now commit them
to prison.

At present magistrates have not this power, for though, as a matter
of course, these institutions receive numbers of boys and girls from
police-courts, the institutions have the power to Refuse, to grant
"licences" or to "discharge." So it happens that the meshes of the net
are large enough to allow those that ought to be detained to go free.

No one can possibly doubt that a provision of this character would
largely diminish the number of those that become homeless vagrants.

But I proceed to my second suggestion--the detention and segregation
of all professional tramps. If it is intolerable that an army of poor
afflicted human beings should live homeless and nomadic lives, it
is still more intolerable that an army of men and women who are not
deficient in intelligence, and who are possessed of fairly healthy
bodies should, in these days, be allowed to live as our professional
tramps live.

I have already spoken of the fascination attached to a life of
irresponsible liberty. The wind on the heath, the field and meadow
glistening with dew or sparkling with flowers, the singing of the bird,
the joy of life, and no rent day coming round, who would not be a tramp!
Perhaps our professional tramps think nothing of these things, for
to eat, to sleep, to be free of work, to be uncontrolled, to have no
anxieties, save the gratification of animal demands and animal passions,
is the perfection of life for thousands of our fellow men and women.

Is this kind of life to be permitted? Every sensible person will surely
say that it ought not to be permitted. Yet the number of people who
attach themselves to this life continually increases, for year by year
the prison commissioners tell us that the number of persons imprisoned
for vagrancy, sleeping out, indecency, etc., continues to increase, and
that short terms of imprisonment only serve as periods of recuperation
for them, for in prison they are healed of their sores and cleansed from
their vermin.

With every decent fellow who tramps in search of work we must have the
greatest sympathy, but for professional tramps we must provide very
simply. Most of these men, women and children find their way into
prison, workhouses and casual wards at some time or other. When the man
gets into prison, the woman and children go into the nearest workhouse.
When the man is released from prison he finds the woman and children
waiting for him, and away they go ref