in pamphlet form, and Haeckel's _Riddle of
the Universe_ are typical. A surprisingly large number can quote
extensively from Buckle's _History of Civilization_ and from the
writings of Marx. They quote statistics freely--statistics of wages,
poverty, crime, vice, and so on--generally derived from the radical
press and implicitly believed because so published, with what they
accept as adequate authority.

Their most marked peculiarity is the migratory nature of their lives.
Whether this is self-determined, a matter of temperament and habit, or
due to uncontrollable factors, it is largely responsible for the
contempt in which they are popularly held. It naturally brings upon them
the reproach and resentment everywhere visited upon "tramps" and
"vagabonds." They rarely remain long enough in any one place to form
local attachments and ties or anything like civic pride. They move from
job to job, city to city, state to state, sometimes tramping afoot,
begging as they go; sometimes stealing rides on railway trains, in
freight cars--"side-door Pullmans"--or on the rods underneath the cars.
Frequently arrested for begging, trespassing, or stealing rides, they
are often victims of injustice at the hands of local judges and
justices. The absence of friends, combined with the prejudice against
vagrants which everywhere exists, subjects them to arbitrary and
high-handed injustice such as no other body of American citizens has to
endure. Moreover, through the conditions of their existence they are
readily suspected of crimes they do not commit; it is all too easy for
the hard-pushed police officer or sheriff to impute a crime to the lone
and defenseless "Wobbly," who frequently can produce no testimony to
prove his innocence, simply because he has no friends in the
neighborhood and has been at pains to conceal his movements. In this
manner the "Wobbly" becomes a veritable son of Ishmael, his hand against
the hand of nearly every man in conventional society. In particular he
becomes a rebel by habit, hating the police and the courts as his
constant enemies.

Doubtless the great majority of these men are temperamentally
predisposed to the unanchored, adventurous, migratory existence which
they lead. Boys so constituted run away to sea, take jobs with traveling
circuses, or enlist as soldiers. The type is familiar and not uncommon.
Such individuals cannot be content with the prosaic, humdrum, monotonous
life of regular employment. As