sons slept and prepared their food. . . .
In another room, located in a dark cellar, without screens or partitions,
were together two men with their wives and a girl of fourteen, two single
men and a boy of seventeen, two women and four boys,--nine, ten, eleven,
and fifteen years old,--fourteen persons in all."

Here humanity rots. Its victims, with grim humor, call it "tenant-house
rot." Or, as a legislative report puts it: "Here infantile life unfolds
its bud, but perishes before its first anniversary. Here youth is ugly
with loathsome disease, and the deformities which follow physical
degeneration."

These are the men and women who are what they are because they were not
better born, or because they happened to be unluckily born in time and
space. Gauged by the needs of the system, they are weak and worthless.
The hospital and the pauper's grave await them, and they offer no
encouragement to the mediocre worker who has failed higher up in the
industrial structure. Such a worker, conscious that he has failed,
conscious from the hard fact that he cannot obtain work in the higher
employments, finds several courses open to him. He may come down and be
a beast in the social pit, for instance; but if he be of a certain
caliber, the effect of the social pit will be to discourage him from
work. In his blood a rebellion will quicken, and he will elect to become
either a felon or a tramp.

If he have fought the hard fight he is not unacquainted with the lure of
the "road." When out of work and still undiscouraged, he has been forced
to "hit the road" between large cities in his quest for a job. He has
loafed, seen the country and green things, laughed in joy, lain on his
back and listened to the birds singing overhead, unannoyed by factory
whistles and bosses' harsh commands; and, most significant of all, _he
has lived_! That is the point! He has not starved to death. Not only
has he been care-free and happy, but he has lived! And from the
knowledge that he has idled and is still alive, he achieves a new outlook
on life; and the more he experiences the unenviable lot of the poor
worker, the more the blandishments of the "road" take hold of him. And
finally he flings his challenge in the face of society, imposes a
valorous boycott on all work, and joins the far-wanderers of Hoboland,
the gypsy folk of this latter day.

But the tramp does not usually come from the slums. His place of birth
is ordinarily a bit