CHAPTER XV
THE SOAP BOX AND THE OPEN FORUM
“Killing time” is a problem with the homeless man. The movie and the burlesque are the only forms of commercialized amusements within the range of his purse. Even these are only patronized infrequently and by a few. For the vast majority there is no pastime save the passing show of the crowded thoroughfare. Most of them spend their leisure time shuffling along the street reading the menu cards in the cheap restaurants, or in other forms of “window shopping.” Sometimes they stray out of the “stem” into the Loop. Perhaps they will go to the parks and lie on the grass, or to the lake front where they may sit down and look out on the water.
The homeless man, as he meanders along the street, is looking for something to break the monotony. He will stand on the curb for hours, watching people pass. He notices every conspicuous person and follows with interest, perhaps sometimes with envy, the wavering movements of every passing drunk. If a policeman stops anyone on the street, he also stops and listens in. If he notices a man running into an alley his curiosity is aroused. Wherever he sees a group gathered, he lingers. He will stop to listen if two men are arguing. He will spend hours sitting on the curb talking with a congenial companion.
During the summer, time hangs heavier on the hobo’s hands than in winter. In cold weather, he is usually hard pressed to find food and shelter. If the inclement weather overtakes him without funds and jobless, and this is generally the case, he is absorbed with the problem of “getting by.” He is driven to his wits’ end to find a warm place to sleep at night and a comfortable place to loaf during the day. It often takes a whole day’s scouting to find a place to sleep at night and food enough to appease his gnawing and growling stomach.
There are homeless men who have time on their hands even in winter. They are those who have the rare ability to save enough in summer to live in winter. The parks are no longer inviting. The soap-box orators have either gone out of business or are forced indoors. The hobo follows them and, where he can afford it, helps to support them inside much as he did in the open. He spends more time in the movies and burlesques and will sit for half a day at times watching one show.
Listening to speeches is a popular pastime in Hobohemia. Nothing, unless it is reading, occupies so much of the homeless man’s leisure time.
STREET SPEAKING IN HOBOHEMIA
Hobohemia knows but two types of speakers—the soap-box orator and the evangelist. The evangelist has been longer on the job. Religious speakers are usually associated with established organizations, or they represent mission groups of which there are many varieties on the “stem.” There are evangelists who adhere to no faith or creed. They are “free lances,” as most hobo speakers are, only their message is a religious one. Few of these latter take contributions, and seldom do they essay to make converts in the sense of having a following. They are enthusiasts driven into the streets with the irresistible urgency of their message. In Hobohemia, where time hangs heavy on the hobo’s hands, there is an audience for every message.
In a later chapter[64] the rôle of the evangelist in the life of Hobohemia is considered; here we are interested in the soap-box orators whose message is secular rather than other-worldly. The man on the soap box is a reformer or a revolutionist, seeking to change conditions. The missionary, on the other hand, is seeking less to change conditions than to change mankind. This is the basis of the conflict between their rival doctrines. The soap-boxers may contend with each other concerning what is best for the down-and-out in the here and now, but they are unanimous in their opposition to the “sky pilots” and the “mission squawkers.” They maintain that it is more important to enjoy life here than to live on the prospect of joy hereafter. They have lost patience with the preacher because he only promises “pie in the sky when you die,” and they want the pie now.
The men and women who bring religion to the tramp in Hobohemia have taken root in the life of the “stem.” Their street singing, their preaching and praying, although little heeded by the hobo, would be greatly missed if absent. But the missionary, transplanted from another area of life, remains more or less of an alien. The soap-box reformer is no less of an institution and he is, moreover, native to the soil. He is closer to the actual life and mundane interests of the homeless man. He stands on the curbstone and publishes his opinions on the great questions of the day in a positive and convincing manner, and his ideas are generally couched in language that the man on the street can understand. The hobo’s intellectual interests revolve about the problem of labor. The soap-box orator is the hobo’s principal source of information on this topic.
