TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

Footnotes have been placed at the end of their respective chapters.

THE HOBO

THE SOCIOLOGY OF THE HOMELESS MAN

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS

THE BAKER AND TAYLOR COMPANY, NEW YORK

THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, LONDON

THE MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA, TOKYO

THE MISSION BOOK COMPANY, SHANGHAI

THE HOBO

THE SOCIOLOGY OF THE
HOMELESS MAN

By NELS ANDERSON

A STUDY PREPARED FOR THE CHICAGO
COUNCIL OF SOCIAL AGENCIES UNDER
THE DIRECTION OF THE COMMITTEE
ON HOMELESS MEN

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
CHICAGO · ILLINOIS

COPYRIGHT 1923 BY THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

PUBLISHED MAY 1923

COMPOSED AND PRINTED BY

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, U.S.A.

EDITOR’S PREFACE

The present volume is intended to be the first of a series of studies of the urban community and of city life. The old familiar problems of our communal and social life—poverty, crime, and vice—assume new and strange forms under the conditions of modern urban existence. Inherited custom, tradition, all our ancient social and political heritages—human nature itself—have changed and are changing under the influence of the modern urban environment.

The man whose restless disposition made him a pioneer on the frontier tends to become a “homeless man”—a hobo and a vagrant—in the modern city. From the point of view of their biological predispositions, the pioneer and the hobo are perhaps the same temperamental type; from the point of view of their socially acquired traits, they are something quite different.

The city, more than any other product of man’s genius and labors, represents the effort of mankind to remake the world in accordance with its wishes, but the city, once made, compels man to conform to the structure and the purposes he himself has imposed upon it. If it is true that man made the city, it is quite as true that the city is now making man. That is certainly a part of what we mean when we speak of the “urban” as contrasted with the “rural” mind. In any case, it is true that within the circle of these two tendencies, man’s disposition, on the one hand, to create a world in which he can live, and, on the other, to adapt himself to the world which he himself has created, all, or most all of the problems and the processes are included with which the student of society is positively concerned. These processes go on, and these problems arise everywhere that men, coming together in order to live, find themselves compelled to carry on a common and communal life. In cities, however, and particularly in great cities, where social life is more intense than elsewhere, the processes produce new and strange effects, and the problems are more poignant and pressing.

A changing population of from 30,000 to 75,000 homeless men in Chicago, living together within the area of thirty or forty city blocks, has created a milieu in which new and unusual personal types flourish and new and unsuspected problems have arisen.

If the city were to be identified, as it sometimes has been, with its mere physical structure, its buildings, streets, street railways, telephones, and other communal efficiencies; if the city were, in fact, a mere complex of mechanical and administrative devices for realizing certain clearly defined purposes, the problem of the city would be one of engineering and of administration merely. But this takes no account of human nature; it takes no account of what we have come to refer to in industry as the “problem of personnel.” At least it seems to assume that the individual men and women for whom these organized agencies—economic, social, and political—exist, and by whom they are conducted, remain, in all their varied associations and relations, practically the same. Recent observation, on the other hand, has led to the conclusion that human nature, as we ordinarily understand it, while it is based on certain fundamental but not clearly definable human traits and predispositions, is very largely a product of the environment, and particularly the human environment in which the individual happens to find himself. That means that every community, through the very character of the environment which it imposes upon the individuals that compose it, tends to determine the personal traits as it does determine the language, the vocation, social values, and, eventually, the personal opinions, of the individuals who compose it.

It is the purpose of this and the succeeding studies in this series to describe the changes that are taking place in the life of the city and its peoples, and to investigate the city’s problems in the light of these changes, and conditions of life generally of urban people. For this reason, this study of the “homeless man” has sought to see him, first of all, in his own habitat; in the social milieu which he has created for himself within the limits of the larger community by which he is surrounded, but from which he is, in large part, an outcast.

It is interesting to notice that within the area of his own social environment, the hobo has created, or at least there has grown up in response to his needs, a distinct and relatively independent local community, with its own economic, social, and social-political institutions.

It is assumed that the study here made of the “Hobohemia” of Chicago, as well as the studies that are being planned for other areas and aspects of the city and its life, will at least be comparable with the natural areas and the problematic aspects of other American cities. It is, in fact, the purpose of these studies to emphasize not so much the particular and local as the generic and universal aspects of the city and its life, and so make these studies not merely a contribution to our information but to our permanent scientific knowledge of the city as a communal type.

Robert E. Park

COMMITTEE’S PREFACE

The Committee on Homeless Men was organized by the Executive Committee of the Chicago Council of Social Agencies on June 16, 1922, to study the problem of the migratory casual worker. Its members included men and women in contact with the problem of homeless men from different points of view.

Mr. Nels Anderson, a graduate student in sociology in the University of Chicago, was selected to make the study. Mr. Anderson was already thoroughly familiar with the life of the migratory casual worker. He had shared their experiences “on the road” and at work, and had visited the Hobohemian areas of many of the large western cities. In the summer of 1921, he made a study of 400 migrants. Early in 1922, through the generous assistance and encouragement of Dr. William A. Evans, Dr. Ben L. Reitman, and Joel D. Hunter, he began a study of homeless men in Chicago, in connection with a field-study course at the University of Chicago.

The assumption of this study by the Chicago Council of Social Agencies, in co-operation with the Juvenile Protective Association, enabled an enlargement of its scope.[1]

The object of this inquiry, from the standpoint of the Committee, was to secure those facts which would enable social agencies to deal intelligently with the problems created by the continuous ebb and flow, out of and into Chicago, of tens of thousands of foot-loose and homeless men. Only through an understanding both of the human nature of the migratory casual worker, and of the economic and social forces which have shaped his personality, could there be devised any fundamental program for social agencies interested in his welfare.

Earlier studies of the migratory casual workers in the United States have been limited almost entirely to statistical investigation. In the present inquiry a more intensive study of cases was decided upon in preference to an extensive statistical survey. For the past twelve months Mr. Anderson lived in Hobohemia, and in a natural and informal way secured upward of sixty life-histories, and collected, in addition, a mass of documents and other materials which are listed in Appendix B. Mr. Anderson has had, in certain parts of the field work, the assistance of C. W. Allen, L. G. Brown, G. F. Davis, B. W. Bridgman, F. C. Frey, E. H. Koster, G. S. Sobel, H. D. Wolf, and R. N. Wood, students in sociology at the University of Chicago, and has utilized the results of past studies of this subject by students in the department.

The Committee on Homeless Men held many meetings which were devoted to outlining the plan of investigation, to reports upon the progress of field work, and to the drafting of the findings and recommendations which appear as Appendix A.

The Committee and the author are indebted to the social agencies and to the many persons who co-operated in furnishing data for this investigation. They desire also to express their appreciation to Professor Robert E. Park for the inclusion of this volume as the first of a series of studies on the urban community of which he is editor, and for his services in the preparation of the manuscript for publication.

Ernest W. Burgess, Chairman

University of Chicago

Director, Chicago Council of Social Agencies

Salvation Army, Workingman’s Palace

Juvenile Protective Association

Juvenile Protective Association

Advisory Board, Illinois Free Employment Service

Chicago Urban League

United Charities of Chicago

Jewish Social Service Bureau

Chicago Christian Industrial League

Central Charity Bureau

Salvation Army

Chicago Department of Health

President, Chicago Council of Social Agencies

FOOTNOTES:

[1] A part of the investigation relating to the effects upon the boy of association with tramps, especially made for the Juvenile Protective Association, is not included in this report, but will appear in an early number of the Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PART I

HOBOHEMIA, THE HOME OF THE HOMELESS MAN

CHAPTER I
HOBOHEMIA DEFINED

All that Broadway is to the actors of America, West Madison is to its habitués—and more. Every institution of the Rialto is paralleled by one in West Madison. West Madison Street is the Rialto of the hobo.

The hobos, themselves, do not think of Madison Street as the Rialto; they call it “The Main Stem,” a term borrowed from tramp jargon, and meaning the main street of the town. “The Main Stem” is a more fitting term, perhaps, than the Rialto, but still inadequate. West Madison Street is more than a mere Rialto, more than the principal hobo thoroughfare of Chicago. It is the Pennsylvania Avenue, the Wilhelmstrasse of the anarchy of Hobohemia.—From an unpublished paper on the hobo, by Harry M. Beardsley, of the Chicago Daily News, March 20, 1917.

A survey of the lodging-house and hotel population, supplemented by the census reports of the areas in which they live, indicates that the number of homeless men in Chicago ranges from 30,000 in good times to 75,000 in hard times.

We may say that approximately one-third of these are permanent residents of the city. The other two-thirds are here today and gone tomorrow. When work is plentiful they seldom linger in the city more than a week at a time. In winter when jobs are scarce, and it takes courage to face the inclement weather, the visits to town lengthen to three weeks and a month. From 300,000 to 500,000 of these migratory men pass through the city during the course of a normal year.

A still larger number are wanderers who have spent their days and their strength on the “long, gray road” and have fled to this haven for succor. They are Chicago’s portion of the down-and-outs.

