A New Race of Tramps.

Ladies' Mirror, Volume V, Issue 6, 1 December 1926, Page 67

A New Race of Tramps.

/'"Vie of the big problems the New AS Zealand police force and magistrates are endeavouring to solve is how to suppress motor thieves, drunken motorists, and “joy riders.” Just at present, however, the civic fathers and district councillors of many a township in Western America are worried to distraction by a race of tramps which they have classified under the name of “auto gipsies.” What the motor tramp docs is to get hold of a cheap second-hand car —which he can do for a mere song pack his family and a few cooking utensils aboard, and move off to “the finest climate in the world.” There, by ironic Providence, he finds that a beneficent municipality has provided a beautiful camping site which he can use free of charge. It is true the site was planned and prepared for the genuine tourist, whose presence was desired and sought by means of lavish advertising ; but the gipsy hobo and his kind have monopolised these camps to such an extent that no tourist will so much as go near them. The “Lizzie Families” '\X7Tien the motoring tramp ar- * * rives, his usual plan, if funds, food, and petrol are low, is to approach one of the welfare agencies which are common in all American

towns. If there should be no such agency, he goes to the town authorities with the plea that he is seeking a job. He knows full well that while that search progresses his family will be looked after; but he knows even better that no town is anxious to keep him and his family . in the neighbourhood, and that the main desire is to be rid of them with the least possible delay. So he accepts the two days’ rations and a full petrol tank which the town or the welfare agency—offers, and passes on. Both parties are thus satisfied, the one to the full, the other more or less so. Often, of course, the newstyle tramp, like the old, does not scruple to help himself as he passes. If he wants wood, he. chops it down or purloins a fence post and rails. Orchards, fields, and hen-houses all suffer from the depredations of these, gentry, so that the problem of dealing with the “Lizzie families” is daily becoming more acute. hat is more, California has now found it necessary to institute a corps of truant officers on motorcycles to seek out the children who ride with the “fly-by-Fords” instead of more prosaically learning the three R’s in school as the law demands. So civilisation creates new difficulties in removing old ones. © The girl who admits another girl is pretty must be very sure of being much prettier herself.