Soap-boxers are “free lances” most of the time. Either they are out of harmony with all organizations or no organization has been willing to adopt them. Those who make street speaking a profession are a great deal like the ancient sophists. They are able to plead one cause today and a different cause tomorrow. Their allegiance is to be had by any group that can make the proper bid. With some of them the inducement must be a financial one, while others are interested only in ideas. If the idea attracts them they will take up the new angle of the subject with the same enthusiasm that they did the old. In this respect they are influenced by public opinion. They love to harangue the crowds but they like to have the crowd on their side.
EDUCATING THE PROLETARIAT
Soap-boxers usually take themselves seriously, though their audiences do not always do so. They take themselves seriously in spite of their frequent and often abrupt changes in positions on the issues they discuss. They are usually made to explain these changes, and these explanations, if not always logical, are usually sincere. They invariably give their best thoughts on the subject they discuss. Whatever they have gleaned from the available sources they are striving to express in language that is live and understandable to the man on the street. These efforts to clear the issues, to spread propaganda or whatever it may be called, is termed by the soap-boxers, “education.”
Not all the “stem” intellectuals who assume the burden of educating the proletariat use the soap box. Many of them wield the pen. The latter are, in the main, free-lance writers, and most of their productions are tinctured with “red.” But they are generally able to catch the ear of the down-and-out, whether he is a hobo or not. The writings of these cloistered radicals, who are striving to bring the chaotic proletariat to a unity of the faith, provide the soap-box pulpiteer with facts and ideas which he interprets and passes on to his curbstone audience in the shape of poems, songs, articles, and essays. The writers provide, for them, an abundance of material out of which the orators build their castles. Most of these literary radicals are optimistic about the success of their efforts to “get the worker’s mind right,” and thus prepare him for the new order. The masses must be educated, but the soap-boxer, whose burden it is, must himself be educated, and that is the job of the writer who works behind the scenes.
Just how much education the Hobohemian proletariat gets from this speaking and reading is not easily estimated. They learn something about the class struggle, industrial organization, and politics. Sometimes an observation on science or literature or art will fall from a speaker’s lips, but most of these observations are new only to the stranger in the class. The old-timer, however, hears only old ideas restated; or, at best, new facts and figures interpreted to support old ideas. It is like a game with a limited number of pieces and a limited number of moves. Sometimes, to be sure, a speaker endeavors to serve “science” to the “floating fraternity.” Lectures on biology, psychology, sociology, or economics may be heard any evening or holiday during the summer. Most of these lectures go over the heads of the audience, and it is questionable whether the speakers have sufficient background to speak intelligently of the sciences they are attempting to expound.
This effort to educate the proletariat is, nevertheless, not altogether without results. It gives men something to occupy their minds. It gives them some understanding of their common interests; creates a certain amount of solidarity and, perhaps, best of all, “kills time.” Some speakers realize this and declare that the soap box is primarily a kind of entertainment. One man makes it a point to try to amuse his crowd as well as to “instruct” them. “You’ve got to keep ’em interested. You have to amuse them and make ’em laugh before you can get any ideas into their heads. Whenever things get dry, I leave an opening for a drunk or someone to ask me a question or crack a joke, and interest picks up again.”
An Afternoon Series of Soap-Box Orations
60. During a Sunday in July, 1922, no less than twenty men spoke on the box at the corner of Jefferson and Madison streets; and as many topics were treated. In the afternoon the following speakers shared the time:
1. The meeting was opened by a man who borrowed a box from a nearby fruit stand. He tried to get another man to speak first so that he would not have to hurt his voice gathering the crowd, but no one cared to start. He talked for twenty minutes about graft in the patent-medicine trade. He had a very catchy speech well tempered with humor and he gathered a big crowd. Evidently he had made a study of the patent-medicine business and his speech was an “exposure” of the game. He finished by selling some pamphlets dealing with the subject.
2. The second speaker was an I.W.W. who talked for fifteen minutes on education. He was a good talker and held the crowd. He wound up by selling some I.W.W. literature and periodicals in which the thoughts of economists had been reduced from the difficult academic language to the understanding of the man on the street. He also passed out some literature, i.e., old issues of the Solidarity, and I.W.W. papers.
