Seattle's Vagrancy Sweep: Work, Leave Town, or Jail
A late-night police roundup netted more than thirty tramps, beggars, and tinhorn gamblers, who were given a lecture and a three-way choice: work, leave town, or jail.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The crusade inaugurated by Chief of Police Rogers against tramps, beggars, and tinhorn gamblers is bearing fruit, and the city was never so free of these pests as it is today. Late Saturday night the chief ordered a general round-up of this element at Fifth, Main, and Jackson and other streets in the tenderloin. Officers Phillips, Hart, Philbrick, Corbett, Williams, and Grant were sent out, and within an hour over thirty men of all grades and conditions of hobo-dom were taken to the city jail and locked up, charged with vagrancy.
Yesterday morning the chief had them brought to his private office, and after sizing them up gave them a lecture and the alternative of three things: work, leave town, or be yanked and sent up for a long term in jail. With this admonition he released the gang. As a result of this wholesale raid the streets last evening were especially free from this useless element of mankind.
“Work, leave town, or be yanked and sent up for a long term in jail.”
The 1895 sweep rounded up more than thirty homeless and itinerant people and offered them work, exile, or jail. Seattle's current debates over encampments and public order echo that old ultimatum, including the same tension between clearing streets and actually housing people.
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