An investigation of 1,000 dependent, homeless men made in Chicago in 1911 indicated that 254, or more than one-fourth of the 1,000 examined, were either temporarily crippled or maimed. Some 89 of this 1,000, or 9 per cent, were manifestly either insane, feeble-minded, or epileptic. This did not include those large numbers of border-line cases in which vice or an overwhelming desire to wander had assumed the character of a mania.

Homeless men are largely single men. Something like 75 per cent of the cases examined were single, while only 9 per cent admitted they were married.

“MAIN STEMS”

Every large city has its district into which these homeless types gravitate. In the parlance of the “road” such a section is known as the “stem” or the “main drag.” To the homeless man it is home, for there, no matter how sorry his lot, he can find those who will understand. The veteran of the road finds other veterans; the old man finds the aged; the chronic grouch finds fellowship; the radical, the optimist, the crook, the inebriate, all find others here to tune in with them. The wanderer finds friends here or enemies, but, and that is at once a characteristic and pathetic feature of Hobohemia, they are friends or enemies only for the day. They meet and pass on.

Hobohemia is divided into four parts—west, south, north, and east—and no part is more than five minutes from the heart of the Loop. They are all the “stem” as they are also Hobohemia. This four-part concept, Hobohemia, is Chicago to the down-and-out.

THE “SLAVE MARKET”

To the men of the road, West Madison Street is the “slave market.” It is the slave market because here most of the employment agencies are located. Here men in search of work bargain for jobs in distant places with the “man catchers” from the agencies. Most of the men on West Madison Street are looking for work. If they are not seeking work they want jobs, at least; jobs that have long rides thrown in. Most of the men seen here are young, at any rate they are men under middle age; restless, seeking, they parade the streets and scan the signs chalked on the windows or smeared over colored posters. Eager to “ship” somewhere, they are generally interested in a job as a means to reach a destination. The result is that distant jobs are in demand while good, paying, local jobs usually go begging.

West Madison, being a port of homeless men, has its own characteristic institutions and professions. The bootlegger is at home here; the dope peddler hunts and finds here his victims; here the professional gambler plies his trade and the “jack roller,” as he is commonly called, the man who robs his fellows, while they are drunk or asleep; these and others of their kind find in the anonymity of this changing population the freedom and security that only the crowded city offers.

The street has its share also of peddlers, beggars, cripples, and old, broken men; men worn out with the adventure and vicissitudes of life on the road. One of its most striking characteristics is the almost complete absence of women and children; it is the most completely womanless and childless of all the city areas. It is quite definitely a man’s street.

West Madison Street, near the river, has always been a stronghold of the casual laborer. At one time it was a rendezvous for the seamen, but of late these have made South Chicago their haven. Even before the coming of the factories, before family life had wholly departed, this was an area of the homeless man. It will continue to be so, no doubt, until big businesses or a new union depot crowds the hobo out. Then he will move farther out into that area of deteriorated property that inevitably grows up just outside the business center of the city, where property, which has been abandoned for residences, has not yet been taken over by businesses, and where land values are high but rents are low.

Jefferson Park, between Adams and Monroe and west of Throop Street, is an appanage of the “slave market.” It is the favorite place for the “bos” to sleep in summer or to enjoy their leisure, relating their adventures and reading the papers. On the “stem” it is known as “Bum Park,” and men who visit it daily know no other name for it. A certain high spot of ground in the park is generally designated as “Crumb Hill.” It is especially dedicated to “drunks.” At any rate, the drunk and the drowsy seem inevitably to drift to this rise of ground. In fact, so many men visit the place that the grass under the trees seems to be having a fierce struggle to hold its own. It must be said, however, that the men who go to “Bum Park” are for the most part sober and well behaved. It is too far out for the more confirmed Madison Street bums to walk. The town folks of the neighborhood use the park, to a certain extent, but the women and children of the neighborhood are usually outnumbered by the men of the road, who monopolize the benches and crowd the shady places.

HOBOHEMIA’S PLAYGROUND

The thing that characterizes State Street south of the Loop is the burlesque show. It is here that the hobo, seeking entertainment, is cheered and gladdened by the “bathing beauties” and the oriental dancers. Here, also, he finds improvement at the hands of the lady barbers, who, it is reported, are using these men as a wedge to make their way into a profitable profession that up to the present time has belonged almost wholly to men.

South State Street differs from West Madison in many particulars. For one thing there are more women here, and there is nothing like so complete an absence of family life. The male population, likewise, is of a totally different complexion. The prevailing color is an urban pink, rather than the rural grime and bronze of the man on the road. There are not so many restless, seeking youngsters.

Men do not parade the streets in groups of threes and fours with their coats or bundles under their arms. There are no employment offices on this street. They are not needed. Nobody wants to go anywhere. When these men work they are content to take some short job in the city. Short local jobs are at a premium. Many of these men have petty jobs about the city where they work a few hours a day and are able to earn enough to live. In winter many men will be found in the cheap hotels on South State, Van Buren, or South Clark streets who have been able to save enough money during the summer to house themselves during the cold weather. State Street is the rendezvous of the vagabond who has settled and retired, the “home guard” as they are rather contemptuously referred to by the tribe of younger and more adventurous men who still choose to take the road.

The white man’s end of the south section of Hobohemia does not extend south of Twelfth Street. From that point on to about Thirtieth Street there is an area that has been taken over by the colored population. Colored people go much farther south, but if there are any homeless men in the “Black Belt,” they are likely to be found along State Street, between Twenty-second and Thirtieth. The Douglas Hotel, in this region, is a colored man’s lodging-house.

To the south and southwest are the railroad yards. In summer homeless men find these yards a convenient place to pass the night. For those who wish to leave the city, they are the more accessible than the yards on the north and west. The railroad yard is, in most places, one of the hobo’s favorite holdouts. It is a good place to loaf. There are coal and wood and often vacant spaces where he can build fires and cook food or keep warm. This is not so easily done in Chicago where the tramp’s most deadly enemy, the railroad police, are numerous and in closer co-operation with the civil authorities than in most cities. In spite of this, hobos hang about the yards.

“BUGHOUSE SQUARE”

On the north side of the river, Clark Street below Chicago Avenue is the “stem.” Here a class of transients have drifted together, forming a group unlike any in either of the other areas of Hobohemia. This is the region of the hobo intellectuals. This area may be described as the rendezvous of the thinker, the dreamer, and the chronic agitator. Many of its denizens are “home guards.” Few transients ever turn up here; they do not have time. They alone come here who have time to think, patience to listen, or courage to talk. Washington Square is the center of the northern area. To the “bos” it is “Bughouse Square.” Many people do not know any other name for it. This area is as near to the so-called Latin Quarter as the hobo dare come. “Bughouse Square” is, in fact, quite as much the stronghold of the more or less vagabond poets, artists, writers, revolutionists, of various types as of the go-abouts. Among themselves this region is known as the “village.”

Bohemia and Hobohemia meet at “Bughouse Square.” On Sundays and holidays, any evening, in fact, when the weather permits, it will be teeming with life. At such times all the benches will be occupied. On the grass in the shade of the trees men sit about in little groups of a dozen or less. The park, except a little corner to the southeast where the women come to read, or knit, or gossip, while the children play, is completely in possession of men. A polyglot population swarms here. Tramps, and hobos—yes, but they are only scatteringly represented. Pale-faced denizens of the Russian tearooms, philosophers and enthusiasts from the “Blue Fish,” brush shoulders with kindred types from the “Dill Pickle,” the “Green Mask,” the “Gray Cottage.” Free-lance propagandists who belong to no group and claim no following, non-conformists, dreamers, fakers, beggars, bootleggers, dope fiends—they are all here.

Around the edges of the Square the curbstone orators gather their audiences. Religion, politics, science, the economic struggle, these are the principal themes of discussion in this outdoor forum. Often there are three or four audiences gathered at the same time in different parts of the park, each carrying on a different discussion. One may be calling miserable sinners to repent, and the other denouncing all religion as superstition. Opposing speakers frequently follow each other, talking to the same audience. In this aggregation of minds the most striking thing is the variety and violence of the antipathies. There is, notwithstanding, a generous tolerance. It is probably a tolerance growing out of the fact, that, although everyone talks and argues, no one takes the other seriously. It helps to pass the time and that is why folks come to “Bughouse Square.”

To the hobo who thinks, even though he does not think well, the lower North Side is a great source of comfort. On the North Side he finds people to whom he can talk and to whom he is willing to listen. Hobos do not generally go there to listen, however, but burning with a message of which they are bound to unburden themselves. They go to speak, perhaps to write. Many of them are there to get away from the sordidness of life in other areas of Hobohemia.

A “JUNGLE” ON THE LAKE FRONT

Grant Park, east of Michigan Avenue, is a loafing place for hobos with time on their hands. They gather here from all parts of Hobohemia to read the papers, to talk, and to kill time. For men who have not had a bed it is a good place to sleep when the sun is kind and the grass is warm. In the long summer evenings Grant Park is a favorite gathering place for men who like to get together to tell yarns and to frolic. It is a favorite rendezvous for the boy tramps.

A JUNGLE CAMP—THE “BOS” HAVE HID FROM THE CAMERA

SUMMER RESORTING BEHIND FIELD MUSEUM, CHICAGO

The section of Grant Park facing the lake shore is no less popular. Along the shore from the Field Museum northward to Randolph Street the homeless men have access to the lake. They take advantage of the unimproved condition of the park and make of the place, between the railroad tracks and the lake, a retreat, a resort, a social center. Here they wash their clothes, bathe, sew, mend shoes.

