Jack London
The Bookman/August, 1902
He who knows but one class of tramps can no more understand that class of tramps than he who knows but one language can understand that language. This is indisputable. And out of this non-misunderstanding, or partial understanding, much erroneous information is given forth to those who do not know tramps at all. And not only is this unjust to those who do not know, but it is unjust to the tramp. It is the intention of this brief article to correct some of this misinformation; and it is as an old-time tramp, a “comet,” one who has served his “road-kid” and “gay-cat” apprenticeship, that I shall speak thus authoritatively.
When I say that the average tramp does not understand Trampland, it will be readily understood that the average sociologist, tentatively dabbling, does not and cannot understand Trampland. A single instance of this should suffice. Now it is notorious that Eastern tramps do not know how to “railroad.” The tramp whose habitat has been confined to the East and South can no more “hold down” a train in spite of a “horstile” crew than can he step into Rockefeller’s office and “hold down” Standard Oil. Conditions do not demand it. He is not trained to it. The crews are rarely “horstile.” Speaking out of my own experience, I have been but twice put off trains between the Mississippi and the Atlantic Ocean; while west of the Mississippi I have been put off, and thrown off, and beaten off more times than I can recollect.
But the instance I have in mind. In professional Trampland the United States over, “riding the rods” has a specific meaning. It characterizes, not various kinds of acts, but one particular act. Yet the average Eastern tramp and the average Eastern tramp-investigator do not know what this particular act is. The ordinary tramp hears the professional tramp, the comet, or the tramproyal, speak of “riding the rods,” and, utterly ignorant of what the rods are (because he has never had to ride them), he confuses them with the gunnels and concludes that he, too, has “ridden the rods.” And not only this, for he describes the operation to the tramp-investigator, poses on the gunnels before a camera, and the erroneous picture is reproduced in our magazines, labeled “Riding the Rods.”
Now, what are the gunnels? As correctly described but incorrectly named, they are “the truss rods which, after the fashion of bridge trusses, support the middle stretch of the car between trucks.” They are heavy iron rods which run lengthwise with the car, and which differ in number and shape according to the make of the car. While they occur on passenger coaches, no one ever dreams of riding them except on freight cars. And by those who know and who set the pace in Trampland, they are named “gunnels.” And be it remarked parenthetically that criteria are required in Trampland as well as any other land. Somebody must set the pace, give the law, sanction usage.
Anybody with arms and legs can ride the gunnels. It requires no special trick or nerve, and this in the face of the dictum of the ordinary tramp (the “gay-cat” and stew-bum), who swells pridefully and narrates valorously in the presence of the stray and passing sociologist.
But to “ride the rods” requires nerve, and skill, and daring. And, by the way, there is but one rod, and it occurs on passenger coaches. Idiomatically, it becomes “rods,” just as idiomatically we speak of “riding trains.” As a matter of fact, I have never yet met a man who made a practice of riding more than one train at a time. But to return. One never rides the gunnels on “passengers;” one never rides the rods on “freights.” Also, between the rod on a “four-wheeler” and the rod on a “six-wheeler” there is the difference of life and death.
A four-wheel truck is oblong in shape, and is divided into halves by a cross-partition. What is true of one-half is true of the other half. Between this cross-partition and the axle is a small lateral rod, three to four feet in length, running parallel with both the partition and the axle. This is the rod. There is more often than not another rod, running longitudinally, the air-brake rod. These rods cross each other; but woe to the tyro who takes his seat on the brake-rod! It is not the rod, and the chance is large that the tyro’s remains will worry and puzzle the county coroner.
Let me explain how such a rod is ridden. One may take his seat on it when the train is stationary. This is comparatively easy. But the “comet” and the “profesh,” the men who ride despite “horstile” crews, are wont to take their seats while the train is under way. This is how it is done, and since I have done it often, for clearness let me describe it in the first person:
The train is pulling out and going as fast as a man can run, or even faster. Time, night or day; to one who is familiar it does not matter. I stand alongside the track. The train is approaching. With a quick eye I select the coach and truck—the for’ard truck, so that, sheltered by the cross-partition, I shall avoid “punching the wind.” I begin to run gently in the direction the train is going. As “my” truck comes closer I hit up my pace, and just before it reaches me I make one swift spurt, so that when it is abreast of me the respective velocities of the train and myself are nearly equalised. At this moment (and it must be the moment of moments and neither the moment before nor the moment after), at this moment I suddenly stoop, reach under the car and seize hold of the first gunnel; and at this same instant I lift my feet from the ground, swing my body under the car and bring my feet to rest on the brake-beam. The posture is undignified and perilous. My feet are merely resting, my whole weight is supported by my arms, the car above me is rolling and jolting, and my back is toward the rails singing beneath.
But, hand over hand, I haul myself in till I am standing in a doubled position on the brake-beam. It will be noted that I am still outside the truck. Between the top of the truck and the bottom of the car is a narrow space, barely sufficient to admit a man’s body. Through this I squeeze, in such manner that my feet still remain outside the truck on the brakebeam, my stomach is pressed against the top of the truck, and my head and shoulders, unsupported, are inside the truck. I say “unsupported,” and I mean it, for beneath my chest is the rapidly revolving axle. This I dare not touch, but must thrust my head and trunk, snake fashion, over and past it and down till I can lay my hands on either the brake-rod or the cross-rod. This done, my head and shoulders are now lower than my hips (which are on top the truck), and I must draw my hips, legs and feet over and down across that moving axle without touching. Squirming and twisting, this is accomplished, and I sit down on the crossrod, back resting against the side of the truck, one shoulder against the cross-partition, the other shoulder within a couple of inches of the whirling wheel. My legs are disposed along the rod to where my feet rest on it at the opposite end within an inch or so of the other wheel. More than once I have had a wheel rasp against my shoe or whizz greasily on my shoulder. Six or eight inches beneath me are the ties, bounding along at thirty, forty, or fifty miles an hour, and all in the world between is a slender swaying rod as thick as a man’s first finger. Dirt and gravel are flying, the car is bounding overhead, the earth flashing away beneath, there is clank and clash, and rumble and roar, and . . . this is “riding the rods.”
