On the punitive and deterrent side other remedies are required. If "sleeping out" and "loitering with intent" and begging for food or drink are treated as offences the vagrant can no longer be left to the poor law. He becomes a concern of the Home Office. Va grancy offenders should then be subject to penal detention under an indeterminate sentence. Such men should not be allowed to become recidivists. Two things are quite obvious in dealing with this problem. The first is that penal detention should not be re sorted to where the only crime is poverty; the second, that where the social conduct of an individual calls for penal treatment he should not be allowed to contaminate others in the casual ward.
Like all social problems vagrancy cannot be isolated from other important questions such as housing, poor law reform and unem ployment. It is a symptom of a deeply rooted social evil which must be remedied by dealing with the other problems which lie at the root of the trouble. (See also POOR LAW; CASUAL WARD; LABOUR COLONIES ; UNEMPLOYMENT.) B1BLIOGRAPHY.-For a history of vagrancy see C. J. Ribton-Turner, History of Vagrants and Vagrancy (i887) see also Reports, Evidence and Appendices of Departmental Committee on Vagrancy (1906), a most valuable publication, as well as The Vagrancy Problem (Iwo), by W. H. Dawson, who was a witness before the committee, and whose work quoted is full of first-hand information. Two Board of Trade Reports on "Agencies and Methods for Dealing with the Unemployed" (1893 and 1904) will be found useful, as also Rev. W. Carlile and V. W. Carlile's The Continental Outcast (1906) ; Mary Higgs, Down and Out. Studies in the Problems of Vagrancy; "Royal Commission on the Poor Law," appendix to Reports on Visit to Labour Colonies, vol. xxxii. (1919) ; Ministry of Reconstruction Report on Transference of Function of Poor Law (1918). (P. A.) The United States.—Vagrancy laws in the United States be gan to appear after the economic depression of 1873 (New Jersey, 1876; Delaware, 1879; New York, 1884) and after the even greater depression of 1893. Owing to the unique nature of the problem in the United States these laws attempted to differentiate between the vagrant or loafer about town, and the tramp who roved "about from place to place." Both were "idle persons with out visible means of support" only the tramp was more of a romantic adventurer. In other connections he is known as a migratory worker or hobo. He was a conspicuous figure in the building of railroads, prospecting and clearing the land during the strenuous drive against the frontier. With the passing of the
frontier he continued in his role as tramp and migratory worker, but he now functions in only the seasonal industries and transient occupations. The migratory worker, thanks to his facility in using the railroads, is more mobile than any type of vagrant so far developed. In the main he is self-sustaining, and when he is not, his problem is as much a matter of unemployment as of vagrancy. His labour market is elusive; harvesting, sheep shearing, lumber ing, ice cutting and the like ; and his fortunes are no less elusive. However legitimate his function may be in the country's industrial set-up, he still leads a precarious, hand-to-mouth existence, moving from job to job, from State to State at the beck and call of his opportunities, and not infrequently of his moods. Most of his life the hobo lives in the open, especially in summer when if he is not at work or travelling to the next job he is basking in the "jungles," his roadside camps. In winter when work is scarce he is frequently forced into some city for food and shelter, and it is then that he gets his rating as a vagrant.
The life of the hobo, and he is at present typical of the Ameri can variant of the genus vagrant, is divided between train riding, the job, the "jungle" and the "main stem," or the street of the homeless found in most cities. In most of his contacts he is relatively isolated from women, so hobo life becomes a man's game. A population recruiting its new membership from young men and boys, it has little of the culture traits, jargon and sign language that some observers attribute to vagrants of the Old World. Since so many boys and young men are attracted into the class and since the promise of adventure generally proves a de lusion there is naturally considerable unrest, which may explain the zeal with which hobos often turn to syndicalism. Manifesta tions of unrest, songs of protest, and rapid movement, especially of younger hobos, about the country, have all appeared with the passing of the frontier and the swing of the country from a rural to an industrial, city-building civilization. The hobo of the old school who lived his life in the open, tramping and working by turns, and carrying his bed wherever he went, is vanishing. Whereas the old-type hobo used to avoid the city, the present species of the undomesticated American is essentially urban, and only when necessity forces him does he venture into the country.