Behind the Field Museum, on the section of the park that is still being used as a dump for rubbish, the hobos have established a series of camps or “jungles.” Here, not more than five minutes from the Loop, are numerous improvised shacks in which men live. Many men visit these sections only for the day. To them it is a good place to come to fish and they spend hours gazing at the water and trying to keep the little fish from biting.

WHY MEN COME TO CHICAGO

The hobo has no social centers other than the “stem,” and the “jungle.” He either spends his leisure in the “jungles” or in town. The “jungle” ordinarily is a station on his way to town. Life revolves for him around his contacts on the “stem,” and it is to town he hies himself whenever free to do so.

Few casuals can give any reason for the attraction that the city has for them. Few have ever considered it. The explanations they give, when pressed for reasons, are more or less matter of fact and center in their material interests. Other motives, motives of which they are only half conscious, undoubtedly influence them.

The city is the labor exchange for the migratory worker and even for the migratory non-worker who is often just as ambitious to travel. When he is tired of a job, or when the old job is finished, he goes to town to get another in some other part of the country. The labor exchanges facilitate this turnover of seasonal labor. They enable a man to leave the city “on the cushins.” This is the lure that draws him to the city. Hobohemia brings the job-seeking man and the man-seeking job together. Migrants have always known that a larger variety of jobs and a better assortment of good “shipments” were to be had in Chicago than elsewhere.

Chicago is the greatest railway center in the United States. No one knows these facts better than the hobo. It is a fact that trains from all points of the compass are constantly entering and leaving the city over its 39 different railways. According to the Chicago City Manual, there are 2,840 miles of steam railways within the city limits. The mileage of steam railroad track in Chicago is equal to the entire railroad mileage in Switzerland and Belgium, and is greater than the steam railroad mileage found in each of the kingdoms of Denmark, Holland, Norway, and Portugal. Twenty-five through package cars leave Chicago every day for 18,000 shipping points in 44 states.

The termination of the seasonal occupations brings men cityward. They come here for shelter during the winter, and not only for shelter but for inside winter work. This is the hobo’s only alternative, provided he cannot go to California or to one of the southern states. The dull routine of the inside job, which seemed so unattractive in the springtime, looks better with the falling of the temperature. We may add, also, that many of the men who are attracted to the city in winter are not particularly interested in work. There are, however, among the improvident tramp class, “wise virgins” who save in the summer in order to enjoy the life of a boarding-house during the winter.

The hobo often goes to town for medical attention. For the sick and injured of the floating fraternity Chicago is a haven of refuge because of the large number of opportunities found here for free treatment. The county hospital, the dispensaries, and the medical colleges are well known to these men. Many get well and go their way, others get no farther than the hospital—and then the morgue.

A man whose income is limited to a few hundred dollars a year can do more with it in the large city than in a small town. In no other American city will a dollar go farther than in Chicago. It is not uncommon to find men living in Hobohemia on less than a dollar a day. Large numbers make possible cheap service, and cheap service brings the men.

THE PROBLEM DEFINED IN TERMS OF NUMBERS

Not only the extent, but the nature of the problem of the homeless man is revealed by a study of his numbers. In Chicago all estimates are in substantial agreement that the population of Hobohemia never falls below 30,000 in summer, doubles this figure in winter, and has reached 75,000 and over in periods of unemployment.[2]

These numbers, while large, are only between 1 and 2½ per cent of Chicago’s population of nearly 3,000,000. Homeless men, however, are not distributed evenly throughout the city; they are concentrated, segregated, as we have seen, in three contiguous narrow areas close to the center of transportation and trade.

This segregation of tens of thousands of foot-loose, homeless, and not to say hopeless men is the fact fundamental to an understanding of the problem. Their concentration has created an isolated cultural area—Hobohemia. Here characteristic institutions have arisen—cheap hotels, lodging-houses, flops, eating joints, outfitting shops, employment agencies, missions, radical bookstores, welfare agencies, economic and political institutions—to minister to the needs, physical and spiritual, of the homeless man. This massing of detached and migratory men upon a small area has created an environment in which gamblers, dope venders, bootleggers, and pickpockets can live and thrive.

The mobility of the migratory worker complicates the problem of the missions, police, and welfare agencies. The mission measures its success not only in numbers of converts but in the numbers of men fed and lodged. The police department, on the contrary, alarmed by the influx of hobos and tramps in response to free meals and free flops, has adopted a policy of severity and repression for the protection of the community. Welfare agencies, opposing alike the demoralizing results of indiscriminate feeding and lodging, and the negative policy of the police, favor a program of organized effort based upon an investigation of the needs of each individual case.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Mrs. Solenberger’s figures of more than a decade ago put the number of the various types of homeless men in this city at 40,000-60,000:

“No exact census of the total number of homeless men of various types in the lodging-house districts of Chicago has been taken, but 40,000 is considered a conservative estimate by several careful students of the question who are closely in touch with local conditions. This number is somewhat increased at election times and very greatly increased when word goes out, as it did during the winter of 1907-8, that relief funds were being collected and free lodgings and food would be furnished to the unemployed. In December, January, February, and March of that winter all private lodging-houses were filled to overflowing, and the Municipal Lodging House, its annex, and two other houses which it operated gave a total of 79,411 lodgings to homeless men as compared with 6,930 for the same months of the winter before, an increase of 72,481. The Health Department, which took charge of the municipal lodging-houses and made a careful study of local conditions during the winter of 1907-8, estimated the number of homeless men then in Chicago to be probably not less than 60,000.”—One Thousand Homeless Men, p. 9, n.

Nearly if not quite one-fifth of the 700 hotels in Chicago cater to the migratory and casual worker. The 63 hotels visited by investigators in this study had a total capacity for the accommodation of 15,000 men. On the basis of these figures, it seems safe to put the total capacity of the hotels in Hobohemian areas at 25,000-30,000. A like number of men are probably provided for in nearby boarding- and lodging-houses. Thousands of other men sleep at the docks, in engine rooms, in vacant houses, in flophouses, or in summer in the parks.

The returns of the 1920 United States census show that in the three wards of the city in which Hobohemian areas are located there are 28,105 more male than female residents. This figure indicates that the so-called “home guard” numbers about 30,000, the summer population of Hobohemia.

The Jewish Bureau of Social Service estimates that the number of homeless men in Chicago at any one time in the winter of 1921-22 was 120,000. This figure, which seems high when compared with estimates arrived at by other methods of calculation, assumes that the proportion of homeless men for the city is the same as that for the Jewish community.

CHAPTER II
THE JUNGLES: THE HOMELESS MAN ABROAD

In the city, under ordinary circumstances, the homeless man gathers with his kind. Even so he is very much alone and his contacts with his fellows are relatively formal and distant.

City life is interesting but full of danger. Even in a world where the conditions of life are so elementary, prudence dictates a certain amount of reserve and hence formality and convention in the relations of men. The flophouse and the cheap hotel compel promiscuity, but do not encourage intimacy or neighborliness. On the outskirts of cities, however, the homeless men have established social centers that they call “jungles,” places where the hobos congregate to pass their leisure time outside the urban centers. The jungle is to the tramp what the camp ground is to the vagabond who travels by auto. It has for the hobo, perhaps, greater significance, since it becomes a necessary part of his daily life. The evening camp fire for the tourist, on the contrary, is a novelty merely, an experience but not a necessity.

LOCATION AND TYPES OF JUNGLES

Jungles are usually located in close proximity to a railroad division point, where the trains are made up or where trains stop to change crews and engines. Sometimes they are located near a “tank town,” where occasional stops are made for water or fuel. Not infrequently they are near the intersection of railroad lines. In the South, and on the West Coast, jungles are often located along the highways. This is due to the fact that many men go South in winter not to work but to escape the rigors of the northern climate. The railroad for the time being has no attraction for them and they are content to stroll abroad, seeing the country. In the West, where men frequently carry bedding and cooking equipment, they can camp anywhere. It is easier for them, therefore, to leave the railroad and venture along the highways.

Accessibility to a railroad is only one of the requirements of a good jungle. It should be located in a dry and shady place that permits sleeping on the ground. There should be plenty of water for cooking and bathing and wood enough to keep the pot boiling. If there is a general store near by where bread, meat, and vegetables may be had, so much the better. For those who have no money, but enough courage to “bum lumps,” it is well that the jungles be not too far from a town, though far enough to escape the attention of the natives and officials, the town “clowns.”

Jungle camps may be divided into two classes—the temporary and the permanent, or continuous. Temporary jungles are merely stop-over or relay stations inhabited intermittently by the men of the road. Men temporarily stranded in a town usually seek a secluded spot at the edge of a village, not too far from the railroad, where they may while away the time without being molested. Men on the road look for places where other men preceding them have camped. There they are likely to find pots and kettles in which to cook food or wash clothes. At points where trains stop frequently, making it possible for men to get away at any time, the population of a temporary jungle is likely to be larger and more permanent.

The continuous or permanent jungles are seldom deserted, at least in summer. There is usually someone there to keep the fire burning and usually there are men or boys occupied at various tasks—cooking, washing or boiling clothes, shaving, sewing, bathing, and reading.

