Why are there tramps and hobos? What are the conditions and motives that make migratory workers, vagrants, homeless men? Attempts to answer these questions have invariably raised other questions even more difficult to answer. Homeless men themselves are not always agreed in regard to the matter. The younger men put the blame upon circumstance and external conditions. The older men, who know life better, are humbler. They are disposed to go to the other extreme and put all the blame on themselves.
10. “My old man tried his d—dest to get me to go to school; but no, I couldn’t learn anything in school. I could make my own way. I could get along without the old man or his advice. Well, when I woke up I was forty years old, of course it was too late. I couldn’t go back. That’s what’s the matter with half of these d—d kids on the road. No one can tell them anything. They’re burning up to learn something on their own hook; and they’ll learn it, too.”
From the records and observations of a great many men the reasons why men leave home seem to fall under several heads: (a) seasonal work and unemployment, (b) industrial inadequacy, (c) defects of personality, (d) crises in the life of the person, (e) racial or national discrimination, and (f) wanderlust.
Chief among the economic causes why men leave home are (1) seasonal occupations, (2) local changes in industry, (3) seasonal fluctuations in the demand for labor, and (4) periods of unemployment. The cases of homeless men studied in Chicago show how these conditions of work tend to require and to create the migratory worker.
1) The industrial attractions of seasonal work often make a powerful appeal to the foot-loose man and boy. A new railroad that is building, a mining camp just opening up, an oil boom widely advertised, a bumper crop to be harvested in Kansas or the Dakotas fire the imagination and bring thousands of recruits each year into the army of seasonal and migratory workers.
11. Fifty-eight years old and born in Belgium. He came to this country with his parents in 1882. His family moved to a farm in northern Wisconsin where they remained several years. The boy worked during his spare time in the woods. His father soon became tired of farming and decided he could do better in the coal camps of southern Illinois, for he had been a miner in Belgium. After the family moved, the boy grew restless in the mining town and decided to return to his old home town in Wisconsin where he could get a job in the woods which was more to his liking. For several years he divided his time between the northern woods in winter and the mines at his Illinois home in summer. But he never liked coal mining and later began to go to the harvest fields for his summer employment. Sometimes he worked on railroad construction or at other seasonal work. He has spent several winters in Chicago, and usually (he says) he has been able to pay his way. However this year, 1921-22, he has been eating some at the missions.
This case shows the steps by which a stationary seasonal worker becomes a migratory worker. It indicates how easily and naturally the migrant may sink still lower in the economic scale until he spends his winters in Hobohemia “feeding at the missions.”
2) Local changes in industry dislocate the routine of work of the wage-earner. The timber in certain regions gives out, mines close down when the ore is exhausted or when prices drop, or in the reorganization of an industry a branch factory may be abandoned. Under these circumstances, certain workers are compelled to look elsewhere for employment. Those who are free to move naturally migrate. The following case is that of a migratory worker who with the passing of the West finds it difficult to make the necessary adjustment.
12. A. is the pioneer type of hobo. He came to Chicago because he was pressed eastward by the closing down of the mines in the West. He is about fifty years old. He was born in southern Illinois but grew restless on the farm. He left home in his teens to drive a team on the railroad grades. He moved West with the railroad building. He got into the mining game at Cripple Creek, and then turned prospector. He spent a couple of years in the mines of Alaska. He has never been able to attach himself to an old established camp. He has worked in the mines of northern Michigan but did not like it there. He regrets that he came East. He says that he was never so hopelessly down in the West. He plans to go back where he knows people and where he can go out and get some kind of a job when he feels like going to work.
This man always carried a bundle in the West. He laments that he found it necessary to throw his bed away when he came East. He claims that a man with a bed and a desire to work can get along better in the West than he has seen anyone get along here. Out there he only went to town four or five times a year. The rest of the time he was out in the hills. Out there he could always find work (until this recent industrial depression), but here he has not seen any jobs he cares for.
3) Seasonal fluctuations in the demand for labor accompanied by the seasonal rise and fall in wages have greatly affected the ebb and flow of workers.
