Charges are even made that tramps and hobos sell their votes, that they often engage in “repeating.” There is not as much ground for such charges as one would expect. The average tramp does not have the courage to take the chances that the “repeater” must expect to run. He realizes also that he is always under more or less suspicion even when he is going straight, and this serves as a brake. Homeless men as a group make much of the fact that they are excluded from the ballot, and they remind all who have the patience to listen that the exclusion is unjust because they perform an important and legitimate function in the labor world. They seem to protest against their exclusion more than to demand the ballot. One man said that he did not know if he would vote if he had a chance, “but it’s the principle of the thing.” The International Brotherhood Welfare Association has repeatedly stood for some form of universal suffrage that would permit migratory workers to vote, regardless of the length of their residence in a community. During the latter part of May, 1922, a convention of the Farmer-Labor Party was held in Chicago. Certain members of the hobo group failed in the attempt to get a resolution through the convention in favor of giving the vote to migratory workers. Certain delegates feared that the hobo was too irresponsible to use the ballot. The farmer element in the Farmer-Labor Party resented the idea of giving support to the tramp group by whom they had been harassed so much in the harvest fields. Nor is the I.W.W. particularly interested in “votes for the hobos,” because in their opinion the ballot is at best an indirect method of accomplishing what can be easier secured by direct action. Forty-eight of the 400 homeless men studied by the writer claimed to have voted in the presidential election of 1920. 56. One of the men interviewed in this study said: “I happened to drop into Salt Lake the last day of the registration so I got my name on the dotted line. I swore I had been in the state a year. They couldn’t prove I wasn’t, so it passed. I’d been in ten or fifteen states that year. Well, when election came I was working in Bingham. My boss was short of help and didn’t want me to lay off to vote, so I quit and went to Salt Lake. Got there just before the polls closed.” One man said that he beat his way 1,000 miles to cast his ballot. Most of the 48, however, had voted because at election time they were living in or near their legal residence. What was the attitude of the 352 who did not vote? The following are the reasons given (with reference to 1920 election):[56]