Class Conflict and the Suppression of Tramps in Buffalo, 1892-1894

Abstract

Class struggle shapes every aspect of the law. In Buffalo, New York, the railroad strikes of 1892 and 1894, coupled with a major depression, heightened the level of class conflict. Hundreds of thousands of American workers had “taken to the road,” both as a form of political protest and to look for work. When one of these “tramp armies” reached Buffalo, it was greeted by a show of working class solidarity among the Polish immigrant community, and by massive police repression under the control of the bourgeoisie. This paper analyzes the economic, political, and social context of those events.Every workingman is a tramp in embryo. [Alarm, October 11,1884]The policemen swung their long nightsticks right and left, left and right, and every time they hit a man he fell bleeding like a stuck pig, and whining and moaning like a kicked dog… . The horses were pulled up on their hind legs; they pawed the air with their front legs and mowed down the hoboes like grass, tearing their scalps open and bruising and wounding them. [Buffalo Evening News, August 25, 1894]

The rate of surplus value and crime. A theoretical and empirical examination of Marxian economic theory and criminology

“…Adler 1986Adler , 1989Chambliss 1964Chambliss , 1984Hindus 1980;Monkkonen 1983Monkkonen , 1981Harring 1983Harring , 1977. Lizotte et al (1982) analysis of the association between police strength and the rate of surplus value in Chicago lends additional support to the contention that increases in the rate of surplus value are related to increased attempts to control crime committed by marginal groups.…”

Defining Crime

“…He offers examples of crimes that are shaped by class conflict such as vagrancy laws (Chambliss 1964). Others have also applied this kind of analysis to a range of behaviors that include law related to vagrancy, drug offenses (Brownstein 1996), and status offenses among others (Harring 1977(Harring , 1983. Orthodox criminology has tended to reject these discussions as ideological, therefore, protecting its preference for and the reliance on the legal definition of crime.…”

Vagrancy as a Penal Problem: The Logistics of Administering Punishment in Late‐Nineteenth‐Century Canada

“…Beier (1985: 4) terms it. Historical vagrancy legislation served myriad purposes including, but not limited to: concerns about work, discipline and labour, especially relating to the movements of labourers (see, Beier, 1974; 1985; 2008; Davies, 1966; Rogers, 1994; Harring, 1977; Higbie, 2008; Pitsula, 1980); the visibility and difficulties of attending to poverty (see, Pound, 1971; Slack, 1974; Hitchcock, 2001); crime and criminality, especially concerning what was called a “criminal” or a “dangerous‐class” (see, Aydelotte, 1967/1913; Fuller, 1936; Rogers, 1991; Adler, 1986); and leisure, popular morality and public health (see, Ribton‐Turner, 1887). Despite this eclecticism what is common and underpins these concerns is the unequivocal fact that vagrancy was a serious social problem to contemporaries.…”