THE BRAKE BEAM TOURIST.

Press, Volume L, Issue 8666, 15 December 1893, Page 2

THE BRAKE BEAM TOURIST.

SOME ACCOUNTS OF THE AMERICAN TRAMP. By One Who Knows Him. What is a brake-beam toarlst? Well, for tho benefit of the uninitiated I may explain that the term Is simply a high-toued name for a " hand-out solicitor." To enlighten Ihoie benighted individuals who are completely saturated with Ignorance I will further state that both these names are synonymous with a "cross-tie sailor," a " centennial ranger," " square - meal crusader, , " " free lunch fiend," broker, freerider, back-door explorer, dead-beat, or what our Australian friends would call a tussocker, ausidowner or Murrumbldgee whaler. Coining down to pure bed-rock facts, all these ingenious epithets are applied to that; great and ever-growing excrescence on our modern civilisation, the genus "tramp." He is a brake-beam touriat and a free-rider when he mouute the economical, but deadly brake-beam, of a railroad car and thereon steals a ride. When he gets , the G.B. or Grand Bounce and i 4 " fired" off the cars and compelled to walk the track awaiting another chance to jump a train, he is then a " crocs-tic sailor," and in said to hare a " tie-pas* " or a contract "counting ties." He haunts the free-lunch saloon bars in the cities and cruises over the country in search of square tnealH. He explores the buck doors aud solicits hanil-oucs, i.e., food handed out to him. He may be entitled a true knight of the road. Hβ may honourably earn a few of these imposing, title*, or he may proudly claim the whole elltterinc array, buc always, always he is a broker and a dead beat.

The tramp, as he exists in America, is one of the inosc singular outcomes of nineteenth century civilisation. But a few decades bacfe and lie was almost an unkuown quantity, buh now he awarme over t he vast, urea o£ the United States in countless thousands. People who read of the trampa in newHpapere or who travel the country by car, ntage and steamboat, have no conception of the magnitude to which this army of impecunious tourists has iittuinert. But lee him be tramping in xearch of work, or locate himself in a railroad depot when a freight train pulls in, or, Htill better, let him start to " beat hla way" on the cars and ho will soon have a good ilea of the hordes of free travellers who are ever moving to and fro in search of the promleed land. Where was this immense multitude of hungry droncH ihircy years ago. No man can say. They sprang into existence, a* a town ' appears in a new mining dhtrict or a great human hive flashes into life oa a new trane-contiuental railroad. Every year this army becomes larger, every year it stretches, ocl opus-like, farther and further afield, every year it grows more bold, daring and dangerous, in their groat aemi-annual migrations north and »outb, the railroads are infested by them. They crowd the trains and steamboats, they swarm on the country rands and by-way* of the land, they "jump" the. trains and when in force often retaliate savagely on the train employes who try to eject them. When numerically weak they clanobsr on to the car roofs, ride the pilot, jump the " blind bntrnage," mount the the brake beam »ct, bufc when, numeroun, they have been, known, to seize trains compelHiiK the officials to carry them over their division. Cases are on record of their h&viug taken of towas and levied on iho inhabitant 8 thereof for food until, exasperated by the lawlessness of their unwelpome vi : itorrf, tho people rose in arms and drove tham out. A tramp on being " fired" off a train in the West will likely "pull down" on the brakoman wirti a eixihooter. On the .arid blackblocks of Attstmlia, on being refused a "pannikin of dunt" be will bint that ''Bell and Black ain't dead yet," a dangcrou* threat in a country where a lighted match may carry ruin co many a rancher. M&ay theories have been advanced an to the cause and care of this mendicant human deluge, but no satisfactory conclusion sceme to have been arrived at, and meanwhile their number i<i rapidly increasing. The tramp is a serious menace to modern civilisation and. the 6reah Tramp Problem grows more difficult to «oive a-* time wears on.

