All told, I have met on the railroads about one thousand men and boys who claimed to be out-of-works and not professional vagabonds and tramps. In saying that I have met them, I mean that I have talked with them and learned considerable about their history, present condition, and plans and hopes for the future. They talked with me as freely as with one of their own kind; indeed, they seemed to assume that I belonged among them. The most striking thing about them is that the majority are practically youths, the average age being about twenty-three years, both West and East. Of my one thousand out-of-works, fully two-thirds were between twenty and twenty-five years old; the rest were young boys under eighteen and mature men anywhere from forty to seventy. Youths of all classes of society have their _Wanderjahre_, and so much time during this period is taken up with mere roaming that it is easy to understand how many of them must be without work from time to time. It is also true that young men are more hasty than their elders in giving up positions on account of some real or supposed affront; life is all before them, they think, anyhow, and meanwhile they do not intend to knuckle down to any overbearing employer. In certain parts of the country, on account of crowded conditions, it must be stated, furthermore, that it is difficult for a number of young men to get suitable employment. There is a sociological significance, however, about the present strikingly large number of young men who are "beating" their way over the country on the railroads. There is gradually being developed in the United States a class of wanderers who may be likened to the degenerated _Handwerksburschen_ of Germany. They are not necessarily apprentices in the sense that the _Handwerksburschen_ usually are, although the great majority of them have trades and make some effort, in winter at least, to work at them, but they are almost the exact counterpart of the _Burschen_ in their migratory habits. Years ago the travelling apprentice was a picturesque figure in German life, and it was thought quite proper that he should pack up his tools every now and then, get out his wheelbarrow, and take a jaunt into the world. He had to take to the highways in those days, and there was no such inducement, as there is now, to make long, unbroken trips. A few miles a day was the average stint, and at the end of a fortnight, or possibly a month, he was ready and glad to go to work again.