Some Day You'll Be Busted, Herding with the Vags

Racine and Sheboygan, Wisconsin, 1915--

"Walt Mason Says"
By Walt Mason

IN YEARS TO COME

Money comes in easy, when a man is young, and in manner breezy to the birds it's flung. "He's a tightwad fossil who would save," he cries, and in rout and wassail, fast the money flies. Thrown into the gutters, thrown at drakes and ducks! "There is more," he mutters, "where I got these bucks." Youth, alas, is fleeting, as a pair of steers, and there's no repeating of the sunny years. You don't duly prize it, boys so blithe and gay! You don't realize it, till you're growing gray! Youth is swiftly speeding, years that won't return, and you'll soon be needing all this coin you burn. There is nothing sadder in this vale of tears, than a worn-out gadder, crippled by the years, toiling, poor and lonely, up and down the street, sighing, "If I only had some grub to eat!" There is nothing tougher than to see a gent starve and weep and suffer, when with age he's bent. All the battered relics who for handouts crave, once were giddy alecks who refused to save. Don't be too disgusted when you see their rags; some day you'll be busted, herding with the vags!

--The Racine Journal-News, Racine, Wisconsin, August 3, 1915, page 4.



HAS NO HOME, DOESN'T WORK, MUST BE VAG

"Where do you live?"
"No place."
"Where do you work?"
"No place."

These questions and answers settled a case in court this morning when John Klabeck, Austrian, was arraigned on a charge of vagrancy.

Klabeck was unable to understand much English and did not know the meaning of the word "vagrant" or "guilt," so the judge used simpler terms.

Klabeck was given 10 days in the county jail workhouse. He was arrested by Officer Heimke in Mike Keenan's horse shed, which he would not claim as his residence.

--The Sheboygan Press, Sheboygan, Wisconsin, August 27, 1915, page 3.