Women are often found in the areas of the cities where the homeless men congregate but not in the jungles. Here is an institution where the hobo is his own housewife. He not only cooks his own food, but has even invented dishes that are peculiar to jungle life. Chief among these is “mulligan” stew. “Mulligan,” or “combination,” is a “throw together” of vegetables and meat. There are certain ideal mixtures of vegetables and meat, but the tramp makes “mulligan” from anything that is at hand. Onions, potatoes, and beef are the prime essentials. Some men become adept at frying and roasting over camp fires.

The hobo who lives in the jungles has proved that he can become domesticated without the aid of women. He has established the habit of keeping his clothes and person clean. It is not difficult to select from a group of transients the men who have just come from the jungles. Their clothes will be clean and even bear evidence of jungle sewing. Overalls that have seen service will be bleached almost white from numerous washings. The hobo learns here the housewife’s art of keeping pots clean and the camp in order. The man who cannot, or will not, learn these few elementary principles of housekeeping is likely to fare ill in the jungle.

If it is a warm day some men will be sleeping. They may have been riding trains all night or have found the night too cold for sleep. A daily paper from an adjoining town may be going the rounds. There may be newspapers from different cities brought in by men traveling different directions. Travelers meeting this way have much of common interest to talk about and conversation is enlivened with discussions of questions of concern to “bos.” The jungle is always astir with life and movement, and the hobo enters into this life as he does no other. Here he turns his back on the world and faces his fellows, and is at ease.

Absolute democracy reigns in the jungle. The color line has been drawn in some camps, but it is the general custom, and especially in the North, for Negroes, Mexicans, and whites to share the same jungle. The jungle is the melting pot of trampdom.

The average man of the road has had a variety of experience and not a little adventure. In the jungles there is always an audience for anyone who wants to talk, whether of his thoughts, his experiences, or his observations. There is plenty of opportunity to tell stories. The art of telling a story is diligently cultivated by the “bos” in the assemblies about the fire. This vagabond existence tends to enrich the personality and long practice has developed in some of these men an art of personal narrative that has greatly declined elsewhere. Many of them develop into fascinating raconteurs in the literal as well as the literary sense of the term. Talk in the jungle is of the open road and the day to come, and in that there is sufficient matter to occupy them.

Jungle populations are ever changing. Every hour new faces appear to take the place of those that have passed on. They come and go without ceremony, with scarcely a greeting or “fare-you-well.” Every new member is of interest for the news he brings or the rumors that he spreads. Each is interested in the other so far as he has something to tell about the road over which he has come, the work conditions, the behavior of the police, or other significant details. But with all the discussion there is seldom any effort to discuss personal relations and connections. Here is one place where every man’s past is his own secret.

Only in the case of very young boys or sick men and sometimes old men is there any effort to learn something of the individual’s past. Men will brush elbows in the jungles for days and even weeks without ever learning one another’s names. They live closed lives and grant others the same privilege.

THE LAWS OF THE JUNGLE

In every permanent camp there is likely to be a permanent group that makes the camp its headquarters. Sometimes these groups are able to take possession and exploit the transient guests. The I.W.W. has at times been able to exclude everyone who did not carry the red card of that organization. As a rule, however, the jungle is extremely hospitable and democratic.

The freedom of the jungles is, however, limited by a code of etiquette. Jungle laws are unwritten, but strictly adhered to. The breaking of these rules, if intentional, leads to expulsion, forced labor, or physical punishment.

Jungle crimes include (1) making fire by night in jungles subject to raids; (2) “hi-jacking,” or robbing men at night when sleeping in the jungles; (3) “buzzing,” or making the jungle a permanent hangout for jungle “buzzards” who subsist on the leavings of meals; (4) wasting food or destroying it after eating is a serious crime; (5) leaving pots and other utensils dirty after using; (6) cooking without first hustling fuel; (7) destroying jungle equipment. In addition to these fixed offenses are other crimes which are dealt with as they arise. Men are supposed to use cooking cans for cooking only, “boiling up” cans for washing clothing, coffee cans to cook coffee, etc. After using, guests are expected to clean utensils, dry them, and leave them turned bottom side up so that they will not fill with rainwater and rust. They are expected to keep the camp clean. To enforce such common-sense rules, self-appointed committees come into existence.[3]

Exclusive camps are usually the result of the efforts of the older residents to enforce discipline. Most “jungle buzzards,” men who linger in the jungles from season to season, take an interest in the running of things. For the most part they are parasitic, begging food from others, but they are generally on the alert to keep the place clean and orderly.

The following description of a day in the jungles was written by a migratory worker, a man who knows the life from years of experience. His narrative presents a faithful picture of an average day in an average jungle.

A Day in the Jungles

1.[4] This jungle is on the edge of a strip of timber. A stream fed from a spring runs into the lake near by. The empty box cars on the railroad siding close by offer protection against rain and a place to sleep. Half a mile away is the junction of two railroads where all trains stop, and a mile and a half further on is a small town.

At one o’clock in the morning a few men step off a freight train. One speaks up: “Does anyone know if there is a jungle in this place?” “Yes,” someone answers, “The jungle is up in that direction,” pointing towards a woods, “but what’s the use in going over there now? You can’t build a fire at this time of night. I am going to hunt up a box car for a flop.”

After a moment of silence someone else asks, “Any town close by?” “Yes, there it is,” replies another, pointing to some lights showing in the distance. The men form groups according to acquaintance and talk in a low tone. “Come on, let us hunt up a place to flop till daylight.” The different groups start off. One starts out for the town, one goes towards the box cars, and one makes for the jungles. I was with the group bound for the jungles.

A hundred feet from the railroad right-of-way under the darkness of big trees we see three or four dying camp fires. Around one fire we can see the shadows of men. Some are sitting on the butts of logs, smoking or dozing; others are stretched out on the ground sound asleep.

The new arrivals walk up to the fire, look over the bunch to find, perhaps, some old acquaintances. Then some of us find seats or lie down; others, with as little noise as possible, hunt up cans which they fill with water and place over the glowing coals. The men take ground coffee from packages in their pockets and pour it into boiling water. The feed is open to everybody. Bread and sausage are brought out; even sugar is passed around as long as it lasts. The men eat in silence. Each one takes the utensils he used and walks to the creek to wash them. Nearly all of the men then lie down, but some leave. Nobody asks anyone about himself and nobody says “hello” or “goodbye.”

Daylight comes. The breaking of sticks for firewood is heard. Fires are started, cooking utensils are chosen. The law of the jungle is that no one can call a vessel his except at the time he uses it. Packages and receptacles are opened revealing food of all kinds. Eating commences. If any man with more than enough for himself sees someone else not eating, it is etiquette to offer to share with his neighbor. If the other man accepts the offer, he thereby takes upon himself the responsibility of cleaning the dishes.

At any time men will be seen leaving the jungles to hustle food, or to get wood, or to catch trains. Anytime is eating time in the jungles and someone is always bringing in “chuck” that he has bought or “bummed.” Talking goes on as long as the daylight lasts. Heated arguments often develop. Papers and pamphlets are distributed, union cards are taken out; business meetings are held to decide policies and actions, how to get the next meal or how to win the battle between labor and capital.

About ten o’clock in the morning two townsmen displaying stars come into the jungle. One of them tells the men that they will have to clean out because people are kicking. A holdup has been committed in town the night before and they intend to prevent any more from being committed, “So you fellers have to leave.”

One man in the jungles speaks up and tells the officers that we are not holdup men, that we are getting ourselves something to eat, and that we have got to have some place to do that. “We have paid for everything. What would you do if you was in our place; go into town and get pulled and let the town feed us?”

The officer looks nonplussed, but curtly replies, “Well, I am going by orders.” After that he walks away. The timid men leave the jungle. The others reply by roundly cursing indiscriminately all their enemies. They are town clowns, sky pilots, Bible ranters, bulls, politicians, home guards, hicks, stool pigeons, systems, scissor bills, and capitalists. Incidentally they advocate strikes, rebellion, mass action, complete revolution of the political system, abolishment of the wage system.

It is close to twelve o’clock. Fires are replenished, cans, pots and pans are put into service. Plans are being made in anticipation of a coming raid by the police. At two o’clock, someone suggests a song. After a fiery song of the class struggle, a speech follows advising the men to organize.

By three o’clock only about fifteen or twenty are left in the jungle. The officer followed by townsmen armed with guns return. Some of the hobos retreat into the woods. Those remaining are ordered to hold up their hands with “You damn bums” added to the command. Some comply, others refuse. One even has the courage to shout, “Go ahead and shoot, you damn cowards.” This starts a general shooting into every pot, pan and can in sight. The men scatter.

After the invaders leave, an inventory is immediately made to assess the damage. Since the utensils in best condition had been hidden in the brush, no serious loss to the jungle has resulted.

By four o’clock the story of the raid has traveled and men come in from all directions. The decision of the majority is to remain in the jungle over night. Food is brought in and preparations for supper begin. The men are doubling up to cook together. Those belonging to certain unions have as many as eight or ten in a bunch. There are from thirty to forty angry men in camp by now and more are coming in. There is some talk of revenge.

