ising, the money that
is made out of stone-broke tramps. All through the South--at least
when I was hoboing--are convict camps and plantations, where the time
of convicted hoboes is bought by the farmers, and where the hoboes
simply have to work. Then there are places like the quarries at
Rutland, Vermont, where the hobo is exploited, the unearned energy in
his body, which he has accumulated by "battering on the drag" or
"slamming gates," being extracted for the benefit of that particular
community.

Now I don't know anything about the quarries at Rutland, Vermont. I'm
very glad that I don't, when I remember how near I was to getting into
them. Tramps pass the word along, and I first heard of those quarries
when I was in Indiana. But when I got into New England, I heard of
them continually, and always with danger-signals flying. "They want
men in the quarries," the passing hoboes said; "and they never give a
'stiff' less than ninety days." By the time I got into New Hampshire I
was pretty well keyed up over those quarries, and I fought shy of
railroad cops, "bulls," and constables as I never had before.

One evening I went down to the railroad yards at Concord and found a
freight train made up and ready to start. I located an empty box-car,
slid open the side-door, and climbed in. It was my hope to win across
to White River by morning; that would bring me into Vermont and not
more than a thousand miles from Rutland. But after that, as I worked
north, the distance between me and the point of danger would begin to
increase. In the car I found a "gay-cat," who displayed unusual
trepidation at my entrance. He took me for a "shack" (brakeman), and
when he learned I was only a stiff, he began talking about the
quarries at Rutland as the cause of the fright I had given him. He was
a young country fellow, and had beaten his way only over local
stretches of road.

The freight got under way, and we lay down in one end of the box-car
and went to sleep. Two or three hours afterward, at a stop, I was
awakened by the noise of the right-hand door being softly slid open.
The gay-cat slept on. I made no movement, though I veiled my eyes with
my lashes to a little slit through which I could see out. A lantern
was thrust in through the doorway, followed by the head of a shack. He
discovered us, and looked at us for a moment. I was prepared for a
violent expression on his part, or the customary "Hit the grit, you
son of a toad!" Instea