3. Another I.W.W. talked twenty minutes on organization. He argued that the rich man organizes and for that reason is successful. He does not want the poor man at the bottom to organize because he fears that he will not be able to keep him at the bottom. He didn’t blame the rich man for organizing; he blamed the poor man for not organizing. He gave some literature away and sold some.
4. A speech on superstition followed. It lasted twenty minutes and was aimed at a mission group that was holding a meeting across the street. The argument was that the Bible and the church were the most powerful instruments in the hands of rich men for keeping the poor man down. No collection was taken.
5. A twenty-minute speech on the economic organization of industry was given by a man who took great pains to remind the crowd that he had spent seven years to learn all about it. He made a plea for the co-operation of labor to combat the organization of capital. No collection was taken.
6. The next man argued that the unemployment problem is caused by two things; the overcrowding of population and the concentration of wealth into the hands of a few. Eighty-five per cent of the people had but 15 per cent of the wealth and 15 per cent of the people had 85 per cent of the wealth or more than they could possibly consume. This man usually takes up a collection on the ground that he is handicapped physically, but he did not on this occasion. He spoke for twenty minutes.
7. No more speakers wanted the box so a drunk got on the stand and asked for the attention of the crowd. He furnished amusement for fifteen minutes. He was witty but easily led from subject to subject.
No speaker talked long enough to bore the crowd. Each speaker, when he had finished, yielded the box to his successor. The crowd was a characteristic Hobohemian gathering, willing to stand so long as they could be interested. Like most such gatherings, it kept diminishing and increasing in size. Some would stand in front and listen for an hour while others would only stop a few minutes on the outer edge of the gathering. The reaction to the speakers was for the most part sympathetic. Occasionally a man on the sidelines would be seen to frown disapproval but it is the habit of those who are not interested to worm their way out of the group and go their way.
While the sixth speaker of the above list was talking the crowd was attracted to the side by a discussion between one of the previous speakers and another man. The argument attracted so many listeners that the speaker was irritated and he called to one of the men engaged in the discussion, “Say B—, do you think that’s a square deal?” “Sorry C—, I didn’t know we were disturbing you.” The crowd on the side dispersed and gathered around the speaker on the box.
SOAP-BOX ETHICS AND TACTICS
Just as there are certain unwritten laws that are found in the jungle camps, so there are unwritten laws that the soap-boxer observes. Regardless of how much they differ in their schemes, they are seldom personal in their opposition to one another. Soap-boxers behave toward one another when not on the box much as lawyers do when they are out of the courtroom, and even while on the box they consider one another’s interests. For example, a speaker in resigning the rostrum to his successor will frequently close with some such statement as this: “I’d like to talk longer on this subject but there are other speakers here and they have something to say that you might like to hear.”
The practice of taking up personal collections is looked down upon by most curbstone speakers. They feel that the soap box should not be exploited. Collections are not always approved by the audiences. Some men label their speeches “lectures” and “pass the hat” on the ground that they have spent years in getting the information. When they “perform the hat trick on the ‘simpoleons’ [simpletons]” they regard it as a compensation for the rôle they play as educators. They chew fine the complex intellectual food so that it may be taken up by the untrained and unlearned. But unpopular as is the practice of collecting money, it is not a barrier. The audience is exceedingly tolerant toward the hat-passer and more so if he has a good “line” of talk, or if he is handicapped.
Most men who talk to Hobohemian crowds make their living by selling some kind of literature. Sometimes they sell pamphlets they have written themselves, or they sell pamphlets or periodicals on a commission. Getting money in this way is not unpopular among the soap-boxers. It is a practice that is rather favored, for it is the best way of getting the down-and-out to thinking, and if the soap-box orators are united on any one thing it is this: that the proletariat must be educated.
One of the favorite methods of distributing literature is to sell it from the box. Enthusiastic persons in the crowd often buy a paper and pay for several others to be distributed from the box. Sometimes a man will take the stand and dispose of a hundred papers or pamphlets in a few moments by persuading those who have money to buy for those who have none.