By six o’clock supper is well under way. Several fires are burning. Containers of every description are used to cook in; broken shovels and tie plates are used to fry on, empty tobacco tins are used as cups, and tomato cans serve as fry pans, soup kettles and soap dishes. Potatoes are roasted on the coals, wires are bent upon which to broil meat. All are still talking excitedly of the clash with the police.

While some of the men are busily engaged in cooking, others are sewing and mending their clothes or shoes, and still others are shaving. Now and then as at breakfast someone will shout, asking if anybody wants some spuds or a piece of punk or a piece of “gut” (sausage); and usually there is an affirmative answer. After supper, pans and cans are cleaned out, the paper is read and passes the rounds. Already it is growing dark, and the hunt begins for dry sleeping places.

Suddenly a commotion is started; a man is roughly rushed into the open. He is a hi-jack caught in the act of robbing a fellow who was sleeping, a greater crime in the jungle than an open hold up. Cries of “Burn the ——” and “Let us hang him!” are heard from all sides. A council is hurriedly called, a chairman is selected, motions are made with amendments and substitutes. After a short discussion a vote is taken to give him a whipping. The man is tied to a tree facing toward it. His back is bared, and men are called for to apply punishment. No one steps forward; everybody declines to apply the strap or stick.

Another council is called but before they get started a young fellow has declared his willingness to fight the hi-jack to a finish because he knew him and didn’t like him anyway. The proposition is accepted. The hi-jack is more than ten pounds heavier than the challenger; but whether from fear or not, for he knows that the challenger has the crowd back of him to a man, the hi-jack is slow to start. Perhaps he feels that the crowd will give him a beating whether he wins or not. He soon loosens up but he does not show the goods. The “bo” is more than a match for him but the hi-jack does not give up easily. He displays some courage but the “bo” fights like a madman and strikes the hi-jack blow after blow. The fight lasts more than ten minutes before the hi-jack is completely knocked out.

After he gets to his feet he is given a chance to wash his face and stick paper on the cuts; then he is “frisked,” that is, ordered to donate all but one dollar to the jungle. Then he is sent out of camp with orders not to show up in any of the diggings along the line for it would be murder if anyone should spot him.

By eleven o’clock the excitement is over. Different men announce that they were headed for so and so and that the freight starts at such a time. To this someone replies that he is going that way too so they start off together. Others walk back among the trees to the places where they have prepared to sleep. Others who have insufficient clothes to stand the night chill bunch up around the glowing camp fires. Soon everything is quiet except for an occasional sound out of the darkness of men mumbling in conversation. Occasionally the sound of groans and snores or sighs, or curses are heard. These betray the dreams of men living like hunted animals.

I look at my watch and note that it is near midnight and that all is over for the night, so I curl up on some papers beside a bed of coals.[5]

THE MELTING POT OF TRAMPDOM

The part played by the jungles as an agency of discipline for the men of the road cannot be overestimated. Here hobo tradition and law are formulated and transmitted. It is the nursery of tramp lore. Here the fledgling learns to behave like an old-timer. In the jungles the slang of the road and the cant of the tramp class is coined and circulated. It may originate elsewhere but here it gets recognition. The stories and songs current among the men of the road, the sentiments, the attitudes, and the philosophy of the migratory laborer are all given due airing. In short, every idea and ideal that finds lodgment in the tramp’s fancy may be expressed here in the wayside forum where anyone who thinks may speak, whether he be a jester or a sage.

Suspicion and hostility are the universal attitudes of the town or small city to the hobo and the tramp. Accordingly, the so-called “floater” custom of passing vagrants on to other communities is widespread.[6] The net effect of this policy is to intensify the anti-social attitude of the homeless man and to release and accentuate criminal tendencies. The small town is helpless to cope with the situation. As things are, its action perhaps cannot be different. Agriculture, as it becomes organized upon a capitalistic basis, is increasingly dependent upon seasonal labor, in harvesting crops for example. The report of the Commission on Industrial Relations states:

The attempts to regulate movements of migratory workers by local organizations have, without exception, proved failures. This must necessarily be true no matter how well planned or well managed such local organizations may be. The problem cannot be handled except on a national scale and by methods and machinery which are proportioned to the enormous size and complexity of the problem.[7]

FOOTNOTES:

[3] It is interesting here to note that there is a striking parallel between the rules of the jungles and the rules of cow camps and other camps of the hills. It is the custom of the cow men of the west to maintain camps in the hills which are stocked with provisions and equipped with utensils and furnishings. These camps are usually left open and anyone who passes is welcome to spend the night, provided he puts the place in order when he leaves.

[4] The documents from which extracts have been taken are numbered consecutively in the text. For complete list of documents used in each chapter see pp. 281-88.

[5] Written by A. W. Dragstedt, secretary in 1922 of the “Hobo College” of Chicago.

[6] For a discussion of the practice of “floating” with reference to the treatment of misdemeanants, see Stuart A. Queen, The Passing of the County Jail.

[7] Final Report, p. 158.

CHAPTER III
THE LODGING-HOUSE: THE HOMELESS MAN AT HOME

Hobohemia is a lodging-house area. The accommodations it offers the homeless man range from a bed in a single room for fifty cents to location on the floor of an empty loft for a dime. Lodging-house keepers take thin profits but they serve large numbers. There are usually more men than there are beds, particularly in winter. An estimate indicates that all hotels are full from December to May. During the rest of the year they are likely to be filled to two-thirds of their capacity.

Chicago has known three types of cheap hotels: the so-called “barrel-house,” the welfare institution, and the business enterprise. The first, the barrel-house, was a rooming-house, saloon, and house of prostitution, all in one. Men with money usually spent it in the barrel-houses. There they found warmth and companionship. They would join the circle at the bar, buy drinks for the crowd, and have a good time. Men who were afraid of being robbed placed their money with the bartender and charged against it the drinks purchased. As soon as they were overcome by drink they would be taken upstairs to bed. The following day the program would be repeated. A three- or four-hundred-dollar stake at this rate usually lasted a week. Not infrequently the barrel-house added to its other attractions the opportunity for gambling.

The barrel-house is a thing of the past. Its place has been taken in part by hotels like the Workingmen’s Palace; the Reliance; the New Century, owned and operated by the Salvation Army; the Rufus F. Dawes, owned and maintained by General C. G. Dawes; the Popular Hotel, owned and maintained by the Chicago Christian Industrial League. In places of this sort, charges are small, usually not enough to cover operating expenses.

The Rufus F. Dawes and the Workingmen’s Palace are both large, fire-proof structures, clean and modern, constructed originally for other purposes. Like all paternalistic, quasi-charitable institutions, however, they are not popular, although the charges for a room and bed are hardly sufficient to cover the operating expenses. This is the second type of lodging-house.

The pioneers in the cheap hotel business in Chicago operated on a commercial basis were Harvey and McGuire, the founders of the well-known Harvey-McGuire hotel system. Harvey, an evangelist, in his work with the “down-and-outs” had learned the evils of barrel-houses. He went into a partnership with McGuire, a man acquainted with the rough side of life. After a number of years the Harvey-McGuire system went out of existence. McGuire went into the hotel business for himself and now owns a number of cheap lodging-houses. Harvey sold his interests to his nephew and went back to evangelistic work. The nephew went into partnership with Mr. Dammarell. There are eight hotels in the present Harvey-Dammarell system with a combined capacity for lodging 3,000 men. The Ideal opened in 1884, probably the oldest men’s hotel in the city, originally known as the Collonade, at 509 West Madison Street, is an example of the type. The Mohawk, the most modern men’s hotel, is also the property of the Harvey-Dammarell system.

The men who run these hotels do not claim to be philanthropists. Mr. Harvey has defined the situation. He says:

We are in the hotel business to make a living. We give the men the best service they can pay for. We give nothing away and we ask nothing. Consequently, we do not lay ourselves open to criticism. We insist on order and sobriety and we usually get it. We hold that the men have a right to criticize us and come to us if they are not satisfied with the service we give. That is business. The man who pays seventy-five cents for a bed has a right to seventy-five cents’ worth of service. If a man can only pay twenty-five cents for a bed he is entitled to all that he pays for and is entitled to kick if he doesn’t get it.

Different types of hotels attract different types of men. The better class of workingmen who patronize the Mohawk, where the prices range from forty to seventy cents, wear collars and creased trousers. The hotel provides stationery and desks. Hotels where the prices range from twenty-five cents to forty cents are patronized by a shabbier group of men. Few of them are shaven. Some of them read, but most of them sit alone with their thoughts. In some second-class places a man is employed to go the rounds and arouse the sleepers.

In the twenty-five-cent hotels, the patrons not only are content to sit unshaven, but they are often dirty. Many of them have the faces of beaten men; many of them are cripples and old men. The exceptions are the Popular and the Rufus F. Dawes, where the price is twenty cents or less to be sure, but the guests are more select. Since these places are semi-charitable, they can force certain requirements upon their patrons.

The term “room” is a misnomer when applied to a sleeping apartment in a cheap hotel. These rooms have been aptly termed “cubicles,” and among the patrons they are known as “cages.” A cubicle is usually from 6 to 8 feet in width and from 8 to 12 feet in length. The thin walls, composed of steel or matched lumber, are usually about 8 feet in height. A wire netting over the top admits air and prevents the guests climbing from one cubicle to another. The furnishings are simple; sometimes only a bed, sometimes a bed and a chair, and in more expensive places a stand. They are not constructed either for comfort or convenience; lighting and ventilation are usually bad. But they are all they were intended to be: places for men to sleep with a limited degree of privacy.

