Copyright, 1900 By L. C. Page & Company...

A number of the chapters in this book have appeared as separate papers in the Independent , Harper's Weekly , the Critic , Munsey's Magazine , and in publications connected with McClure's Syndicate; but much of the material is new, and all of the articles have been revised before being republished....

For a number of years it had been a wish of mine to have an experience as a police officer, to come in contact with tramps and criminals, as a representative of the law. Not that I bore these people any personal grudge, or desired to carry out any pet policy in dealing with them; but I had learned to know them pretty intimately as companions in lodging-houses and at camp-fires, and had observed them rather carefully as prisoners in jails, and I was anxious to supplement this knowledge of them wi

The first duty of a policeman, no matter what kind of a police force he belongs to, is to inform himself in regard to the people in his bailiwick who are likely to give him trouble. In a municipal force an officer can only be required to know thoroughly the situation on his particular beat; if he can inform himself about other districts as well, he is so much more valuable to the department, but he is not expected to do much more than get acquainted with the people under his immediate surveillan

In appearance and manner the professional criminal has not changed much in the last decade. I knew him first over ten years ago, when making my earliest studies of tramp life. I saw him again five years ago, while on a short trip in Hoboland, and we have met recently on the railroads; and he looks just about as he did when we first got acquainted. Ordinarily he would not be noticed in mixed company by others than those accustomed to his ways. He is not like the tramp, whom practically any one ca

Next to the tramp, who is more of a nuisance on American railroads, however, than a criminal offender, the pickpocket is the most troublesome man that a railroad police officer has to deal with. He has made a study of the different methods by which passengers on trains can be relieved of their pocketbooks, and unless he is carefully watched he can give a railroad a very bad name. The same is true of a circus, in the wake of which light-fingered gentry are generally to be found. Circuses, like ra

Speaking generally, there are two methods in vogue in American police circles for dealing with crime, and they may be called the compromising and the uncompromising. The latter is the more honest. In a town where it is followed, the chief of police is known to be a man who will not allow a professional thief within the city limits, if he can help it, and he is continually on watch for transient offenders. He will make no "deal" with criminals in any particular, and he takes pride in securing the

One of the advantages that the itinerant policeman has over the stationary officer is that he can inspect a large number of penal institutions, and find out who, among the people he has to keep track of, are shut up. The municipal officer may know that a certain "professional" is out of his bailiwick, but unless he can place him elsewhere he is never sure when or where he may turn up again. The itinerant officer, on the other hand, can follow a man, and if he gets into prison the officer knows i

Up till the present time the police business in the United States has remained almost exclusively in the hands of a particular class. From Maine to California one finds practically the same type of man patrolling a beat, and there is not much difference among the superior officers of police forces. They all have about the same conceptions of morality, honesty, and good citizenship, and they differ very little in their notions of police policy and methods. The thing to do, the majority of them th

Scattered over the railroads, sometimes travelling in freight-cars, and sometimes sitting pensively around camp-fires, working when the mood is on them, and loafing when they have accumulated a "stake," always criticising other people but never themselves, seldom very happy or unhappy, and almost constantly without homes such as the persevering workingman struggles for and secures, there is an army of men and boys who, if a census of the unemployed were taken, would have to be included in the cl

Previous to my experience in a railroad police force, I was employed by the same railroad company in making an investigation of the tramp situation on the lines under their management. The object of the investigation was to find out whether the policy pursued by the company was going to be permanently successful in keeping tramps and "train-riders" off the property, and to discover how neighbouring roads dealt with trespassers. Incidentally, I was also to interview tramps that I met, and ask the

It is a popular notion that tramps have a mysterious sign-language in which they communicate secrets to one another in regard to professional matters. It is thought, for instance, that they make peculiar chalk and pencil marks on fences and horse-blocks, indicating to the brotherhood such things as whether a certain house is "good" or not, where a ferocious dog is kept, at what time the police are least likely, or most likely, to put in an appearance, how late in the morning a barn can be occupi

As a political party the tramps cannot be said to amount to much. Counting "gay-cats" and hoboes, the two main wings of the army, they are numerous enough, if concentrated in a single State, or in a city like New York, to cast, perhaps, the determining vote in a close election, but they are so scattered that they never become a formidable political organisation. They are more in evidence in the East than in the West, and in the North than in the South, but they are to be met in every State and T

In a superficial way tramps read practically everything they can get hold of. As a class they are not particularly fond of books when there is something more exciting to engage their attention, such as a "hang-out" conference, for instance, but they get pleasure out of both reading and writing. They have generally learned how to read as boys, either at home with their parents or in some institution for truants and "incorrigibles." Dime novels and like literature amuse them most at this stage in

Engineers build railroads and are largely represented in their management, but both in building and operating them they are dependent, at one time or another, upon some kind of police protection. Indeed, there are railroads that could not have been constructed at all without the aid of either soldiers or policemen. The Trans-Caspian railroad was built largely by soldiers, and is still superintended by the war department at St. Petersburg rather than by the minister of ways of communication. The