A closer look

Demonizing the Poor

How did popular images of poor people wandering the country in search of work during the 1870s depression contribute to public fear of the unemployed?

by Joshua Brown, Graduate Center, CUNY (Emeritus)

Historical Context

In a country where a large proportion of the workforce relied on industrialized employment, the 1870s depression was the greatest crisis that industrial capitalism faced up to that time. By the winter of 1873–1874, one in four workers in New York were unemployed, while nationally one million were out of work. As the economic disaster extended over sixty-five months, many people—for the most part men—moved from city to city along the nation’s railroad lines in search of work. A visible reminder of a society that offered no public programs to alleviate poverty while viewing such hardship as a result of moral and personal failings, these traveling poor were labeled “tramps.”

Offensive Visibility

Instead of provoking sympathy, these people were often viewed as a new type of transient poor who personified disorder. The nation’s expanding number of illustrated periodicals quickly rendered these wandering victims of economic depression as aggressive agents of degradation. As depicted in a July 1877 Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper cover illustration, they no longer restricted themselves to the poor districts of cities and towns. Showing tramps disrupting the tranquility of New York City’s fashionable Madison Square Park, the pictorial weekly noted, “[They] may be seen recuperating in the public squares, sleeping either upon the benches or Nature’s emerald carpet, not only drinking but performing the small amount of ablution [washing] that does not tend to sacrifice his independent character, in the fountain-basins.” In short, tramps were offensive, and they were offensive because they were so visible.

The Invading Poor

But most images of tramps carried a more ominous message than concern or disgust over their unsightly presence and behavior. As shown in an 1879 full-page cartoon entitled “Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the Tramp Is Coming!” in the satirical magazine Puck, the unemployed tramp represented not only a new form of poverty but a new type of criminal. Having left the darkened city behind him, the tramp was depicted as a disheveled giant lurching down a country road as tiny men, women, children, and farm animals flee his advance. No longer content to invade only wealthy urban enclaves, tramps now posed a hazard in the less populated and less policed areas of rural America.

The Predatory Poor

As agents of disorder, tramps were often portrayed as outside agitators, joining the mayhem of violent strikes and destructive riots. But the danger that was most consistently proposed during and after the 1870s depression was the tramp as a menacing sexual predator. A November 1879 Harper’s Weekly illustration offered an often repeated visual narrative: a tramp’s deceptively innocent intrusion, cloaking imminent violence, into the everyday life of a farm family. “A cottage where the male members of the family are at work in some distant field,” went the accompanying description, “is usually the spot selected by the tramp as the scene of his depredations. Our engraving . . . shows us the alarm and danger in which women and children are frequently subjected by these vagabonds.”

The Tramp Menace

“The genus tramp,” Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper declared in an editorial, “is a dangerous element in society, and ought to be dealt with accordingly.” Rather than address ways to ease the economic crisis that had created many needy wanderers, such comments justified violent solutions—such as this April 1877 advertisement in the same magazine: “Tramps, Burglars and Thieves Infest all parts of the Country,” it announced. “ Every One Should go Armed.”

Reflection Questions

Examine the Frank Leslie’s Madison Square Park illustration. Discuss how the picture may have reinforced viewers’ hostility to “tramps.” What details about the people’s appearance and behavior may have contributed to those beliefs? Then discuss how the picture might have been altered to offer a more sympathetic view.

Consider the scene showing a tramp’s encounter with a woman and child in a farmhouse. Discuss how the different details of the image build a visual narrative—and the messages the overall image conveys.

After viewing all four images, discuss how they differ from or resemble present-day visual coverage of unhoused Americans.

Additional Reading

Eric H. Monkkonen, ed., Walking to Work: Tramps in America, 1790-1935 (Lincoln, NE, 1984).

Related Chapters

Progress and Poverty: Industrial Capitalism in the Gilded Age, 1877-1893