A canvass of the Hobohemian hotels has been made with a view to learning the approximate mobility of the hotel population. Few of these hotels are prepared to make any but general statements, though some of them have made an effort to get the facts. The consensus of opinion of hotel clerks is that the greatest turnover is in the cheapest hotels. Better-class places like the Acme, the Ironsides, and the Workingmen’s Palace have a large proportion of permanent guests. The permanent guests, those who remain two or three months or more, range from a third to a half of the total number of roomers. Many of the older hotels have permanent patrons who are seasonal but regular. Others never leave the city.

THE “FLOPHOUSE”

“Flophouses” are nearly all alike. Guests sleep on the floor or in bare, wooden bunks. The only privilege they buy is the privilege to lie down somewhere in a warm room.

2. “Hogan’s Flop” is known from coast to coast among hobos. A tramp who has been in Chicago long enough to learn of Lynch’s place, the Workingmen’s Palace, Hinky Dink’s, or to eat doughnuts in missions has heard of Hogan’s.

The first “Hogan’s Flop” was located on South State Street. Later it moved to the West Side and for some time was on Meridian Street. Since it left Meridian Street it has been located in several places. The original Hogan, who was a Spanish-American War veteran, has passed to his reward. Only his name remains. Every winter, however, someone starts a “flop” and it invariably inherits the name and fame of Hogan. Hogan is now a myth, a sort of eponymous hero. A tramp discussing this matter said: “Hogan may be dead but the bugs that were in business with him are still on the job. They follow this joint wherever it goes. You know when they moved from Meridian Street it wasn’t three days before the bugs got the new address and followed us.”

The following account is adapted from a description of a night spent in “Hogan’s Flop”:

3. I spent the evening at the Bible Rescue Mission where sincere folks were pleading with men of the road to come forward and make things right with the Master. Two came forward and it was a time of rejoicing. They prayed and sang and fed us rolls and coffee, and to those who had no bed for the night they gave tickets to “Hogan’s.” They offered me a ticket but I thanked them and assured them that I still had a little money.

You have to know where “Hogan’s” is to find it. In the spring of 1922, it occupied the second and third floors of a building at 16 South Desplaines Street. A narrow, shaky stairs, a squeaky door, a feebly lighted entrance, a night clerk who demands a dime and you are within. You may take your choice of sleeping on this floor or go on up to the third. There is no difference in the price. I chose the second floor. It was less crowded. The fire, from a large heater in the center of the room, was warmer.

The men around the stove had evidently been exposed to the elements. One was drying his shoes for it had rained all day. Another was drying his shirt. Two were engaged in listless conversation. Others were silent. The air was stuffy, the light dim. I walked around the room looking for a place to lie down. Dozens of men were sleeping on the floor with their heads to the wall. Some were lying on paper, others on the bare floor. Some were partly covered by their overcoats; some had no overcoats. It is an art to curl up under an overcoat. One man of fifty years or more had removed his shirt and trousers and was using the latter for a pillow. He had tied his shoes to his trousers which is evidence that he knew “flop” house ethics. When men sleep in box cars they sometimes use their shoes for pillows but this is not necessary in “Hogan’s.” A planking around the walls affords a resting place for weary heads.

A number of the faces here I had seen a great many times on the “stem.” Two were old men in their seventies who had been in the city several years and were mendicants most of the time. There was a one-legged man whom I had seen chumming with another one-legged man on the streets. Both peddled lead pencils and shoestrings. On the only cot on the floor, two young fellows were lying. They were sleeping with their heads at opposite ends of the narrow bed and their bodies were entangled to prevent their falling off.

I found a vacant place on the floor where I could have about two feet between myself and my nearest neighbor so I spread my papers and lay down. I had more paper than I needed so I gave half to another man who was just circling about for a place to go to bed. I asked the man nearest me if the bugs bothered much. He answered in the richest of Irish brogues that Hogan’s bugs were sure efficient. Another man chimed in. He said they were better organized than the German army. How well organized they were I can’t say but I was not long in learning that they were enterprising.

Two men near me engaged in a discussion about the economic conference at Genoa. One man had very positive, orderly ideas of how things should go. The other interrupted occasionally only to agree. Someone wanted to know why he didn’t hire a hall. Then there was silence, except for snores. I never heard such a variety of snores but none of them seemed to suggest peaceful slumbers or pleasant dreaming. Once the snores were broken into by some man bawling out, “Hey, you; quit spittin’ over this way; you’re gettin’ it on my paper.” “Well, dammit; How much room do you want to take up?” His neighbor retorted, “It’s none of your —— business how much room I take. You lay off’n that spittin’, see.”

More snores. A man got up, stretched, rubbed his legs, came to the center of the room to the stove. More snores. Some men came in, paid their dimes and looked for an opening on the floor. A man ran to the toilet to vomit. A wag called to him to “heave it up.”

After an hour or so I felt something on my hand. I crushed it. There were others to be seen on the white papers. I lay down to try to sleep again. A second attack brought me suddenly to my feet. I lay down resolved a third time not to be disturbed. My companions seemed to be suffering more from the hard floor than anything else; and the floor was hard. I turned my thoughts to the hardness of the floor at “Hogan’s.”

How long I dozed I can’t say but I awoke marveling at the endurance of the man of the road. While I pondered thus a man jumped to his feet and hastened out. He was cursing the bugs and saying that he knew an engine room that had this “place beat all hollow.” I felt better. Someone else had weakened first. I got up and started home. It was two-thirty.

RESTAURANTS AND LUNCHROOMS

Hobohemian restaurants serve meals for a half or a third of the prices current in the Loop. In some of these lunchrooms the charges are so low that one marvels. However, the food is coarse and poor and the service rough and ready.

The homeless man is as casual in his eating as he is in his work. He usually gives all the restaurants a trial. If he has any money when meal time comes he generally does a little “window shopping.” He meanders up and down the street reading the bills of fare in the windows. The Hobohemian restaurants know this and accordingly use window displays to attract the roaming patron. Food is placed in the windows, cooking is done within sight of the street, but the chief means of attraction are the menus chalked on the windows. The whole window is sometimes lettered up with special entrées of the day. Some of these bills of fare are interesting.

Gus’s place on South Halsted Street near the Academy Theater, July 28, 1922, displayed the following:

The same day the James Restaurant on Madison Street near Desplaines advertised the following under the caption, “A Full Meal for Ten Cents”:

One eating-house on West Madison Street is “The Home Restaurant, Meals Fifteen Cents and Up.” This is a popular appeal. Restaurants frequently advertise “Home Cooking,” “Home Made Bread,” “Home Made Coffee,” “Doughnuts Like Mother Used to Make.”

A DINING-ROOM ON THE “MAIN STEM”

EMPLOYMENT BUREAUS OFFER OPPORTUNITY FOR TRAVEL

At meal time, especially at noon, scores of men flock into these eating-houses. The men, a noisy and turbulent crowd, call out their orders, which are shouted by the waiters to the cooks who set out without ceremony the desired dishes. Four or five waiters are able to attend to the wants of a hundred or more men during the course of an hour. The waiters work like madmen during the rush hours, speeding in with orders, out with dirty dishes. During the course of this hour a waiter becomes literally plastered with splashes of coffee, gravy, and soup. The uncleanliness is revolting and the waiters are no less shocking than the cooks and dishwashers. In the kitchens uncleanliness reaches its limit.

But what is the opinion of the patron? They know that the hamburger is generally mixed with bread and potatoes, that the bread is usually stale, that the milk is frequently sour. There are few who do not abhor the odors of the cheap restaurant, but a steady patron reasons thus: “I don’t allow myself to see things, and as long as the eyes don’t see the heart grieves not.”

OUTFITTING STORES AND CLOTHING EXCHANGES

The hobo seldom dresses up. If he does it is evidence that he is making an effort to get out of his class. When he does buy clothing, either rough clothing or a good “front,” he finds his way to places where new clothes are on sale at astonishingly low prices. The seasonal laborer’s outfitters handle a very cheap grade of goods. Much of it is out of date and either shopworn or soiled. Cheap clothing stores are not peculiar to Hobohemia, but here they cater to the wants of the homeless man.

Clothing exchanges, which is a polite term for second-hand clothing stores, are numerous in Hobohemia. There are many of them along North Clark Street and west of Clark on Chicago Avenue. These establishments make a specialty of buying slightly worn clothing, sample suits and overcoats from broken lots, which they sell at remarkably low prices.

Second-hand clothing stores are not entirely monopolized by the hobo trade, but the veteran hobo knows of their existence and he knows how to drive a bargain.

The cobbler who deals in shoes, both second-hand and new, as a sideline, gets his share of the Hobohemian trade. Coming off the road with a roll, the hobo is likely to invest in a whole outfit—shoes, suit, and overcoat—only to sell them again in a few days when he is broke. The second-hand dealer meets him both ways, coming and going.

