except it be in
prison, and, as long as they can get a living for nothing, they will
continue to be, as you say in your article, 'A blot upon the country and
an eyesore on our roads.'

"I always find the quickest way of getting rid of a tramp is to threaten
him with the police, and I am quite sure if every householder would make
a rule never to relieve tramps with money, and only those who are
crippled, with food, the number would soon be decreased. If people have
any old clothes or spare coppers to give away, I am sure they will soon
find in their own town or village many cases more worthy of their charity
than the highway tramp. I do not recommend anybody to find a tramp even
temporary employment, unless they can stand over him and then see the man
safe off the premises, and even then he may come again at night as a
burglar; but I am sure work could be found at 1s. 6d. or 2s. a day by our
corporations or on the highways, where, under proper supervision, these
idle vagabonds would be made to earn an honest living. You will find
that nine out of ten tramps have been in prison and have no character,
and although they may say they 'want work,' they really do not mean it.
Not long ago I caught a great rough fellow trying to get the dinner from
a little girl who was taking it to her father at his work. 'Poor man! he
must have been very hungry,' I fancy I hear the benevolent old lady
saying. Of course, during the last year we have had many men 'on the
road' who are really in search of work, but I always tell them that there
is as much work in one place as another, and unless they really have a
situation in view they should not go tramping from town to town. Many of
them have no characters to produce, and I expect when they find
'tramping' is such a pleasant and easy mode of living they will join the
ranks and become roadsters also."

In _May's Aldershot Advertiser_, September 13th, 1879, the following is a
leading article upon the condition of Gipsies:--"The incoming of
September reminds us that in the hop districts this is the season of
advent of those British nomads--the Gipsies, the only class for whom
there is so little legislation, or with whose actions and habits, lawless
as they are, the agents of the law so seldom interfere. The miners of
the Black Country owe the suppression of juvenile labour and the short
time law to the long exertions of the generous-hearted Richard Oastler.
The brickmaker may no longer d