A man who entertains the “slum proletariat” need not be without status because he lives by street speaking. Most of them either directly or indirectly earn their living in this way, though many of them would not admit it. If a man can plead the cause of the under dog to the satisfaction of the man on the street, if he has a philosophy that pleases the crowd, and if he can present it in an attractive manner, very few resent his passing the hat.
So with all their contentiousness the soap-box orators manage to keep on speaking terms, and rather informally turn favors to one another. Seldom do they “knock” one another, and seldom do they crowd one another away from a corner or place one another in embarrassing positions. In this they have gone farther toward reaching a unity of purpose than the various mission groups who compete on opposite corners for the same crowds.
It must not be thought that soap-boxing is a game that is without its tricks. There are tricks for getting the crowds, tricks for holding the crowds, and tricks for exploiting the crowds. Speakers do not like to be the first one up on the box, nor do they like to be the last one up when the crowd has become tired. If a man wants to pass the hat, it is to his advantage to get the first chance at the crowd. Men will do considerable jockeying to get on the box just when they think it will be to their advantage.
FREE-LANCE VERSATILITY
Street speakers who stand before the same audiences one or more times a week throughout the year tend to wear out. Some of them are resourceful enough to find something new to say, but others find it difficult to say old things in a new way, so they are likely to fall into the habit of repeating themselves. Sometimes they try to keep from growing stale by speaking in as many places as possible, but since their audiences are limited to the Hobohemian population they are always talking to a number who have heard them say the same things before. After a speaker has made the rounds of all the corners he is forced to get a new “line.”
Some men, however, persist in delivering old thread-bare messages in their old, well-worn way. The speeches of some men are so well known that the only interest is one of curiosity. The crowd listens to see if anything was left out. The hobby of one free-lance speaker is Henry George and the Single Tax. To the crowd he is the “P and P” man, because he usually ends his speeches by selling copies of Progress and Poverty at “cost.” Everyone who has been in town long enough to become acquainted with the principal soap-boxers is familiar with this man’s “line,” but usually he hears him again, partly, perhaps, because of his apparent sincerity.
Most soap-boxers, when they find themselves growing stale, are able to change. B’s hobby for a long time has been a speech on birth control, which he followed by selling some books on sex, but he wore this subject out and recently changed to a speech on superstition at the close of which he sells literature of an anti-religious nature. Another speaker whose speech on patent medicine and quack doctors finally lost its novelty is now talking on birth control. Another has gone from trade unionism to the Ku Klux Klan. An old-timer on Madison Street said of a certain speaker: “That man used to be with the I.W.W.; then he went over to How’s organization and now he’s free lancing.” “What is his line now?” is a question that is commonly asked in regard to a soap-box pulpiteer. They are expected to change.
In search of variety and for financial reasons, free lancers of ability hire out as campaigners for the political parties. “Where is John L. now?” asks one man. “Oh, he’s up in Wisconsin campaigning for Senator LaFollette. Last month he was in Missouri stumping for Senator Reed.” John carried credentials from both the Democrats and Republicans and he can plead the cause of either.
The rôle of the soap-boxer, like that of the ancient sophist, is that of instructor or entertainer. Men go in search of these curbstone gatherings. On Sundays and holidays the crowd expects them. Homeless men who have a job in the city during the week spend the Sunday on the “stem” partly in order to hear the evangelists and soap-boxers. It is their life. They like to see old friends on the street, but they like especially to see familiar faces on the box.
THE OPEN FORUM
The open forum is a place, usually indoors, where persons may gather in formal meeting to discuss topics of interest. It is usually a winter retreat for the soap-boxers and their followers. In order to maintain a forum it is necessary to hire a hall and govern themselves by some sort of organization. The “Hobo College” is probably the most conspicuous open forum in Chicago. It is but a branch of a chain of “colleges” that are maintained in the larger cities of the country by the wealth of James Eads How, the “millionaire hobo.” It has operated in Chicago nearly every winter since 1907. Scarcely a soap-boxer in Chicago has not at some time been associated with this institution. Many of them at some time have either been officers or leading lights of the “college.” The I.W.W. generally maintains a hall where a forum is conducted during the winter, though it does not offer the variety of discussion and subjects that the “college” does.