Industrial fluctuations may be classed as cyclical and seasonal. Cyclical fluctuations result from business depressions and at times double the amount of loss of time during a year, which is illustrated by the fact that the railroads employed 236,000 fewer men in 1908 than in 1907. Seasonal fluctuations may either be inappreciable, as in municipal utilities, or may displace nearly the entire labor force. The seasonal fluctuations in the canning industry in California, for example, involve nearly nine-tenths of all the workers; in logging camps, which depend upon the snow, operations are practically suspended in summer; while in the brick and tile industry only 36.5 per cent of the total number of employees are retained during the dull season. Irregularities in the conduct of industry and in the method of employing labor are evident in dock work, in the unskilled work in iron and steel, and in slaughtering and meat packing; in the competitive conditions in industries which force employers to cut labor cost down to the utmost and to close down in order to save operating expenses; in speculative practices which result in the piling up of orders and alternate periods of rush production and inactivity; in loss of time due to inefficient management within plants. In some cases it has been charged, although without definite proof, that irregularity of employment is due to a deliberate policy of employers in order to lessen the chance of organized movement, as well as to keep the level of wages down in unskilled occupations by continually hiring new individuals.[13]
4) Periods of unemployment throw hundreds of thousands of men out of work. But the effects of unemployment are not ended with the passing of the period of business depression. The majority of men, it is true, return to work with their economic efficiency little if any impaired by the stress and strain of uncertainty and deprivation. But upon thousands of men the enforced period of idleness has had a disorganizing effect.[14] The demoralizing effect of being out of work is particularly marked upon the unskilled laborer. His regular routine of work has been interrupted; habits of loafing are easily acquired. The path of personal degradation may lead to the “bread line” at the mission, and from there to panhandling in the Loop.
An increasingly large number of laborers go downward instead of upward. Young men, full of ambition and high hopes for the future start their life as workers, but meeting failure after failure in establishing themselves in some trade or calling, their ambitions and hopes go to pieces, and they gradually sink into the ranks of migratory and casual workers. Continuing their existence in these ranks they begin to lose self-respect and become “hobos.” Afterwards, acquiring certain negative habits, as those of drinking, begging, and losing all self-control, self-respect, and desire to work, they become “down-and-outs”—tramps, bums, vagabonds, gamblers, pickpockets, yeggmen, and other petty criminals—in short, public parasites, the number of whom seems to be growing faster than the general population.[15]
Every year thousands of men fail in the struggle for existence. For one reason or another, they cannot, or at least they do not, keep the pace set by modern large-scale industry. These men are “misfits,” industrially inadequate.
The majority of individuals, commonly regarded as industrially inadequate, are probably feeble-minded or restless types like the emotionally unstable and the egocentric and fall into the group of defective personalities to be considered later. Other causes of industrial incompetency are (1) physical handicaps due to accidents, sickness, or occupational diseases; (2) alcoholism and drug addiction; and (3) old age.
1) The workers in certain industries are exposed to dangerous dusts and gases. The printers have learned the risks of their trade and endeavor to cope with them. Other industries have taken steps to eliminate industrial hazards. Many transients are miners who go from one job to another exposing themselves to different dangers.
13. O. O. is fifty-three years old and he has been a migrant for many years. He has been a lumber jack and a harvest hand. He has tried his hand at various casual jobs but most of his time has been spent in the mines. He used to work in the most dangerous mines because they generally pay the most money. Three years ago (about 1919) while working in the copper mines in Butte, Montana, he contracted miner’s “con,” which is some sort of lung trouble. He had no place to go, could not hold a job, and has wandered about the country ever since. He has no hope of regaining his health and is too proud to return to his people who live in Ohio.
Other industries also have their victims.
14. G. T. came from the New England states. He was wandering about the country in hope of regaining his health. He was a textile worker and claims that the dyes and dust were the cause of his condition. There was no means at hand of proving his story but the fact that he was in ill health, very much underweight, and he was not able to do heavy work. Numerous times he was rebuked because he asked for light work.
Many men in Hobohemia have limbs or parts of limbs missing, or bent and twisted bodies. These are victims of industrial or non-industrial accidents.
