Frontier Kansas was plagued with all kinds of scoundrels out to rob, steal, and cheat their way through life.

Gamblers, horse thieves, and confidence men seemed to be around every corner. Men of limited means known as tramps could be added to the list. The tramp was looked upon as a great nuisance, “a nomadic son of poverty” who shunned work to make his living by theft and begging for handouts.

The May 9, 1878, Nebraska Advertiser advised readers to make tramps work at the woodpile before feeding them.

“Make them earn it.” The Advertiser continued, “If they will not do that, they are not very hungry. A rigid determination on the part of the people not to feed those who will not work will cure the tramping business sooner than anything else.”

The economic panic of 1873 was the first and the longest global depression in the era of industrial capitalism.

The effects of the panic further concentrated capital in the hands of the very wealthy, extending the depression well into 1879.

Men thrown out of work traveled the country, often “riding the rails” on the railroads crossing America.

The country was experiencing a cultural shift. Growing industrialization witnessed a migration from the farms to the cities as young men traded the independence of farm life for wages.

A decade earlier the long, punishing march of troops to battle was called a “tramp.” When the panic left tens of thousands of men without jobs they struck out across the county on their own “tramp.” Homeless and out of work men with no visible means of support assaulted America’s cities and towns like a “great army of tramps” with little hope for the future.

In the culture of the tramp the beginnings of union organization could vaguely be distinguished. Many of the men whose original intent to find work gave in to unemployment, often refusing paying jobs as some sort of badge of honor. There seemed to be a semblance of organization understood only by the initiated.

Travelers left chalk marks at points along their route for the guidance of those that followed. At crossroads a chalked arrow was left on large rocks or tree trunks to point the way to a rendezvous camp.

Different signs made in different colors of chalk formed a rudimentary form of communication. The men often traveled in groups, but upon reaching a town or city the tramps would separate, going through and begging one at a time.

The older men seemed to be able to elicit a degree of compassion with a pitiful story generally “gotten up without regard to truth.”

The young fellows usually had a difficult time getting food of any description. When asked why they didn’t find work they always expressed a readiness to work but professed a trade in which employment was not offered in that locality.

At Omaha, Neb., tramps were overwhelming the city. During a rash of thefts and robberies a Committee of Safety made up of 150 men was organized in early May, 1878. To protect the community from the vagabond beggers besieging the city the committee searched the city thoroughly, captur-ing all suspected tramps. According to reports, “The committee will continue to act nightly until the tramp nuisance is abated.”

The action in Omaha had far-reaching implications. At Beverly Station, Mo., a short distance east of Leavenworth, Kan., an otherwise empty railcar was diverted to a lonely siding. The car was full of tramps believed to have been driven from Omaha by the Committee of Safety.

According to the May 16, 1878, Leavenworth Times, “These passengers, seeing their coach thus set aside, and not caring to camp out at a place where railroad iron and cross-ties were the only articles of diet, made a rush for the train just as it was gliding out from the depot.”

Most tramps were quite adept at boarding a moving railcar and all made it in safety except one. While climbing up, his foot slipped, he lost his grip, and fell under the car, his body lying across the track.

“... the cruel iron wheel of the heavy car passing over him across the middle of his body, rending and tearing the flesh, and cutting him clean in twain.”

Before the train could be brought to a halt, every car had passed over him, “mangling him beyond all recognition.” The editor felt but a “twinge of sorrow” at the untimely death of a man who had made “His Last Tramp” on The Way West.

“The Cowboy,” Jim Gray is author of the book Desperate Seed: Ellsworth Kansas on the Violent Frontier, Ellsworth, KS. Contact Kansas Cowboy, 220 21st Road, Geneseo, Kan. Phone: (785) 531-2058 or kansascowboy@kans.com.