The forum is far from being a harmonious nestling ground for hibernating soap-boxers. It is rather a veritable battle ground of contending factions. These advocates of the “new society” who agree and disagree so smilingly in the open often become caustic and bitter in their attacks when forced to share the same hall. There close association generates factions and cliques. There are always the “ins” and the “outs.” New leaders are ever getting the chair, and old policies are constantly replaced. The “Hobo College” for the winter of 1922-23 had no less than six secretaries in as many months and three complete “house cleanings.”
The order of procedure at the “Hobo College” is practically the same as in most of the open forums. Meetings are held on the afternoons or evenings at set dates, or there is a regular program of a certain number of meetings a week. On Sunday two meetings are often held. Meetings and programs are advertised in conspicuous places. The meetings are so arranged that there is time at the end of the principal speech for criticism, remarks, or questions from the floor, after which the speaker has an opportunity to defend himself. If distinguished visitors are present, they are usually called upon. Meetings at the “Hobo College” are different from most forums in that they usually terminate with a lunch.
The open forum has some advantages over the street meetings. The group is more select and less transient. A subject for discussion is viewed from various angles by different speakers who have come at least partially prepared. On the soap box the problem of disciplining the crowd is left entirely to the speaker. Once he loses their interest they either harass him or desert him. In the forum the audience is honor bound to remain until the speaker has finished. In the open forum speakers may be invited who are supposed to lend a certain distinction to the occasion. No one can lend distinction to a soap box. Not the least advantage of the forum over the soap box is that most of the audience can participate in the meeting. The disadvantage is that it is not so accessible and hence becomes exclusive.
The question is often asked, “How do soap-boxers get initiated into the game of outdoor speaking?” For most of them the answer is, “In the open forum.” In the open forum the beginners, the aspirants, learn to take part in the discussions. They learn here to find words to express themselves. In the forum they take sides and learn to defend or oppose propositions, and they learn to order and present their thoughts.
The forum has been described as a refuge for the hibernating soap-boxer. It is more than a refuge; it is a study center. It is to the free-lance speaker what a summer school is to the teacher; an opportunity to relax and “polish up.”
THE SOAP BOX AND HOBO OPINION
Soap-boxers all say that they have enjoyed more liberty in Chicago than in most cities. Chicago police have always taken a generous and liberal attitude toward the curbstone forum. A man who has been prominent in several free-speech fights says:
The free-lance speaker is a great help to the police in this town. It’s easier to handle these crowds when they have someone to listen to. When a man gets restless, it gives him something to think about. If you don’t believe it just go into a town where the soap-boxer is suppressed and see how bitter the “bos” are.
The rôle of the soap-boxer is to make hobos think. He succeeds to a greater extent in this than we realize. In his efforts to hold his audience for half an hour he throws off a great many ideas. Much of this ammunition is fired in the air, but not all of it. What he actually does is to keep the minds of his hearers on objective things. Otherwise their thoughts would turn inward, and for the homeless man introspection is not a pleasant pastime.
It is probably true that the soap-box orator makes no permanent impression on his audience. He does, to be sure, give voice to some ill-defined sentiments in which all are agreed. But no practical unanimity is ever achieved. This agitation starts no mass movement. There has never been an effective permanent organization among hobos. The very nature of the hobo mind resents every kind of discipline that any form of organization would impose. He is by circumstance, tradition, and temperament an individualist.
What of the soap-box reformer and revolutionist? Is he a menace or merely a joke? The curbstone orator is not an agitator in the ordinary sense of that word. He is merely a thinking hobo. In him the homeless man becomes articulate. It is something to these outcast men to hear in these curbstone forums the reverberations of their own unuttered thoughts. It is something to the homeless man merely to have a voice.