15. Red begs and sometimes peddles pencils along Halsted Street. He lost his leg several years ago while working in the coal mines. In his sober moments he claims that his own carelessness was partly to blame for his loss, but he also holds that the company was negligent. His leg at first had only been bruised and he went back to work in a damp, cold place, and inflammation set in. He has since become accommodated to a life of begging and peddling.
2) Alcoholism decreases the economic efficiency of the worker and so tends to depress him into the group of homeless men. Before prohibition the saloon had no better patron than the homeless man. In Chicago today bootleggers and blind pigs in the vicinity of the “stem” thrive upon the homeless man’s love for liquor.
16. E. J. loafs on West Madison Street and South State Street. He drinks and does not care who knows it. He has been a drinking man for years. “Booze put me on the bum. Now, I’m here and I’m too old to be good for anything, so why not keep it up? You’re goin’ t’ die when your time comes anyway; so why not keep it up?” His philosophy helps him to live and he lives as well as he can by begging a little, working when any jobs come his way. He used to be a carpenter but has lost his efficiency at that trade. He threw up his membership in the union several years ago.
Drinking is responsible for keeping many men on the road. One man said that he left home because he had too many drinking friends. He has been on the road for several years but wherever he goes he finds other drinking friends. An old man refuses to live with his children in the country because he cannot get his “morning’s morning” while with them. They have written him time and again but he does not answer.
Drug addiction likewise decreases the industrial efficiency of its victims. Drug addicts among homeless men seldom are transient. Those who are transient are often cocaine users who are able to do without the drug for considerable periods of time. Not infrequently “coke heads” or “snow-birds” are found among the hobo workers. When on out-of-town jobs, they are prone to go to town occasionally to indulge in a cocaine spree much as a “booze-hoister” indulges in a liquor spree. When their money is gone they return to work and do not touch the “snow” for weeks or months. Users of heroin or morphine are not able to separate themselves from the source of supply for so long a time.
Because of the secret nature of the practice, the extent of drug addiction among homeless men is unknown. Men who use drugs are loath to disclose the fact to anyone but drug users. The drug addict employs every scheme to keep his practice a secret whereas the drinking man strives to share his joy with others. The fear of being discovered drives many addicts from the circle of their family and friends and many of them drift into the homeless man areas where they enjoy the maximum seclusion.
17. The investigator was accosted by a beggar in the Loop. He was impressed by the fervor and the hurry with which the man begged him and was away. He followed the man for several blocks and watched him accost more than a hundred persons, all men. The only men from whom he failed to solicit were those accompanied by women. If two men were standing two or three yards apart he accosted each one individually. Only one or two men gave him anything. Most of them looked with suspicion at him, and not without reason, for although he was fairly well dressed he was very dirty and his clothes looked as if he had been sleeping out. He had a pallid, leaden complexion, and he had a ten days’ growth of beard. He had a wild, hunted expression and impressed the investigator as being a drug addict. He continued to follow the man and engaged him in conversation. He learned that he had just beat his way from Boston. He had ridden passenger trains all the way and had come in less than three days. His only difficulty was in Buffalo where he says that a policeman pulled him off the train and beat him. Why he left Boston he would not say. He denied being a “dope” then and it was not till three days later when he was seen in Grant Park that he admitted the fact. He came to Chicago because he knew more people here and was certain of getting morphine.
Drug users need as much as three or four dollars a day, and even more, to supply their wants. As a rule they are physically unfit to earn a living. They cannot live as the hobos do because the average hobo does not have money enough to buy drugs. They may be forced to live in cheap hotels and to eat in cheap restaurants but only to save money to satisfy the craving for “dope.” Drug addicts wander very little except to make rapid trips from city to city. The drug addict tends to become a criminal rather than a migratory worker. Their natural habitat is the great city.
3) Many old men in the tramp class are not able to work and are too independent to go to the almshouse. Some of them have spent their lives on the road. These old, homeless men usually find their way to the larger cities. Unlike the younger men they have no dreams and no longer burn with the desire to travel. Many have been self-supporting until they were overtaken by senility. It is pitiable to see an old man tottering along the streets living a hand-to-mouth existence.
