Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 1.djvu/173

 TRAMPS.

��165

��TRAMPS.

��BY C. C. LORD.

��We can easily imagine some plain New Hampshire citizen reflecting by his even- ing fire-side, and saying to himself, " What does it mean? Seven tramps to- day, five yesterday, and doubtless enough to-morrow to make up a large daily aver- age." It is a problem.

The people of New England, and of America at large, may well consider this fact : we are only a ripple upon the great historic stream of humanity, and possess- ed of no experience, ambition or hope that is not in some sense common to man. Consequently we cannot consistently ex- pect to arrive at the legitimate solution of any social problem while ignoring the static laws of human life revealed in the authoritatively attested history of the race. ,

Facts are stubborn things. It is a fact that history records the existence of tramps from the remotest, definitely de- scribed periods. It is further evident that in repeated instances the skill of the governing element in society has been se- verely taxed in the effort to suppress the ever-recurring tide of vagrancy. In pres- ent attempts at regulating the irregular features of social life, it will be happy if any practical appliance not before used shall occur to the mind of any inquiring individual.

To the scientifically contemplative mind, the dominant causes of vagrancy are not absolutely iuapparent ; nor are these causes wholly collective, or only individual, in character ; neither may we find that they are entirely preventable.

The different causes of vagabondism are of unequal rational permanency. The direct abuse of government, whereby the rational interests of the humbler classes in society are palpably neglected, is an incentive of an occasional kind. The ever-recurring social reactions, in the manifestation of which the collective hu-

��man organism seems to pass through in- evitable constitutional crises, are motives operating in periodic states. The impel- ling force locked up in the peculiar tem- perament of the individual is so constant in expression as to allow of but infre- quent respites from its ruling energy. The first of these causes is more remova- ble ; the second, less so ; and the third, scarcely, if at all.

In using language recognizing the ex- istence of science ^ we do not intend that restrictive meaning implying only a knowledge of so-called material laws. We wo.uld rather be understood in that fuller sense embracing a comprehension of the laws of that distinctive life per- vading our whole human fabric. The progress of science, or, to be more ex- plicit, the approximation to the fulfill- ment of science in human consciousness, is, in our opinion, teaching us better ideas of government and its legitimate effect upon the masses. True science, howev- er, is at present so confined in its limits, being of necessity entertained only by those who have forsaken all and follow- ed the experimentally humanized divine Word, its effect is as yet seen only darkly in a glass. As yet the brighter hope of human, organized society, lies in the more vital — more experimentally true — instruction afforded to the minds of those certain to be the fufcure rulers in govern- mental affairs. The child listening by its mother's knee, or hearing on the bench of a country common school, or imbibing the words of the local pulpit or rostrum, or catching snatches of thought from the widely-circulating improved literature of the day, may derive some earnest of a scientific insight of the true law of social life that may in the future redound to the amelioration of long-lasting unfortunate conditions. When the true law of soci- ety is seen and illustrated, although the

�� �