THE GREAT TRAMP RENDEZVOUS.
A large bare room, steam heated and furnished with several long tables
and benches, was already filled by nearly three hundred tramps. They
formed a motley crowd. Old and young, of numerous nationalities and
every degree of raggedness and trampdom were there. Young novices,
just entering upon this degraded life. Occasionals--working men
to-day, tramps to-morrow, and drunkards at all times. Professionals,
who preferred mendicancy to honest labor. Honest men, reduced by dire
misfortunes to this sore distress. Sick men, whose hold upon life was
waxing faint. Scorbutic men, bearing on their face and persons the
indelible marks that outraged nature had branded them with, for life.
Sad men, who felt the degradation of their position. Bold, callous men,
for whom this world held no shame; and men whose deportment denoted
that they had seen better days, and could not forget them, were all
gathered there in a heterogenous mass of rags, hunger, dirt, and
profanity.
No notice was taken of Ben's advent among them. Indeed he was
immediately swallowed up in the crowd, the members of which were
variously engaged. Some paced up and down the floor, in lonely
communion with their own thoughts. Some were seated by the wall
patching their garments, and sewing up rents; some reading, others
tossing coppers, and others asleep in all the hubbub and Babel of
voices. Gathered in groups were men discussing the events of the day,
or mapping out routes for future travel. What struck Ben as singular
was the fact that there were very few old men present. Nearly all were
young or in the vigor of manhood. He did not see but one or two old
"war-horses" and they moodily held themselves aloof from the crowd.
There was a hot, fetid air in the room, and his stomach sickened at
this expression of the life he had adopted.
A word of explanation relative to this great tramp "home" will not
be amiss. It was built by the contributions of generous citizens of
Pittsburg as an asylum for the homeless wanderer. A place where he
might rest and recuperate, while he sought employment. One would
naturally suppose that those partaking of the charity would be
grateful, but the tramps are not. A man with authority is continually
employed in preserving the peace among them, and a more ungrateful,
querulous, quarrelsome lot of misery it would be hard to conceive.
The building, which is a large one, is divided into two
departments:--the "Hotel" and "Bum" sides of the house, as they are
locally known. The "Bum" side consists of a single large hall, located
in the rear, and separated entirely from the remainder of the house.
The "pay" department, is a well arranged, well furnished, and well
conducted hotel, principally patronized by permanent guests having
occupations in the city. The proceeds of the "Hotel" are supposed to
be devoted to the maintenance of the "Bum" department. "Bummers Hall"
has an average nightly attendance of two hundred and fifty impecunious
men every night in the year. Sometimes the number reaches to near
four hundred. Statistics are kept of the attendance. Single men
predominate, being above eighty per cent of those seeking the refuge.
The nationalities represented stand in the following order as to
numbers: Ireland, Germany, America and England; though all Europe has
delegates in "Bummers Hall." It has been often questioned if the resort
be not a detriment to the city, and an inducement for the fraternity
to rendezvous there. But this is not good reasoning. The tramps would
come whether the "Home" was there to receive them or no; and it is
far better to have two hundred and fifty impecunious--and frequently
lawless and reckless men--stowed safely away at night, than have them
thrown loose upon the city. It is a difficult matter to make tramping
a crime, for it would make poverty criminal. The suggestion that jails
and work-houses receive them is pernicious in the extreme. Reformatory
institutions turn out finished law-breakers. They generally reform a
man of what little good there may be in him when he enters them. The
great majority of tramps have not the _nerve_ to commit a crime, though
they had the inclination. They are a poor, weak, purposeless, cowardly
set of vagabonds, whose most heinous offence consists in "jumping" a
train, or, perhaps, purloining some trifle of food. They shrink from
committing acts that will bring them before that terror of terrors, a
police court. But a term in the state's prison or work house turns out
quite a different individual. As tramps they still have latent hopes
(however futile) of some day recovering a membership in good society.
As prison graduates, this hope has left them, and they look viciously
upon life. As an evidence of this, it will be found that three-quarters
of the tramps arrested for unlawful acts, are released convicts.
There is a great hue and cry raised every now and then about "what
shall we do with them?" Better, if we turn our attentions to the
_cause_ that produces the _effects_, and ask ourselves "what shall we
do with the system that makes them?"