PAWN SHOPS

Pawn shops are not typical of Hobohemia. They are usually located in that region just outside the limits of the lodging-houses, a sort of border land between respectability and the down-and-outs. Not that the hobo is unwilling, when he is broke, to put anything valuable he happens to have in “hock,” but usually he does not happen to have anything valuable. Still there are men who make a practice of carrying a watch or a ring upon which, in case of need, they can raise a few dollars.

Pawn shops are, to a limited extent, clothing exchanges. They are places where the hobo does much of his buying and selling of tools, fire arms, leather goods, jewelry, and like articles of that sort.

MOVIES AND BURLESQUES

Commercialized entertainment has had difficulty in getting a foothold in Hobohemia. The movie has firmly established itself on the border land, where it may be patronized by both the transient and the resident population. The movies put the admission fee at ten cents. As a matter of fact, there is one on South Halsted Street which charges only a nickel. The pictures shown in these houses have usually passed from the first-class theaters through the various grades of cheaper houses until finally they arrive here much out of date, badly scarred, and so scratched that they irritate the eyes.

Vaudeville and burlesque have become fully established on the South Side. Certain of these theaters cater to “men only.” Advertisements of “classy girls,” “bathing beauties,” or “fancy dancing” have a strange attraction for the homeless and lonely men.

Many men in the Hobohemian population do not patronize either the movie or the burlesque. Those who do are sometimes merely looking for an opportunity to sit down in quiet for an hour. Some theaters, in recognition of this fact, extend an invitation to the audience to “Stay as Long as You Like.” This draws a great many men, especially in cold weather.

BARBER COLLEGES AND BARBERS

Chicago has several barber colleges in close proximity to the “stem.” Four of them are located on West Madison Street and most of them are so situated that they can attract men who are willing to submit to the inexperienced efforts of students. Students must have practice, and here are men, who as they themselves say, can stand it.

The cheap rooming-houses do not always offer facilities for shaving, so they are willing to sacrifice themselves in the interest of education and art. If they are fortunate they may be served by a Senior, but they always are in danger of falling into the hands of a Freshman. Hair cuts cost ten or fifteen cents. This is governed by the law of supply and demand. The colleges must have patrons to keep the students busy. The lady barber flourishes in Hobohemia. The hobo, at least, seems to have no prejudice against a razor being wielded by feminine hands.

BOOKSTORES

Hobohemia has its bookstores where new and second-hand books are sold. The “Hobo Bookstore,” sometimes called the “Proletariat,” located at 1237 West Madison Street, is the best known. This place makes a specialty of periodicals of a radical nature which are extensively read by the “bos.” A large line of books on many subjects are sold, but they are chiefly the paper-bound volumes that the transient can afford. The “Radical Book Shop,” located on North Clark Street, is popular among the intellectuals who pass their time in “Bughouse Square.”

SALOONS AND SOFT DRINK STANDS

The saloon still lives in Hobohemia, though with waning prestige. The five-cent schooner and the free lunch of pre-war days have passed, but the saloons are far from being dead. One can still get a “kick” out of stuff that is sold across the bar, but the crowds do not gather as before prohibition. Formerly, men who got drunk were kept inside, today they are hustled outside or at least kept out of sight. As the saloon has lost its prestige, the bootlegger has gained, and the “drunks” for which he is responsible parade the streets or litter the alleys.

Fruit and soft drink stands and ice-cream cone peddlers are in evidence since prohibition. Enthusiastic and persistent bootblacks swarm in the streets and Gypsy fortune-tellers who hail every passer-by for the privilege of “reading” his mind, and, perhaps, in order to turn a trick at his expense.

THE HOUSING PROBLEM

Standards of living are low in Hobohemia. Flops are unwholesome and unsanitary. Efforts have been made to improve these conditions, but they have not been wholly successful. The Salvation Army and the Dawes hotels have improved the lodging-houses. But the municipal free lodging-house has been opposed by the police on the ground that it was already too popular among casual and migratory workers. The same may be said of any other effort to deal with the problem from the point of view of philanthropy.

The only other alternative would seem to be to encourage the migratory workers to organize to help themselves. This is difficult but not impossible, but the history of these efforts is another chapter in the story of Hobohemia.

CHAPTER IV
“GETTING BY” IN HOBOHEMIA

A man who is conservative can live in Hobohemia on a dollar a day. If he is not too fastidious he can live for sixty cents, including a bed every night. Sleeping in a ten-cent “flop” and sticking to coffee and rolls, he can get along for fifty cents. Old men who do not move around much will live a long time on “coffee-an’,” which they can get at the average restaurant for a nickel. The man who is reduced to “coffee-an’,” however, has touched bedrock.

An old beggar who lingers about the Olive Branch Mission on South Desplaines Street claims that if he were guaranteed forty cents a day he could get on nicely. This would give him a bed every night and, as he says, a good bed is sometimes better than a meal.

The daily routine of this old man’s life rarely takes him beyond the limits of a single block. On the south side of Madison Street, between 62 Desplaines Street and the Transedes Hotel, he is at home. All else is, for him, the open sea. When he ventures beyond the limits of this area into outlying territory he plans the trip the day before.

There are perhaps a hundred old men on South State and West Madison streets whose interests and ambitions have shrunk to the same unvarying routine and the same narrow limits.[8]

Every man who enters Hobohemia is struggling to live above the “coffee-an’” level, and the various devices that are employed in accomplishing this are often ingenious. This business of wringing from chance source enough money each day to supply one’s insistent wants is known on the “stem” as “getting by.” “Getting by” may mean anything from putting in a few hours a day at the most casual labor to picking a pocket or purloining an overcoat. It includes working at odd jobs, peddling small articles, street faking, “putting over” old and new forms of grafts, “working” the folks at home, “white collar” begging, stealing, and “jack rolling.”

WORKING AT ODD JOBS

In spite of all that has been said to the contrary, the hobo is a worker. He is not a steady worker but he earns most of the money he spends. There are migratory casual workers, who spend three or four months each year in a Chicago lodging-house, who never look to the public for assistance. They know how much money they will need to tide them over the winter, and they have learned to spread it thin to make it reach. Casual in their work, they are conservative in their spending.

There are others who are never able to save anything. No matter how much they bring to town they soon spend it. For these the odd job is the likeliest means of livelihood. In a city like Chicago there are almost always opportunities for men who are content to take small jobs. Every restaurant must have dishwashers and waiters. Every hotel needs porters; every saloon or pool hall employs men to do odd jobs. Petty as these jobs are and little as they pay, men not only take but seek them. One man who has been twenty years on West Madison Street is working as night clerk in a lodging-house; another does janitor work at nights and loafs daytime; still another has been for some time a potato peeler in a Madison Street restaurant.

Men who spurn steady jobs in favor of petty ones with pay every night sometimes do so because they hate to leave the street. Often it is because they are not properly clad or have no money to pay their way.

PEDDLING A DEVICE FOR “GETTING BY”

In the eyes of the law, peddling in Chicago, at least, is not begging.[9] Nevertheless much of the peddling in the streets is merely legalized begging. Usually the articles offered for sale are cheap wares which are disposed of for whatever “you care to give.” Not infrequently the buyer gives four times what the article is worth. There are hundreds of cripples in Chicago who gain a livelihood by selling pencils or shoestrings. Many of these are homeless men. Pencils bought for thirty-five cents a dozen retail for a dime, or whatever the purchaser cares to tax himself. A peddler’s license is a protection against the police and serves as a moral prop to the beggar.

A peddler of shoestrings and pencils usually measures his success by the number of sales made in which no change is asked. He expects to be overpaid. Sometimes he persuades himself he is entitled to be overpaid. The business of “getting by” by “touching hearts” is usually spoken of as “work.” A peddler who works the North Side will say: “I didn’t work yesterday; the day before I made three dollars and eighty-five cents.” This man considers himself a real cripple, because he has locomotor ataxia. He is incensed when he meets a one-armed peddler, because a man with one arm is not a real cripple. Real cripples should have first consideration. An able-bodied man who begs when broke is beneath contempt. That is “panhandling” and an able-bodied “panhandler” is always considered despicable.

Many peddlers live in Hobohemian hotels, and spend their leisure on the “stem.” When they go to “work” they take a car. Some of them have regular stands. Not infrequently a peddler will assume to monopolize a position in front of a church or near the entrance of a factory where girls go and come. Beggars have a liberal fund of knowledge about pay days. They know the factories where the workers, when they have money, are “good.”

STREET FAKING

The chief difference between peddling and street faking is one of method. The peddler appeals to the individual; the faker appeals to the crowd. The faker is a salesman. He “pulls” a stunt or makes a speech to attract the crowd. The peddler is more than often a beggar. It requires considerably more initiative and force to play the rôle of a street faker than to peddle.

Almost any time of the day at some street corner of the “stem” one may see a faker with a crowd around him. His wares consist perhaps of combination sets of cuff buttons and collar buttons, or some other such “line.” Success depends upon the novelty of the article offered. A new line of goods is much sought after and a good street faker changes his line from time to time. Many fakers are homeless men. Numbers of the citizens of Hobohemia have tried their hand at some time or other at this kind of salesmanship. Those who are able to “put it over” generally stay with the work.

