A TRAMP COLONY
Every year our City Magistrates send to the Workhouse on Blackwell’s
Island no less than twenty thousand persons. This is entirely
independent of the number sent from Kings County by the Magistrates of
Brooklyn, Richmond and Queens.
By far the largest number of this contingent are the residuum of dregs
of society. As soon as they have their liberty they prey upon society.
And when they are in the toils again the ubiquitous gin-mill will
account for it. But there are other reasons, and some of the
responsibility will have to be laid at the door of our present social
conditions, which need considerable re-adjusting.
It is needless to conceal the fact that a large percentage of this class
is made up of thieves, drunkards, incorrigibles and homeless tramps. As
they cannot find employment readily, they eke out a precarious living
for a time as panhandlers and deadbeats and then return to prison, only
to continue the same experience several times a year. As their
imprisonment does them no good and as they are a great expense to the
city and county, it becomes a serious problem what shall be done with
them. At the present time the cost of crime in Greater New York is no
less than twenty-five per cent. of the entire taxation.
We must therefore consider this subject intelligently with a view to its
solution. But whether these social conditions can be explained fully to
one’s satisfaction matters very little. We question the right of the
authorities to maintain any longer this army of idlers without making
them work to pay the cost of their own living.
For some years past we have observed that hundreds—possibly thousands of
unskilled laborers, many of whom are in the building trades, reach the
dead-line about forty years of age. If they have lived intemperate lives
and happen to be single or widowers, when winter sets in and they find
themselves out of employment the only thing they can do is to apply to
the Magistrate and ask to be committed to the workhouse as vagrants for
three or six months. And many of them, after they have finished their
time and secured their liberty are no better off, and painfully return
to the Police Court for the twentieth time perhaps, to be the city’s
ward in the workhouse. What else can they do, or die on the street from
sheer starvation?
This raises the question, what shall be done with our army of “tramp
rounders” and incorrigibles? To continue to send them back to prison or
workhouse for a few months is simply to prolong the evil and their own
misery. Criminals are jailed and released in this county every year by
the thousand, only to oscillate between prison and a brief season of
liberty. When they leave the place of their confinement they seldom bid
their keepers good-bye, only “au revoir.” When they come among their
fellow men again they are not better. They have spent months or years in
prison in idleness, and surrounded by vile companions, and they are no
better. But why should they be allowed to endanger the life and liberty
of society any longer after the experiences of the past? How long we can
maintain such a system it is difficult to say. At any rate, the cost of
maintaining our prisons is becoming enormous and the problem of what
shall be done with “rounders” and hardened criminals, that prey upon
society as soon as they get out of prison should be solved from a
business and moral standpoint.
We believe the time has come for this whole matter to be thoroughly
sifted and a remedy found that will be commensurate with the present
needs. The aim should be the moral reformation of the criminal; nor do
we think any remedy will be adequate that falls short of this object.
But in working for this end we must not exalt criminals into objects of
popular pity.
A few years ago a committee of the National Prison Association examined
this whole subject and reported that every habitual criminal at large
cost the State by robbery and spoilation no less than sixteen hundred
dollars annually, and if in this State alone the taxpayers could be
relieved of this burden it would be a saving of six million dollars a
year.
Unfortunately New York and vicinity have a large army of unemployed at
all seasons of the year—even when we are blessed with what is called
“good times.” This is especially true of multitudes who are employed in
the building trades. As a rule, contractors who are excavating and
blasting for new buildings can always find twenty times as many laborers
as they usually need.
But the wealth of the country is so great and the opportunities for
employment so vast that the hustler can always find employment in some
part of the country. Often large numbers of men and women are unable to
find employment at any occupation, even when we have prosperous times.
Nor are they to blame entirely for this. Many large corporations, such
as railroads, will only give employment to the young and vigorous who
are able to produce the largest amount of work, which means that the
weak and infirm are soon driven to the wall, and at the first
opportunity dropped from the pay roll and after a certain age are unable
to find employment at anything.
At an expenditure of say $100,000, several cheap plants could be erected
on Riker’s Island, on Long Island Sound, where domestic articles could
be manufactured at merely the cost of the raw material, and this army of
tramps that infest the boroughs of Greater New York summer and winter
could be made to pay the cost of their own living expenses. For example,
ten or a dozen small shops could be erected that would give employment
to 2,000 men and women who would produce things that would in no wise
compete with the great labor industries of the country.
The following are some of the industries that could be carried on by the
wards of the city of New York:
Broom making,
Brush making,
Chair caning,
Laundry work,
Shoe making,
Tailoring,
And in summer Agriculture and Horticulture.
The city could rent a thousand acres of land in Westchester County on
which garden produce could be raised and sold to the poor at low
figures, which would give employment to from 500 to 1,000 persons. From
the middle of April till the middle of October they could live in tents,
which in many cases would greatly improve their health.
The cultivation of the soil under proper restrictions is a most
healthful labor and cannot fail to show good results if properly carried
out. French penologists and reformers speak of the system in the highest
terms and recommend its adoption all over the world. If necessary these
convicts could be used in works of irrigation or canals for the Federal
Government, or indeed, the carrying on of public works in any part of
the country.
M. Demetz, a French philosopher and founder of the Mettray Reformatory
in France, has, for many years, advocated the cultivation of large
tracts of land by criminals. His motto has been, “Reclaim the land by
the man, and the man by the land.” Since 1850 France has had
agricultural colonies for young offenders in crime, where they are
compelled to stay from six months to two years. They cultivate the soil
on a paying basis, and the success and management of the farm colonies
has been eminently successful, as only seven per cent. of their numbers
return again to crime.
French economists think that money has never been more wisely spent than
for such institutions, as the returns show that ninety-three per cent.
of the inmates after their liberation become useful members of society.
It seems to us that no country in the world would carry out penal
colonization schemes with greater advantage and better results than the
United States.
The peaceful conquest of large tracts of lands in this State, means the
acquisition of more domain within our own borders, in which there may be
homes and farms for hundreds of our surplus population.
There are several thousand criminal and vagrant idlers who at the
beginning of winter go before Justices of the Peace in the country towns
and are committed to the county jails for several months, where they
live in idleness on the fat of the land. Such people ought to be in some
colony and kept there till cured of their delusions.