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.
“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.
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:
| Pig’s Snouts and Cabbage or Kraut | 15c |
| Corn Beef Hash | 10c |
| Hamburger Roast | 10c |
| Liver and Onions | 15c |
| Hungarian Goulash | 20c |
| Pig’s Shank and Cabbage | 15c |
| Spare Ribs and Cabbage | 20c |
| Pig’s Feet and Potato Salad | 15c |
| Beef Stew and Kraut | 15c |
| Sausage and Mashed Potatoes | 15c |
| Roast Beef | 20c |
| Roast Pork | 25c |
| T-Bone Steak | 30c |
The same day the James Restaurant on Madison Street near Desplaines advertised the following under the caption, “A Full Meal for Ten Cents”:
| Veal Loaf | 10c |
| Sardines and Potato Salad | 10c |
| Hamburger and One Egg | 10c |
| Baked Beans | 10c |
| Liver and Onions | 10c |
| Corn Beef Plain | 10c |
| Macaroni Italian | 10c |
| Three Eggs any Style | 15c |
| Kidney Stew | 10c |
| Sausage and Mashed Potatoes | 10c |
| Brown Hash and One Egg | 10c |
| Liver and Brown Gravy | 10c |
| Salt Pork Plain | 10c |
| Salmon and Potato Salad | 10c |
| Corn Flakes and Milk | 5c |
| Four Eggs any Style | 20c |
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.”
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.”
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 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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.