hanging on the ladder on the side of a box-car at night, trying to argue with a brakeman, he cuts short the argument by the simple expedient of stamping on your fingers, and you perforce have to take a wild jump off the moving train, hoping and praying that the landing may be soft. But in all this lies the fascination and excitement. Even when all goes well, and you are carefully laid out on a plank across the truss-rods under a car, the flying gravel and sand make travelling, when rapid, uncomfortable. There is also always the danger (when you travel without knowing your destination) of running into some large terminal and being arrested by the police. Still, there must be a huge fascination in the life to attract young fellows of this man’s position in life. It is not the loafing, as hoboes of this description are ready to work when they are out of funds, and do not steal for a living as some tramps will do.
It is always, of course, a point of honour with railroad men not to let a hobo travel on their train unless he is willing to pay something, and this a hobo will never do unless in the direst extremity. I once was witness of a rather amusing thing at a little wayside station in West Texas. A freight pulled in while I was chatting with the station agent, and side-tracked to let the passenger train go by. When they stopped, besides the train crew three tramps got off, and when they first came in sight, the hind-brakeman and the station agent got into an argument as to where they had come from, the agent affirming that they had come in on the freight, and the brakeman sticking out that it was impossible, or he would have seen them, and that they must have walked. Finally, they each bet some money, handing it to me, and decided to leave the matter with the tramps. When the latter came up, the brakeman asked them how they had come in, and one of them answered they “had come in on the train, and intended going out on it.” This answer, coming on top of the fact that he had lost the bet, so angered the brakeman that he started in to lick the tramp spokesman; but to our amusement and delight the tramp did him up brown. He was mad as a wet hen; and the last I saw of him, as the train pulled out, he was sitting on top of the caboose (guard’s van) threatening to kill the first tramp who got on the train. But what he had not seen, which added to our amusement, was the three tramps climb into an empty box-car before the train started.
Some of these tramps are really “bad-men,” and will kill a trainman before they allow themselves to be ditched; but most of them are either like my hobo friend, or are working men out of employment and cash, moving to where work is more plentiful. Most freight conductors carry these last for a small sum (contrary to railroad regulations), and I have seen twenty or thirty cotton-pickers in one empty car on their way to the cotton-fields. If you can convince the conductor that you are really destitute and hunting work, more likely than not he will not only carry you free, but feed you on the road as well. I have heard of this being done in many cases.
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