18. J. is an old man who lives in a cheap hotel on South Desplaines Street, where a few cents a day will house him. He is seventy-two, very bent and gray. Once he was picked up on the street in winter and sent to the hospital where he remained a day or two and was transferred to the poor house at Oak Forest. He ran away from the poor house two years ago and has managed to live. He seldom gets more than a block or two from his lodging. Even today (1923) he may be seen on a cold day shivering without an overcoat on Madison Street. He is a good beggar and manages to get from fifty cents to a dollar a day from the “boys” on the “stem.” Sometimes during the warm weather he makes excursions of three to five blocks away on begging tours. He is exceedingly feeble and walking that distance is hard work for him. Work is out of the question. There are very few jobs that he could manage.
This case is typical. During the summer time, when it is possible to sit outdoors in comfort, numbers of old men may be found in groups on the pavements or in the parks. In winter they are too much occupied seeking food and shelter.
The physically handicapped and industrially inefficient individuals are numerous among the homeless men. The handicap is, in part at least, the reason of their presence in that class. Competition with able-bodied workers forces them into the scrap heap.
Psychological and sociological studies of vagabondage in France, Italy, and Germany have led to the conclusion that the vagabond is primarily a psychopathic type.[16] The findings of European psychopathologists are, of course, the result of case-studies of beggars and wanderers in these countries and cannot without reservation be accepted for the United States. Undoubtedly there are large numbers of individuals with defects of personalities among American hobos and tramps, but there are also large numbers of normal individuals. The American tradition of pioneering, wanderlust, seasonal employment, attract into the group of wanderers and migratory workers a great many energetic and venturesome normal boys and young men.
William Healy, for several years director of the Psychopathic Institute of Chicago, sums up the relation of mental deficiency to vagabondage in these words:
We have seen vagabondage in connection with feeble-mindedness, epilepsy, dementia precox, but we have also seen the same behavior in normal boys who had conceived a grudge, with or without good reasons, against home conditions. Again, we have seen normal lads who have been seeking larger experiences in this way.[17]
Dr. Healy’s observations were made primarily with juveniles, but he adds cautiously a conclusion as to the explanation of adult vagabondage:
When vagabondage is continued beyond the unstable years of adolescence, generalizations on the character of the individuals are more likely to be correct. But even here the only chance of adequate conception of the relationship between the behavior and the type of individual who engages in it is to be found in a personal study of him.
The proportion of feeble-minded is popularly supposed to be higher among the migratory and casual laborer than in the general population. In the earlier studies, only the most obvious cases of mental defect were noted. Mrs. Solenberger by common-sense observation or medical examinations found only eighty-nine of the one thousand men she examined to be feeble-minded, epileptic, or insane.[18]
In recent years mental tests have been given to small groups of unemployed men, in which the types of the hobo, tramp, and bum were well represented. Knollin found 20 per cent of the 150 hobos he tested feeble-minded.[19] Pintner and Toops examined two groups of applicants at Ohio free employment agencies by standardized tests other than the Stanford revision of the Binet-Simon. Of the 94 men taking the tests at Columbus, 28.7 per cent were diagnosed as feeble-minded. Of the 40 unemployed men examined at Dayton 7.5 per cent were assigned to the feeble-minded class.[20] Glenn R. Johnson gave the Stanford revision of the Binet-Simon tests to 107 men out of work in Portland, and found 18 per cent feeble-minded, i.e., under twelve years mental age.[21] As he had expected, he found the proportion of inferior intelligence lower than that of the 62 business men and high-school students upon which Terman had standardized his tests for adults, but he also found among hobos a higher percentage of superior adults. He found also that the higher the intelligence of the individual the shorter the period of holding a job among the unemployed. The testing of an unselected group of 653 men in the army by the Stanford revision of the Binet-Simon tests affords an interesting opportunity for a comparison with the results of the Portland study.
This comparison would indicate that the intelligence of the unemployed is not lower, but, if anything, higher than that of the adult males tested in army camps. Apparently other factors than intelligence are decisive in determining whether an individual is employable or unemployable, or whether he makes or fails to make an adequate adjustment in the normal routine of industrial organization.
