The Vagrancy Question in Ritzville
Business owners and locals grow increasingly hostile toward transients passing through on the railroad.
The story, cleaned up
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The judicious distribution of a few doses of snipe shot might protect our wives and families from the threatening demands which are constantly made at our back doors, for food, by a class of people who are averse to the idea of soiling their hands with any kind of work beyond riding the brake beam or rods of a railroad car. "Hobos" lifted a coat belonging to Carl Lee Monday and secreted it in a pile of railroad rails, where it was discovered by acting-Marshal Lemman, and returned to its owner. Mr. Lee says this is the second coat he has had stolen by these festive pedestrians, and that the next "Weary Willy" he finds inspecting his premises will receive the contents of his 38 and be interrogated afterwards.
“The judicious distribution of a few doses of snipe shot might protect our wives and families from the threatening demands.”
This reflects the recurring late-19th-century societal tension over poverty and migration, viewing itinerant workers as a criminal class rather than victims of economic instability—a framing that persists in modern debates about urban homelessness and public space.
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