Peddling jewelry is one old device for getting money, but it is not too old to succeed. There are men who carry with them cheap rings or watches which they sell by approaching the prospective buyers individually. Sometimes they gather a crowd around them but that rarely succeeds as well as when they work quietly. A faker may sit beside a man in a park or approach him on the street and proffer a ring or watch or pair of eyeglasses for sale cheap, on the grounds that he is broke. Sometimes he will pretend that he found the article and would like to get a little money for it. Often he will tell of some sentiment connected with an article that he is trying to dispose of. A man may have a ring that his mother gave him and he will only part with it on condition that he might have the privilege of redeeming it later. If he thought he could not redeem it he would rather starve than part with it, etc. Hobos are often the victims as well as the perpetrators of these fakes.

GRAFTS OLD AND NEW

Few of these tricks are new but none of them are so old that they do not yield some return. They probably owe their long life to the proverbial identity of fundamental human nature wherever it is found.

One of the most ancient and universal forms of deception is the fake disease. In Hobohemia a pretended affliction is called “jiggers” or “bugs.”

4. L. J. appealed to the Jewish Charities with a letter signed by a doctor in a hospital in Hot Springs saying that he had treated L. J. who was suffering from syphilis and that his eyes were affected and he would “undoubtedly go blind.” It was learned later that this letter was a forgery as were other credentials that the man carried. He had been in a hospital and had been treated for a venereal disease. While there he familiarized himself enough with the terminology of the disease so that he could talk with some intelligence about his case. He would say with conviction, “I know I’m going blind before long.” It further developed that he had been exploiting charity organizations in several cities. Before his entry upon this deception it was learned that he had earned a prison record.

An ancient ruse is to feign to be deaf and dumb. A man who played “deaf-and-dumb” worked restaurants, drug stores, groceries, and other places of business. He would enter the places and stand with cap in hand. Never would he change the expression of his face, regardless of what was said or done. When spoken to he would point to his ears and mouth until he received some money, and then he would bow. If there was a chance of getting something, he would never leave a place unless he was in danger of being thrown out. An investigator followed him for two hours before he learned he was neither deaf nor dumb. Three months later he met the same man working the same graft in another part of the city.

“The hat trick,” as it is sometimes called, is a popular means of “getting by.” On a Sunday, a holiday, or indeed any evening, the streets of Hobohemia are likely to be enlivened by men who have a message, haranguing the crowds. They may be selling papers or books on the proletarian movement. In any case, most of them terminate their speeches by passing the hat. Few speakers spend their eloquence on the audiences of Hobohemia without asking something in return. It must not be assumed that these men are all insincere. Many of them are, but most of them are in the “game” for the money it yields. One of these orators is conspicuous because his stock in trade is a confession that he is not like the other speakers. He admits that he is out for bed and board. He will talk on any subject, will permit himself to be laughed at, and jollied by the crowd, but when he passes the hat he usually gets enough for another day’s board.

The missions attract men who are religious primarily for profit. Many who are really sincere find it more profitable to be on the Lord’s side. Nearly every mission has a corps of men who perform the “hat trick” by going from house to house begging old clothes or cash or whatever the people care to give. The collector’s conscience is the only check on the amount of money taken in. Some missions divide all cash collections with the solicitors. Sometimes the collector gets as much as fifty cents on the dollar.

The exploitation of children is as old as the history of vagrancy. Even the tramp has learned that on the road boys may be used to get money. A boy can beg better than an older man, and frequently men will chum with boys for the advantages such companionships give them. Boys who are new on the road are often willing to be exploited by a veteran in exchange for the things they can learn from him.

“WORKING THE FOLKS”

There is a type of tramp who lives on his bad reputation. He may have been sent away for the sake of the family, or have fled for safety, or he may have gone voluntarily to start life anew. Seldom does he succeed, but family pride stands between him and his return. He capitalizes the fact that his family does not want him to return.

Such a man resides on South State Street. He comes from a good family but his relatives do not care to have him about. He is fat and greasy and dirty; he seems to have no opinions of his own; is always getting into people’s way and making himself disagreeable by his effort to be sociable. His relatives pay him four dollars a week to stay in Chicago. On that amount, with what he can earn, he is able to live.[10]

Another man raises funds now and then when he is broke by writing or telegraphing that he is thinking about returning home. His return means trouble. His requests for assistance are a kind of blackmail levied on the family.[11]

“WHITE COLLAR” BEGGING

Most interesting among the beggars is the man, the well-dressed and able-bodied individual, who begs on the strength of his affiliations. These are the men who make a specialty of exploiting their membership in fraternal organizations. Labor unions are very much imposed upon by men who carry paid-up cards but who are temporarily “down.” The organizations as such are not appealed to as much as individual members. It is hard for a union man who is working to turn away a brother who shows that he is in good standing with the organization.

Of late the “ex-service-man” story has been a good means of getting consideration, and the American Legion buttons have been worked to the limit. Most of the men who wear parts of a uniform or other insignia indicative of military service have really seen service and many have seen action, but a great many of them have heard more than they have seen.

There are men who make a specialty of “working” the charity organizations. Some of them are so adept that they know beforehand what they will be asked and have a stereotyped response for every stereotyped question. These men know a surprising amount about the inside workings of the charitable agencies and they generously hand on their information to their successor. They usually know, for example, what material aid may be had from each organization. A typical case is that of Brown.

5. Brown had not been in Chicago an hour until he had located the chief organizations to which he might go for help. He knew that he could check his bag at the Y.M.C.A. He learned where to go for a bath, where to get clean clothes, how to get a shave and haircut and he actually succeeded in getting some money from the United Charities. He was able to “flop” in a bed even though he came to town without money late in the afternoon; whereas many other men in the same position would have been forced to “carry the banner.” He knew about the charity organizations in all the cities he had visited from the Atlantic to the Pacific. After his case was traced it was learned that he told about the same story wherever he went and that he was known in organizations in all the cities to which he referred. He is 27 years old and has been living for the most part in institutions or at the expense of organizations since he was 13.

6. Another case is that of P. S., a Jewish boy who made his way between New York and Chicago three times and received accommodation at the Jewish charity associations in nearly every big city on his road between here and New York. He is a mental case and goes to the Charities because of a sense of helplessness. Since the last contact with him that the Chicago Jewish charities have had he has learned to get over the country with a little more confidence but he never fails to hunt up the welfare organization as soon as he comes to town. He was last heard of in California.

BORROWING AND BEGGING

Nearly every homeless man “goes broke” at times. Some of them do not feel that a trip to town has been a success if they return to the job with money in their pockets. On the other hand, they do not feel that they have had their money’s worth unless they remain in town a week or two after they have “blown in.” As they linger they face the problem of living. They may have friends but that is unusual. The homeless man used to get advances from the saloon keeper with whom he spent his money. Such loans were often faithfully made good, but they were just as often “beat.” Prohibition has put an end to that kind of philanthropy.

Many of the men who visit the city intermittently loaf and work by turns. These men often beg but they do not remain at it long, perhaps a day or so, or until disgust seizes them. Often when they beg they are drunk or “rum-dum.” As soon as they are sober they quit. Sometimes they succeed in attaching themselves to a friend who has just arrived with a “roll.” But living at the expense of another migrant quickly palls. Soon they will be found scanning the “boards” for free shipment to another job. They disappear from the streets for a season. As soon as they get a “stake,” however, they will be seen again treating the boys and swapping stories on the “main stem”; if not in Chicago, then in some other city. It is the life.

The more interesting types are those who live continuously in the city and are broke most of the time. Some of them have reduced the problem of “getting by” to an art. The tramp who only occasionally goes “broke” may try to imitate these types but he soon tires of the game and goes to work. The chief classes of beggars are the “panhandlers” and the “moochers.”

The “panhandler” can sometimes extract from the pockets of others what amounts to large sums of money. Some “panhandlers” are able to beg from ten to twenty dollars a day. The “panhandler” is a beggar who knows how to beg without loss of dignity. He is not docile and fawning. He appeals in a frank, open manner and usually “comes away with the goods.” The “moocher” begs for nickels and dimes. He is an amateur. He goes to the back door of a house or hotel and asks for a sandwich. His appeal is to pity.

The antagonisms between beggars and peddlers are very keen. The man who carries a permit to peddle has no respect for the individual who merely begs. Nevertheless, some peddlers, when business is slow, themselves turn beggars. On the other hand, the man who begs professes to consider himself far more respectable than the peddler who uses his license as an excuse to get money. This is the language and opinion of a professional: “Good begging is far more honorable than bad peddling and most of this shoestring and lead pencil peddling is bad. I am not going to beat around the bush. I am not going to do any of this petty grafting to get enough to live on.”[12] These antagonisms are evidence of a struggle for status. When a peddler denounces the beggars he is trying to justify himself. His philosophy, like most philosophies, is an attempt to justify his vocation. The same is true of plain beggars. Most of them are able to justify their means of “getting by.”

STEALING

Hobos are not clever enough to be first-class crooks nor daring enough to be classed as criminals. Yet most of them will steal something to eat. There are men who are peculiarly expert at stealing food from back-door steps—pies or cakes that have been set out to cool, for example. There are men who wander about the residential areas, in order to steal from back doors. Some men follow the milkman as he goes from door to door delivering milk and cream, in order to steal a bottle when the opportunity offers. A quart of milk makes an excellent breakfast.