The defects in personality commonly found in the cases of homeless men studied in Chicago are those noted by the students of vagabondage and unemployment, namely, feeble-mindedness, constitutional inferiority, emotional instability, and egocentricity. In a survey of 100 cases of unemployment which had been received as patients in the Boston Psychopathic Hospital, Dr. Herman M. Adler found that 43 fell into the class of paranoid personality (egocentricity). The next largest group of 35 cases was assigned to the class of inadequate personality (mentally defective or feeble-minded). The remaining cases, 22 in number, were diagnosed as emotionally unstable personality. An analysis of the months employed per case showed that the emotionally unstable group averages 50 months to each job; the inadequate group 24.7 months to each job; and the paranoid group 20.6 months to each job.[22]
Mental Capacity of Army Group and of Portland Unemployed as Measured by Stanford-Binet
| Mental Age | Army Group | Portland Unemployed |
| 653 Cases | 105 Cases | |
| Per Cent | Per Cent | |
| 5 | 0.2 | |
| 6 | 0.3 | |
| 7 | 0.2 | 1.9 |
| 8 | 3.4 | 1.9 |
| 9 | 9.5 | 3.8 |
| 10 | 10.1 | 6.7 |
| 11 | 10.6 | 5.7 |
| 12 | 12.4 | 8.6 |
| 13 | 10.6 | 16.2 |
| 14 | 11.8 | 18.1 |
| 15 | 9.6 | 11.4 |
| 16 | 8.3 | 9.5 |
| 17 | 7.2 | 7.6 |
| 18 | 5.2 | 7.6 |
| 19 | 0.8 | 2.9 |
Many individuals not feeble-minded find their way into the group of casual and migratory workers by reason of other defects of personality, for example, emotional instability and egocentricity. Among transient laborers the very great turnover cannot be entirely accounted for by industrial conditions. Much of their shifting from scene to scene is indicative of their emotional instability and restlessness.
19. W. E. was born in a little village in Kentucky. His first job away from home was on the section. When he learned that it was the meanest job on the railroad he decided to change. He got a job on an extra-gang where he moved about considerably, worked in several towns during the summer. Later got a steady job on a farm but he soon tired of “eating at the same table day after day” and he went to Kansas City where he worked in a box factory. He became expert at it but soon tired of using the same tools, and working as fast as possible day after day, and he changed. He worked in several factories making boxes but there was no difference. Then with his meager experience with tools he got in the maintenance of way work of a railroad. Here he had some variety and remained a year. Decided he wanted to work in the mines and he got a job timbering. Later he tried his hand at millwright work but he soon quit that and went back to the bridge gang. He still goes to town every month or two to spend his money and each time he goes out to some different job.
In hard times when work is scarce and wages are low, voluntary quitting of jobs is much less than in good times. Hobos are easily piqued and they will “walk off” the job on the slightest pretext, even when they have the best jobs and living conditions are relatively good. Hobo philosophy is disposed to represent the man who is a long time on the job as a piker. He ought to leave a job once in a while simply to assert his independence and to learn something else about other jobs. The following case shows the relation of instability and egocentricity to labor turnover:
20. Yes, Pete had had plenty of good jobs, but something had always gone against him. At one place not long ago they wanted him to continue work in spite of the dust which was blowing everywhere. Another rude employer never spoke to him (or any other of the employees) politely.
No one should work for a man like that. Upon another occasion the boss suggested reform of a certain habit—as if he had any right to tell an American citizen what he ought to do.
He had worked at almost everything, but it went against his very nature to do one thing very long. He would, in two or three weeks, quit and look for a different occupation. Why he quit, I am sure he didn’t know. “Independence,” “Justice,” and “American Equality” furnished the material for his excuses, but they were only excuses.
A survey of the so-called “intellectuals” of Hobohemia reveals a group of egocentric and rebellious natures who decry most things that are. Intellectuals, just because they are highly organized and specialized, are very likely to become misfits outside of the environment to which they artificially are adapted. When, added to this handicap, they lack the discipline which a regular occupation affords they are likely to become quite impossible.
21. H. has a great chart that he uses to preach evolution to the curbstone audiences. He has learned a few scientific terms from one or two books he has read. He has no use for the modern scientists. He considers them heretic. He is a student of Darwin “and those old-timers.” When pinned down he is not able to discuss clearly what contributions the old-timers made or what they believed.
