The Tramp in America

This book provides the first account of the invention of the tramp as a social type in the United States from the 1870s through the 1930s. Tim Cresswell considers the ways in which the figure of the tramp was imagined and described and how, by the Second World War, it was being reclassified, renamed and rendered invisible. He describes the 'tramp scare' of the late nineteenth century in terms of the major factors that influenced the tramp's existence: the political and economic climate, the technology of the railroad and the after-effects of the Civil War. He then explores various stereotypes associated with tramps -- for example, the assumption that they were invariably male and therefore a threat to women in domestic environments. Another stereotype prevalent in medical discourse saw tramps as untrustworthy, diseased and of unsound heredity, thus suggesting reasons for their exclusion from democratic processes. Cresswell also examines tramps as comic figures and looks at the work of a number of prominent American photographers, among them Dorothea Lange, which signalled a sympathetic portrayal of this often-despised group. Perhaps most significantly, The Tramp in America calls into question the common assumption that mobility played a central role in the production of American identity.