Page 247 - down-and-out-in-paris-and-london

push him on to the next; hence the rule that he can stay
only one night. If he returns within a month he is penal-
ized by being confined for a week, and, as this is much the
same as being in prison, naturally he keeps moving. But if
he represented labour to the workhouse, and the workhouse
represented sound food to him, it would be another matter.
The workhouses would develop into partially self-support-
ing institutions, and the tramps, settling down here or there
according as they were needed, would cease to be tramps.
They would be doing something comparatively useful, get-
ting decent food, and living a settled life. By degrees, if the
scheme worked well, they might even cease to be regard-
ed as paupers, and be able to marry and take a respectable
place in society.
This is only a rough idea, and there are some obvious
objections to it. Nevertheless, it does suggest a way of im-
proving the status of tramps without piling new burdens on
the rates. And the solution must, in any case, be something
of this kind. For the question is, what to do with men who
are underfed and idle; and the answer—to make them grow
their own food—imposes itself automatically.

Down and Out in Paris and London