22. D. H. is a student of economics according to Karl Marx. He has no room in his thinking for any contribution of any other man. Indeed, he does not think that anyone has made any contribution since Marx. One of his stock phrases is “Now get this into your heads. I am making it simple so that you can understand it.”
23. B. is writing a novel. He has been working on it for several years. He also writes songs, popular songs. But he has never sold a song nor has he ever been able to interest a publisher in his novel. He calls the publishers a lot of grafters and claims that they are in league to keep the poor writers down.
24. L. is a soap-box orator. He has one hobby. He is a single-taxer. He is a great believer in Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson. To him there is only one problem, to find out who is exploiting the people, and there is only one remedy and that the single tax. He will entertain no argument against the single tax. Anyone who does not share his opinion is to be pitied.
The intellectuals are frequently egocentric. They are obsessed by some peculiar point of view. As egocentrics they are in conflict with the rest of the world. Their cry is often a lament and just as often a justification or defense.
A study of individual cases seems to indicate that there is a large proportion of inadequate personalities among homeless men. The following cases indicate the variety of ways in which personal defects lead to a migratory existence which lands them eventually at the bottom of the social scale.
25. D. is a man who could not get along at home. He was continually into difficulty with his father. He always had ideas and schemes that his father thought foolish and he was never permitted to carry any of them out. He still has the habit of working up schemes and programs. One week he will be writing a play. Again he will be inventing some mechanical device. He has tried several different courses in mechanical engineering but has not completed any of them.
26. F. has an idea that he can become a singer but he refuses to spend his time in the rigid and arduous training that would be required. He buys cheap books on voice culture. When he gets money enough ahead to take lessons he forgets his musical ambition and drinks or gambles.
27. L. was the “simple Simon” in his home town. During the war he was rejected for military service so he decided to go to the city to work. Here he earned fair money, more than at home. The people at home used to tease him but at first he got by fairly well in Minneapolis. Later he went to Detroit because the fellows where he worked in Minneapolis used “to run him.” They used to tease him in Detroit and he left two jobs there on that account. He is the type of person that invites teasing. He puts himself in the way of it but resents it if it reaches a certain extent. With the slack season in industry in 1921-22 he had a hard time to get along but he would not return home.
28. H. is a man who thinks that he is getting the worst of every deal he has with others. He says that at home he was imposed on by his people so he left. He is always on the lookout for plots directed against him. If he is working along with others on a job and a bad piece of work falls his way he concludes that it happened purposely. However, he is ready to gloat over favors. His best efforts are made to ingratiate himself with others. Whenever he leaves a place, he does so with bitterness in his heart. He usually keeps his grudge to himself.
29. M. is a good worker but a transient. He behaves well when sober but he becomes quarrelsome when drunk. If he is not discharged because of a drunken scene he usually quits voluntarily because he feels ashamed of himself. He argues a great deal when sober but he has the ability to control himself. His periods of drunkenness last from a week to ten days and are staged whenever his finances will permit. Not infrequently he is arrested while drunk.
Crises in the life of the person, as family conflict, for example, the feeling of failure, disgrace or embarrassment, the fear of punishment for the commission of an offense may cause a man to desert home and community. With the severance of family and social ties the man or boy is all the more likely to drift aimlessly from place to place, and at last perhaps find himself permanently in the group of migratory and casual laborers.
Conflict at home forces many men and boys into the group of homeless men. Not infrequently boys run away from home because of difficulties with their people. One youth says that his father tried to tell him “where to head in at,” and he “wouldn’t stand for it.” Another boy could not get along with his brothers who were older than he. They tried to “boss” him.
Many men in Hobohemia manifest no inclination to wander but are as completely cut off from their home associations as are the migrants. These men of the “home guard” types may have had trouble with their parents or with their wives.
30. H. claims that he was married and that he held a job as traveling salesman. He maintained an apartment on the South Side where he left his wife while he was away on trips through the Southwest. His story is that his wife was untrue to him and he divorced her. This experience “broke him up” so that he quit his job and went West where he remained a year. Today he loafs on West Madison Street and blames his wife for his failure in life. The divorced wife’s story learned from other sources lays considerable of the responsibility at his feet. This much of his story is true: he was not in the tramp class before he married. The circumstances surrounding his home trouble were unfortunate and were partly due to the shortcomings of both.