Ben had scarcely time to look about and familiarize himself with the
place, when supper was announced. It consisted of a tin dish of soup
and a piece of bread, and was served up on the long table in the center
of the room. The soup was of the "_bouillon_" order. In it were sliced
carrots, stewed potatoes, boiled potato peelings, baked fish, chicken
bones, salt mackerel, cabbage, tomatoes, cheese, beef, beans, dried
apples, vegetable parings, and a few other articles. To the imaginative
mind it suggested the possibility of a small grocery store having gone
off on a drunk, and got drowned in a cauldron of boiling water. A more
practical view of the matter was that it consisted of the remnants of
the "Hotel side," with the kitchen dish water generously added, by way
of a flavor.
Though Ben had fasted all day, he declined partaking of it, and sat
toying with his iron spoon, and noticing the other guests. They had
not his squeamishness. The greater portion of the three hundred were
devoting a majesty of jaw bone to the work before them, highly edifying.
"The soup is extra to-night," remarked a veteran, as he fished up a
mass that might have been fish, flesh or fowl.
"Excellent!" responded a neighbor; "the best I've tasted since leaving
the rotisseries in the Rue de Gumbo!"
"I'll wait fur the toorkey wid the ister stuffin'," remarked another
who had finished his pan.
"Yez'll have to wait, thin, for it's Friday, an' there's no toorkey.
It'll be trout an' salmon, the day," returned a gentleman whose ragged
sleeve had evidently enjoyed the soup in company with its owner.
"What part of the fowl do you prefer, sir?" asked a polite tramp,
tendering Ben a section of a mackerel's back.
"Let the gentleman alone. The venison he had for dinner did not agree
with him," said a thin man, eyeing Ben's untasted soup longingly. Ben
saw the soup and presented him the panful, which made the thin man an
object of envy to all in that vicinity.
"Didn't I see you in Poverty Barn, in Cleveland?" asked a fat,
asthmatic tramp of Ben.
Our friend replied in the negative, when the asthmatic went into a
glowing description of the magnificence of "Poverty Barn, in Cleveland."
"It's behind the police station, Sor. Bunks three tier high, Sor. A
plank set on edge for a pillow in each of them, Sor. A big stove that
you can dry your clothes at, Sor. There's no knob on the inside of
the door, Sor. So when you get in you can't get out, Sor. It's a good
hangup, but no chuck, Sor. When you're in Cleveland don't fail to give
it a call, Sor. It's deserving of patronage, Sor."
Ben assured him that Poverty Barn should have his custom if business
took him to Cleveland.
"To hell mit Boverty Parn! I preaks my neck from vone of der punks down
comma, von night. Youst, when you go mit Cleveland, youst try der iron
vorks an' shleep in der varm sandt!" kindly advised a gentleman having
a pronounced Teutonic accent.
With much similar conversation, the meal drew to a close, the pans
were removed, and the long table turned, bottom-up, against the wall;
so that having banqueted off of the top side they might sleep on the
bottom. The benches were then arranged across the room, and an elderly
gentleman in black, with a clerical stock about his neck, (who was
irreverently greeted as "Old Blue Blazes") entered at a side door, at
the upper end of the hall, and proceeded to hold religious services. A
more orderly and attentive congregation than the three hundred tramps
composed, could not have been desired. This evening service was as much
a part of the charity as the soup, and should it have been omitted they
would have felt themselves defrauded. Cards, with the popular revival
hymns of the day printed on them, were distributed through the crowd,
and they lustily sang "Hold the Fort!" and "Pull for the Shore!"
The services concluded, preparations were made for retiring. Some of
the fastidious (generally the most ragged) spread a newspaper on the
floor to keep their clothes from getting soiled. Others contented
themselves with scraping a place free from tobacco quids, and retired
with their boots for a pillow.
There was one devotion peculiar to nearly all previous to closing their
eyes. Everyone indulged in a good _scratch_! That great luxury that
no unfeeling world could dispossess them of so long as they had their
hands. And _such_ scratching! Such contortions in getting way round at
their backs; such grunts and sighs of satisfaction as both hands would
be vigorously applied to opposite extremities! And then the inventions
of genius--rubbing the back against a table leg while employing the
hands elsewhere; and using a foot and both hands at the same time! And
such courtesies--one scratching the unreachable portion of another, and
three and four scratching each other in a row! Ben was about the only
one present who did not scratch, and when a neighbor asked him to rub
his back with the sole of his boot he could not refuse the kindness;
so while he did not scratch himself, he aided others. Let him awake at
what hour of the night he might, there was scratching going forward in
some parts of the hall. Before daybreak, however, he found it congenial
to commence upon himself, and it took the closest application and
industry of search and slaughter, during the leisure moments of two
succeeding days, to prevent him from becoming a confirmed scratcher.