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