Chapter 36 Summary

The narrator explains why tramps exist: it is the fault of society. Society is to blame because of ineffective laws and a misunderstanding about the nature of man. One law that leads to vagrancy is the law that tramps cannot stay in the same spike more than one night at a time. They waste countless hours and energy walking from spike to spike when that energy could be used for a more productive endeavor. Secondly, tramps need meaningful work to do. In the spikes, they are shut up in little cells with nothing to do. The narrator contends that uneducated men, more than anyone else, need physical labor to stay sane. Thirdly, it is not good for tramps to be cut off from the society of women. Hardly any women are vagrants, so most tramps never associate with women, and it's degrading to...