The army of professional tramp* winters in the Southern Status and move* northwards* in the'spring to spend the summer in the vast extent of country between the Atlantic States and California. They pat in the winter on the levees of the Mlshls* efppi, in the Texan prafria country, In the cotton region of Louisiana, Mtest»»ipi and Alabama, and the forest* of Arkansas. They crowd into the low quarters of the rivcrloo cities, Baton Kuuge, Memphis and New Orleans. All public institutions such as gaols, hospitals and workhouse* know them full well. Up from the Sunny South they come in thousands, vomited forth from all the vile dens of the country where they have managed to exist, during the winter. They haunt every steamboat landing on the MUsSshldl, and crowd on to the great river boats going north to St. Loui3, Cairo and the Missouri. They line the railroads and board the cars at every depot and water tank on the route. Nothing stops them. The railroad companies may issue the strictest orders to their employes not to allow tramps to ride on the trains, bat they get there just the same. At one time one of the biggest roads in Arkansas, the Sr. L. and 1. M,, lost so many of the spire ties stacked along the lice, through their being burnt by tranjpi, that they ordered the cond actors to pass all trampa over the road. I have seen a train pulled up in the middle of the vast deaerte of Arizona and every tramp driven off it, leaving them in the

middle of a great-, waterlets waito W k, fi death cornea awlffc and certain, bat m«I next train that pulled In to Demin™ Tucson, or Fort Tunin, would conlan! those same tourista as calmly nanimtni"'" as ever. When a freight train iioiTJ depot the brakemen arm tlivmselveii _*,? thn iron bars uncd for son ing the break? and knock tho free-rMors till" t| lc j, *;• beams and draw heads, and drive them from tho b.>xear* and the blind baautii* They all ,k away ahea'l of Uie car* vf»*i hide bohind sheds and tic-pile*. \yu" the train itarta.awd is runniu* p«'*t thorn they jump the box and express care thM glide between tlu-in and mount the'draw heads, they even clamber on to tbenlluk and car roofs and seat themselves on the I steps of tho ctbooßO. I once haw a trarun thrown oft' tho car threo (hues on the tan between the Tehuchapl P.»«m and Fr«i nn I asked him if he Htlll IntentiontotrVft "beat "her or give it up "C,l»elt en," he said by, yard .I've only been bounced nvi tumu fioni Luh Angelo*" j returned to my seat in tlie car with L feeling of intense admiration for thl* übiquitous tourht. »vi most uaniurouii of ah modes of free-rldlng, and yut onofoi tho moHt common, is that from which thieketch derives its title. The beam Wh eh runs acroes beneath the cars connrotlnii the two brakes in but a few incliet in width, and elevated Imlf thn height of the wheel above the rMle, yot men wtU ride for hundreds of miles cramped up on out of the«e beams, hanging on fur dear life and exposed to the constant and terrible danger of falling off the beam, in which case their end would bo awlfc Indeed Many such deaths occur each year. 1* have seen "oldtimcrs" seize ilio brace-rod and swing themselves uude. ncath tho car between the gtluding wlmols und on to the brakc-beum, while the cars were run. ning twelve miles ami hour. It In needless to add thnt many men are killed while attempting to ride the Unreliable brake-beiun.

It is a hard life. Make no error About that. Say what they will about the Uzluens and utter UHclonHticei of the trams this much is certain, that what wlb hunger, hardship ami privations tf an extreme nature, the Irksome and d&ngoroua portltiunH he is compelled to maintain when "beatinir" t lio carx, tho avornae brakebeam tourist has a far harder tltue of it than ho would If working for his living. But tho chains of vngnboiulsee hold him no tightly that he is unable to escape from them, nnd In tho vast uinjorlty of cases the axiom " one* a trump nhvayr a tramp " holds good. After studying tiu genus tramp during several years'travelling I have divided him Info three classes: The men who are reduced to their wandering life by dlaioluro end improvident ways, others who har« ttie vagaboud or glnny spirit born in them, and yet another class is composed of Invertebrate men, thut is men «vho are a power neither for good nor evil, happy-go-lucky charactors who simply drift into trampdom. I have often talked with rail, rond conductors and brakemen aneut the wily tramp, and have heard many singular anecdotes related of the great lratcrnlty. The strange adventures and novel experiences of nomo of those knl«ht» of tho road would "lay over" the wanderings of Ulysses himself, I remember a conductor on thn A. T, and S.F.R.K. telling mc of one incident which befell him on the run souf.h from Albuquerque. llu was informed that a tramp was comfortably nnsconced In a box-car of bin train, and had notified Ills intention of "holding her down" until ho reached Deming. Thi* assertion rather "riled" the " con," who forthwith arimid himself with a brake lever und aturtoii In to expel the free-rider. On sliding bnck tho doot of the car he was quite surprised to fltul him «elf Iboklng down tho muzrie of • 46.50. " You get," said the tramp, " Yoa bet," replied the " con." Aad ho rapidly got. n Bawxdnu,