Tramping with Tramps: Studies and Sketches of Vagabond LifeFlynt, Josiah
History
Tramping with Tramps: Studies and Sketches of Vagabond Life
Flynt, Josiah
Tramps
Club life among the Natives,--the older outcasts,--although in many
respects quite different from that of the Kids, is in some ways
strikingly similar. There are, for instance, young rowdies and roughs
whose main pleasures are mischief and petty misdemeanors, just as among
the young boys in Chicago. But in place of breaking church windows and
turning over horse-blocks, they join what are called "scrappin' gangs,"
and spend most of their time in fighting hostile clubs of the same
order. They are not clever enough as yet to become successful criminals;
they are too brutal and impolite to do profitable begging, and as
rowdyism is about the only thing they can take part in, their
associations become pugilistic clubs.
How these originated is an open question even among the rowdies
themselves. My own explanation of their origin is this: Every community,
if it is at all complex and varied, has different sets of outcasts and
ne'er-do-wells, just as it has varieties of respectable people. In time
these different sets appropriate, often quite accidentally, territories
of their own. One set, for example, will live mainly on the east side of
a city, and another set on the west side. After some residence in their
distinct quarters, local prejudices and habits are formed, and, what is
more to the point, a local patriotism grows. The east-sider thinks his
hang-outs and dives are the best, and the west-sider thinks the same of
his. Out of this conceit there comes invariably a class hatred, which
grows, and finally develops into the "scrappin' gangs," the purpose of
which is to defend the pride of each separate district. In New York I
know of over half a dozen of these pugnacious organizations, and they
fight for as many different territories. I have seen in one club young
and old of both sexes joined together to defend their "kentry," as they
called the street or series of streets in which they lived. The majority
of the real fighters, however, are powerful fellows between the ages of
eighteen and twenty-two. Sometimes they live at home, and a few pretend
to do some work, but most of them are loafers, who spend their time in
drinking, gambling, and petty thieving. They usually sleep in old
tenements and cheap lodging-houses, and in the daytime they are either
in the streets or at some dive supported mainly by their patronage.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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