Thus the tramp cuts no figure as a railroad problem, much less menace,
abroad. But with us it is the fact that railroads representing more
than half the total mileage operated in the United States and Canada
testify almost without exception to depredation, thieving, injuries,
deaths, accidents to passengers or rolling stock, enormous aggregate
costs to railroads or society, caused by the habitual illegal use of
the railroads by vagrants. The number of "trespassers," from one-half
to three-quarters of whom were vagrants, who are killed annually
on American railroads exceeds the combined total of passengers and
trainmen killed annually. Within four years 23,964 trespassers were
killed and 25,236 injured, thus furnishing the enormous total of
49,200 casualties, with all the cost they involve.
Only by the co-operation of the railroads with one another and of
towns and cities with the railroads can this waste of life and
property and this increasing peril to the safety of the traveling
public be prevented. Much more stringent laws will have to be both
enacted and enforced to prevent the trespassing, which puts a premium
on vagrancy.
One of the best effects of the strict prevention of free riding on
railroads would be to keep boys from going "on the road" and becoming
tramps. It is simply amazing to find little fellows of from 12 to 17
years of age, who have never been farther away from home than to some
outlying freight yards, disappearing for several weeks and returning
from Kansas City, or Cleveland, Omaha or New York, having all alone,
or with a companion or two, beaten their way and lived by their wits
while traveling half way across the continent. Once the excitement
of the adventure is enjoyed, the hardship it costs does not seem so
hard to them as the monotony of home or shop. The discipline of the
United States navy has been the only regulation of this wandering
habit which the writer has known to be successful. But the habit is
more easily prevented than regulated. Massachusetts has taken the most
advanced legislative action of all the states to this end. The Wabash
and the New York Central railways suggest fine and imprisonment for
trespassing upon railway tracks or rolling stock.