As I write I have before me my “ticket.” I have ridden countless miles on it. It is a piece of three-quarter-inch pine, well seasoned, four inches wide by five long. Across it a rude groove has been gashed with a jack-knife. Into this groove the rod fits, and on this piece of wood the man sits. It is a small affair. When not in use I carried it in my hip pocket. Yet I have seen the passing sociologist and tramp-investigator, in the course of mis-describing rod-riding, speak of “tickets” which were four-foot planks!
I remember being “ditched” on a little “jerk” road in the French country near Montreal. With me were two other “stiffs,” Vancouver Ned and Chi Slim. Vancouver Ned was a tramp-royal. He was just back from across the pond and was returning to Vancouver. Chi Slim, as his “monica” denotes, hailed from Chicago. He thought of himself as a “blowed in-the-glass stiff,” and so far as his experience went he was so blown, but his experience was quite limited. His seven years of tramping had been narrowly confined. He was not a product of rigid selection. A certain repressed eagerness alternated with fits of timidity, and one could see at a glance that this was his first big adventure. He had broken out of his habitat and was at last on the great “road.” And as befitted one honoured by the companionship of a “comet” and a tramp-royal, he deemed it necessary to put on a wise “front.” He was a bold, bad man, and the chests he threw amused Vancouver Ned and me. Since he was bound West, we knew he stood in need of education, and Vancouver Ned kindly proceeded to “put him wise” concerning the “railroading” he would have to do ere he achieved West. Vancouver Ned mentioned riding the rods as necessary for getting over the ground. Oh, he knew all about riding the rods, did Chi Slim; he was no “gay cat.” I saw that he needed fetching down a peg or so, told him that I knew he did not know, and challenged him to go down to the railroad yards and show us the rods. He led the way confidently, and, as we had suspected, pointed in triumph to the gunnels!
Another current and widespread misconception is that the train crews (the “shacks”), if they wished, could prevent all tramps from riding. It is undeniable that if they tried they could prevent many tramps from riding, but it is deniable that they could prevent all. There are probably some several thousand tramps in the United States who can successfully defy any such attempt, while the very attempt would develop many thousand more—the men who “hold down” trains in spite of the crews “horstile” or otherwise. I have forced an Overland Mail to stop five times, and then indulged the anxious eyed passengers with a rough-and-tumble with the “shacks” before I was finally “ditched.” But this was in broad daylight and I was handicapped. Had it been night time, barring accidents, they could not have kept me off. But they were carrying the mails, and a policy of stopping five times for every tramp along the track is on the face of it absurd. As Josiah Flynt has pointed out, to completely rid a railroad of tramps a police service is necessary. The trainmen have other functions to perform. And as to the brakemen being passively consenting parties to the free freightage of hobos, well, and what of it? It’s easier to than not to; and further, more than one overzealous “shack” has been strewn in fragments along the right of way by tramps who elected to become “horstile.”
The point of this article is: that when the lesser local tramps are themselves ignorant of much of the real “road,” the stray and passing sociologist, dealing only with the lesser local tramps, must stand in corresponding ignorance. Such investigators do not deal with the genuine “profesh.” The tramps they probe and dissect are mere creatures, without perspective, incapable of “sizing up” or understanding the Underworld in which they live. These are the canaille and bourgeoisie, these “gay cats,” “bindle stiffs,” “stake men,” “shovel bums,” “mushers,” “fakirs” and “stew bums.” As well might the Man from Mars get a lucid and philosophic exposition of twentieth-century sublunary society from a denizen of Mulberry Street as the stray and passing sociologist get a clear and searching exposition of the “road” from these men.
The “profesh” do not lend themselves to putting inquisitive “mugs” wise. They do not lend themselves to putting any one wise save their own “prushuns.” Nor can the superficial investigator come to know the “profesh” by merely “hitting the road.” So far as they are concerned, he will be despised as a “gay cat,” or, in more familiar parlance, as a short horn, a tenderfoot, a new chum. He cannot know the “profesh” until he has hobnobbed with them, and he cannot hobnob with them until he has qualified. And he may be so made that he can never qualify. Thousands of men on the “road” are unfit to be “profesh;” it is impossible for them to be “profesh.” The “profesh” are the aristocracy of their Underworld. They are the lords and masters, the aggressive men, the primordial noble men, the blond beasts of Nietzsche, lustfully roving and conquering through sheer superiority and strength. Unwritten is the law they impose. They are the Law, the Law incarnate. And the Underworld looks up to them and obeys. They are not easy of access. They are conscious of their own nobility and treat only with equals. Unless the investigator qualify, as Josiah Flynt qualified (“The Cigarette”), he will never know them. And unless he be able to qualify and know them, he will be no fit exponent of the Underworld to the Upperworld.
The Archive 