Page 245 - down-and-out-in-paris-and-london

cell walls. They cost the country at least a pound a week a
man, and give nothing in return for it. They go round and
round, on an endless boring game of general post, which
is of no use, and is not even meant to be of any use to any
person whatever. The law keeps this process going, and we
have got so accustomed to it that We are not surprised. But
it is very silly.
Granting the futility of a tramp’s life, the question is
whether anything could be done to improve it. Obviously it
would be possible, for instance, to make the casual wards a
little more habitable, and this is actually being done in some
cases. During the last year some of the casual wards have
been improved—beyond recognition, if the accounts are
true— and there is talk of doing the same to all of them. But
this does not go to the heart of the problem. The problem is
how to turn the tramp from a bored, half alive vagrant into
a self-respecting human being. A mere increase of comfort
cannot do this. Even if the casual wards became positive-
ly luxurious (they never will)* a tramp’s life would still be
wasted. He would still be a pauper, cut off from marriage
and home life, and a dead loss to the community. What is
needed is to depauperize him, and this can only be done by
finding him work—not work for the sake of working, but
work of which he can enjoy the benefit. At present, in the
great majority of casual wards, tramps do no work what-
ever. At one time they were made to break stones for their
food, but this was stopped when they had broken enough
stone for years ahead and put the stone-breakers out of
work. Nowadays they are kept idle, because there is seem-

Down and Out in Paris and London