31. G. lays the blame for his condition upon family trouble. He has not lived with his wife for nine years. They are not divorced because he and his wife are both Catholic and do not believe in it. He worked most of the time before their separation and claims that he owned his own home which is now in the possession of his wife. What his wife is doing now he does not know nor does he know anything about their child. He is content where he is; doing just enough work to pay expenses.
Deaths in a family will sometimes turn a person out into the world and he may drift into the hobo and tramp group.
32. M.’s father died when he was about six years old. Five years later his mother died. Kindly neighbors took him in charge by turns. It seemed to him that wherever he was the people would parade the fact that they were taking “care of” someone else’s child. It was charity. He stayed with several different families. Some of them he liked and others he didn’t. Some sent him to school and others didn’t seem to care what became of him. More than one family tried to pass him on to others on the ground that it was too much of an expense. When he began to be old enough to work then they all wanted him. He hated it all so he left the country. He came through Chicago on his way to Texas. (A sixteen-year-old boy and small for his age.) He said he had a brother in the cavalry who was stationed in Texas. The brother tried to persuade him to wait till he had saved enough money to pay his fare but he preferred to take his “chances,” so he was “beating his way.”
Embarrassing situations often make it easier to leave home than to remain and face the criticism or sympathy of the public. On the road, a man is more or less immune to attacks upon his self-consciousness and self-respect, for his relations to other persons are loose and transient and he has no status to maintain. The opposite is true in his home town where his every act is known.
33. One man who works in and near Chicago claims that he was put on the “bum” by a woman. He was to have been married to this girl and prepared for the wedding in good faith. A few days before the ceremony she ran away with another man. He was laughed at by his friends and rather than remain and for a long time be the butt of the joke, he packed his things and has not been back since. His home is in a country town in southern Illinois, and although he has been near the place several times during the past ten years he has never returned.
34. F. is another case of injured pride. For some boyish prank he had been sent to the reformatory for three years. Upon his release he was given transportation home and started in high glee. His people met him at the station and took him home. Although he was treated well he felt uncomfortable. “They treated me good because I happened to be a part of the family. I felt like I didn’t belong there, so as soon as it got dark I skinned out. They write to me to come back and maybe I will after a while.” He is an average man of the migratory worker type. He comes to Chicago when he has money and when he is “broke” he goes out on some job and is not seen for two or three months or until he has another stake. He gets arrested now and then but only on petty offenses that he commits while drunk.
The following case shows that a sense of failure and fear of ridicule may force a boy to leave his home community:
35. This lad was working in a grocery store at the age of twelve. He became dissatisfied with the job and asked for a raise which was denied. He was somewhat embarrassed at being set back and lest he be laughed at for staying on after making a demand he quit. Someone asked him what he would do since there was no other job to be had. This was really another challenge and he met it with the reply that Podunk was not the only place to work. He left home to make his bluff good.
He met with many reverses. He was small and no one wanted to hire him. So he begged and he “managed.” Sometimes he did odd jobs, but he didn’t go home. Other people had left home and come back beaten and had to take the “horse laugh” and he did not admire any of them. He couldn’t think of going back unless he had more money than when he left and better clothes, so he went on. He learned to like the road and he traveled over the country for about two years before he went back. When he did return he was in a position to talk. He had some money to spend, he had seen the country. He had been East and West, and he had been to sea. He had something to talk about. But he only remained in his home town long enough to stir up admiration and envy and he was off again. He is still under twenty-one and is still traveling in response to the same urge.
Other individuals began their migratory career by fleeing from the consequences of some offense. If the offense is of such gravity that the consequences seem to outweigh the advantages of remaining in the community, then flight is the natural course.
36. A. states that he left home to avoid the wrath of his father. He had been to town with the horse and buggy. On the way home the horse became excited, left the road, ran into a post, and broke the buggy. His father was absent for the day and he and his brothers tried to repair the buggy so that the parent would not suspect. It could not be fixed and they all knew what the consequences would be. The brothers helped him pack up and he ran away. He did not return for three years; then it was only to remain for a short time.
