Little Bums

BOY AND GIRL TRAMPS OF AMERICA--Thomas Minehan-- Farrar & Rinehart ($2.50).

A good old anatomical word in England, "bum" in U. S. parlance means a down-&-outer. But not every social outcast answers willingly to the name. Many a hobo is no bum but a journeyman worker, traveling cheaply from one seasonal occupation to another. Some "jungle" inhabitants are college graduates, may even be sociologists in search of statistics. Such a bloodhound in bum's clothing was Author Thomas Minehan. Disguising himself with apparently complete success, he spent two years' vacations traveling in boxcars, weekending in jungles, standing in mission breadlines, indefatigably taking notes. The result was the first book of its kind on the besprizorniye (wild children) of the U. S.

How many boy-&-girl hoboes are wandering the U. S. today Author Minehan does not attempt to estimate. The overwhelming majority of the 500-odd cases he collected left home because of hard times. They travel in small gangs, repeat the same routes, rarely get more than 500 miles from their starting place. The girls are sometimes on their own, oftener are common to the gang or temporarily faithful to one boy. For their living they depend on panhandling, petty thievery, breadlines.

Author Minehan learned some useful tips on the art of begging. Said one adept: "Poorly dressed men with a grouch and a mean look are often the best prospects because they don't get hit so much." He learned to understand such lingo as: "I'm on the fritz, see? And I carries the banner slinking harness bulls. Until glims. Then I batters private plunging like a gandy dancer and red bulls sock into the old heavy-foot himself. 'Tooting ringers for a scoffing?' he says. 'Come wid me, I'll give you a scoffing.' Skating on my uppers I mush talks him out of a hustle buggy ride and into mongee." Catholic charity Investigator Minehan found the kindest. Religion has small place in these adolescent tramps' lives; theirs is the tribal deity of Hemingway. Said one of them: "God is guts." The Second Coming they vaguely apprehend is the advent of a militant Messiah. "Every group of boy tramps contains a Communist. Bolshevism is spreading rapidly."

Author Minehan thinks something ought to be done about these child hoboes, advocates a Child Conservation Corps "which will have as its purpose the saving not of our forests a hundred years from today, but of our boys and girls growing into the men and women of tomorrow."

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