women. This point needs elaborating.

   Tramps are cut off from women, in the first place,

because there Are very few women at their level of