"I should think you would want to ride more on freight-trains," I went on, "and catch the trespassers in the act, so to speak." "I'm too heavy to fool around freight-trains; besides, I don't want to have a knife put into me. Some o' them tramps are mighty quick on their feet, and if I went at 'em they'd have a razor cut in me before I could turn round." I asked him why, in view of his age and heaviness, he did not try to find employment in some other department of the road more suited to his abilities. Railroad companies are often very lenient with employees of long standing, and give them easy positions in their old age. "This is the easiest department the road's got," he returned. "Besides, I'm my own boss." "Don't you have to make regular reports to any one?" "I go to the trainmaster's office every morning for orders, but he don't know much about the business, and generally tells me to do as I think best. We men haven't got a chief the way the regular railroaders have." "Who is responsible for what you do?" I inquired. "Nobody, I guess, but the pres'dent o' the road." "How do you spend your time?" "Well, I go to the trainmaster in the morning, and if he hasn't heard of anything special, like a car robbery or an accident where there's likely to be a claim for damages, I stay around the station a while, or go down into the yards and see what I can see. Sometimes I spend the day in the yards." "What do you do there?" "Oh, I loaf around, keep the kids away from the cars, chin-chin with the switchmen 'n' the other men, keep my eyes open for fellows that there's rewards for, eat my dinner, an' go to bed." "Why don't you try to break up the tramp camps?" "We do try it, but they come back again." "Don't you think you would probably be more successful if you raided them oftener?" "Yes, I guess we would; but, you see, there ain't any one who's running the thing. When an order comes from the superintendent to make raids we make 'em, but he don't send in that order more'n once in three months, an' the rest o' the time we do pretty much as we like." "How do you think things would go if you men were organised and had a chief? Would better work be done?" "Better work would be done, I guess, but it would be a darned sight harder work," and he smiled significantly. My tramp informant was an old roadster of about forty, who had "held down" the railroad in question for a number of years. I asked him how long it had been an "open" road,--one easy for trespassers to get over. "As long as the memory of man goes back," he replied, with a suggestive flourish of his hand. "Are not some divisions harder to beat than others?" "Once in awhile a division'll get a little horstile, but only fer a few weeks." "How many tramps are riding trains?"