37. Red left home because he feared the consequences of an affair with a woman. He claims that the woman had relations with another man and that he was not sure that the child would be his. The other man was a Mexican and Red says that he has heard since that the child is a dark-skinned little fellow and that eases his conscience.
38. O. could not get along with his wife. They were divorced and he was ordered by the court to pay her thirty dollars a month. He paid it faithfully for a couple of months and then failed for a month or two. She had him arrested and he agreed to make good. As soon as he was released, he fled the country. He has been living in and about Chicago the past year. It has been two or three years since he left home. He has not communicated with his home because he fears arrest. His alimony bill has mounted to terrifying proportions. He hopes that his wife is married again.
In certain situations racial or national traits cause discrimination in employment and so result in a descent from regular to casual work. So far as selection for employment is adverse to the Negroes they tend to recruit the ranks of homeless men. During the war, a much higher proportion of foreign-born of German origin was observed on West Madison Street than had previously been reported. Interviews with certain Russians on the “main stem” in the spring of 1922 suggest that the public disapproval of Bolshevism had reacted unfavorably on the chances for employment of this nationality in the United States.
Wanderlust is a longing for new experience. It is the yearning to see new places, to feel the thrill of new sensations, to encounter new situations, and to know the freedom and the exhilaration of being a stranger.
In its pure form the desire for new experience results in motion, change, danger, instability, social irresponsibility. It is to be seen in simple form in the prowling and meddling activities of the child, and the love of adventure and travel in the boy and man. It ranges in moral quality from the pursuit of game and the pursuit of pleasure to the pursuit of knowledge and the pursuit of ideals. It is found equally in the vagabond and the scientific explorer.[23]
Even those of us who seem to have settled down quite comfortably to exacting routine are sometimes intolerably stirred by the wanderlust. It comes upon us unaware; and often we cut away and go. There are automobiles, railway cars, steamships, airplanes—serving little other purpose, really, than the gratification of wander tendencies. Usually we do not say it so openly of course; we make good reasons for travelling, for not “staying put.” Many a business man has developed a perfect technique for escaping from his rut; many a laborer has invented a physical inability to work steadily that lets him out into the drifting current when monotony sets in on the job. Life is full of these moral side doors; but we need not view man’s rationalizing power cynically, merely understandingly. The escapes he contrives are a damaging critique of the modern mode of life. We may infer from them the superior adjustments we strive so blindly toward.[24]
Wanderlust is a wish of the person. Its expression in the form of tramping, “making” the harvest field, roughing it, pioneering, is a social pattern of American life. The fascination of the life of the road is, in part, disclosed in the following case-study.
39. S. who is 19 years old has been a wanderer for nearly four years. He does not know why he travels except that he gets thrills out of it. He says that there is nothing that he likes better than to catch trains out of a town where the police are rather strict. When he can outwit the “bulls” he gets a “kick” out of it. He would rather ride the passenger trains than the freights because he can “get there” quicker, and then, they are watched closer. He likes to tell of making “big jumps” on passenger trains as from the coast to Chicago in five days, or from Chicago to Kansas City or Omaha in one day. He only works long enough in one place to get a “grubstake,” or enough money to live on for a few days.
He says that he knows that he would be better off if he would settle down at some steady job. He has tried it a few times but the monotony of it made him so restless that he had to leave. He thinks that he might be able to stay in a city if he had a steady job and he agreed to take such a job if he could get it. Jobs were scarce and the investigator promised to take him to the United Charities to help him get placed.
The following morning the lad came to the office with another boy with whom he had become acquainted that morning. He had changed his mind about that job but wanted to thank everyone who had taken an interest in him. He and his “buddy” were going to “make the Harvest.”
The longing to see the world is often stimulated in a boy by reason of the experiences of some relative or friend whom he admires. One boy went on the road because of the influence his uncle had upon him. The uncle did not advise him to leave home, in fact, he did not know very much about the boy. But the uncle had been to war, and had traveled in China, Alaska, and South America. The boy had to go on the road to become disillusioned. He now knows that his uncle is a plain tramp and that he himself has become a hobo.