Notes of an Itinerant Policeman

A railroad patrol stretching over two thousand miles gave Josiah Flynt a new view of people he had previously known in lodging houses and beside campfires. During the spring and summer of 1899, he joined two other officers to protect trains serving picnics, circuses and other large gatherings. His account follows this mobile police work while examining professional thieves, wandering workers and the authorities responsible for watching them.

Flynt combines personal observation with arguments about policing and public responsibility. He describes categories of offenders, challenges the habit of blaming immigrants for American crime, and considers dishonesty among public servants. Conversations with men moving between jobs bring unemployment, drinking and the appeal of life on the road into the discussion. Readers interested in American social history will find an observer's account of railroad travel and law enforcement, shaped by the judgments and assumptions of its period.