Chapter XXXVI: A Tramp Colony

Every year our City Magistrates send to the Workhouse on Blackwell’s Island no less than twenty thousand persons. This is entirely independent of the number sent from Kings County by the Magistrates of Brooklyn, Richmond and Queens.

By far the largest number of this contingent are the residuum of dregs of society. As soon as they have their liberty they prey upon society. And when they are in the toils again the ubiquitous gin-mill will account for it. But there are other reasons, and some of the responsibility will have to be laid at the door of our present social conditions, which need considerable re-adjusting.

It is needless to conceal the fact that a large percentage of this class is made up of thieves, drunkards, incorrigibles and homeless tramps. As they cannot find employment readily, they eke out a precarious living for a time as panhandlers and deadbeats and then return to prison, only to continue the same experience several times a year. As their imprisonment does them no good and as they are a great expense to the city and county, it becomes a serious problem what shall be done with them. At the present time the cost of crime in Greater New York is no less than twenty-five per cent. of the entire taxation.

We must therefore consider this subject intelligently with a view to its solution. But whether these social conditions can be explained fully to one’s satisfaction matters very little. We question the right of the authorities to maintain any longer this army of idlers without making them work to pay the cost of their own living.

For some years past we have observed that hundreds—possibly thousands of unskilled laborers, many of whom are in the building trades, reach the dead-line about forty years of age. If they have lived intemperate lives and happen to be single or widowers, when winter sets in and they find themselves out of employment the only thing they can do is to apply to the Magistrate and ask to be committed to the workhouse as vagrants for three or six months. And many of them, after they have finished their time and secured their liberty are no better off, and painfully return to the Police Court for the twentieth time perhaps, to be the city’s ward in the workhouse. What else can they do, or die on the street from sheer starvation?

This raises the question, what shall be done with our army of “tramp rounders” and incorrigibles? To continue to send them back to prison or workhouse for a few months is simply to prolong the evil and their own misery. Criminals are jailed and released in this county every year by the thousand, only to oscillate between prison and a brief season of liberty. When they leave the place of their confinement they seldom bid their keepers good-bye, only “au revoir.” When they come among their fellow men again they are not better. They have spent months or years in prison in idleness, and surrounded by vile companions, and they are no better. But why should they be allowed to endanger the life and liberty of society any longer after the experiences of the past? How long we can maintain such a system it is difficult to say. At any rate, the cost of maintaining our prisons is becoming enormous and the problem of what shall be done with “rounders” and hardened criminals, that prey upon society as soon as they get out of prison should be solved from a business and moral standpoint.

We believe the time has come for this whole matter to be thoroughly sifted and a remedy found that will be commensurate with the present needs. The aim should be the moral reformation of the criminal; nor do we think any remedy will be adequate that falls short of this object. But in working for this end we must not exalt criminals into objects of popular pity.

A few years ago a committee of the National Prison Association examined this whole subject and reported that every habitual criminal at large cost the State by robbery and spoilation no less than sixteen hundred dollars annually, and if in this State alone the taxpayers could be relieved of this burden it would be a saving of six million dollars a year.

Unfortunately New York and vicinity have a large army of unemployed at all seasons of the year—even when we are blessed with what is called “good times.” This is especially true of multitudes who are employed in the building trades. As a rule, contractors who are excavating and blasting for new buildings can always find twenty times as many laborers as they usually need.

But the wealth of the country is so great and the opportunities for employment so vast that the hustler can always find employment in some part of the country. Often large numbers of men and women are unable to find employment at any occupation, even when we have prosperous times. Nor are they to blame entirely for this. Many large corporations, such as railroads, will only give employment to the young and vigorous who are able to produce the largest amount of work, which means that the weak and infirm are soon driven to the wall, and at the first opportunity dropped from the pay roll and after a certain age are unable to find employment at anything.

At an expenditure of say $100,000, several cheap plants could be erected on Riker’s Island, on Long Island Sound, where domestic articles could be manufactured at merely the cost of the raw material, and this army of tramps that infest the boroughs of Greater New York summer and winter could be made to pay the cost of their own living expenses. For example, ten or a dozen small shops could be erected that would give employment to 2,000 men and women who would produce things that would in no wise compete with the great labor industries of the country.

The following are some of the industries that could be carried on by the wards of the city of New York:

Broom making,
Brush making,
Chair caning,
Laundry work,
Shoe making,
Tailoring,
And in summer Agriculture and Horticulture.

The city could rent a thousand acres of land in Westchester County on which garden produce could be raised and sold to the poor at low figures, which would give employment to from 500 to 1,000 persons. From the middle of April till the middle of October they could live in tents, which in many cases would greatly improve their health.

The cultivation of the soil under proper restrictions is a most healthful labor and cannot fail to show good results if properly carried out. French penologists and reformers speak of the system in the highest terms and recommend its adoption all over the world. If necessary these convicts could be used in works of irrigation or canals for the Federal Government, or indeed, the carrying on of public works in any part of the country.

M. Demetz, a French philosopher and founder of the Mettray Reformatory in France, has, for many years, advocated the cultivation of large tracts of land by criminals. His motto has been, “Reclaim the land by the man, and the man by the land.” Since 1850 France has had agricultural colonies for young offenders in crime, where they are compelled to stay from six months to two years. They cultivate the soil on a paying basis, and the success and management of the farm colonies has been eminently successful, as only seven per cent. of their numbers return again to crime.

French economists think that money has never been more wisely spent than for such institutions, as the returns show that ninety-three per cent. of the inmates after their liberation become useful members of society.

It seems to us that no country in the world would carry out penal colonization schemes with greater advantage and better results than the United States.

The peaceful conquest of large tracts of lands in this State, means the acquisition of more domain within our own borders, in which there may be homes and farms for hundreds of our surplus population.

There are several thousand criminal and vagrant idlers who at the beginning of winter go before Justices of the Peace in the country towns and are committed to the county jails for several months, where they live in idleness on the fat of the land. Such people ought to be in some colony and kept there till cured of their delusions.