40. W. left home when he was sixteen. He was the oldest of a family of five boys and three girls. His father owned a farm in Michigan and was usually hard pressed for means. He needed help at home and so W. was kept out of school a great deal. When he did go to school it was hard for him to learn. When the father saw that the younger boys were passing W. in school he decided that it was time wasted to send W. to school. W. was big for his age and the father imposed more work on him than on the other boys who were smaller. W. felt that he was not getting a square deal so he ran away.
He remained away a year before he dared to write. One reason he did not write sooner was because he was not earning much money, and the other reason was that he feared his father would hunt him down and force him to return. When he felt secure he wrote more frequently and most of his letters were boastful. He told of prospering and he moved from place to place often to show the other children at home that he could go and come as he pleased. He traveled in different parts of the country and from each part he would write painting his experiences in a rosy hue.
He succeeded in stirring up unrest in the hearts of the other boys who left home one by one. In about two years N. followed W. L. soon began to feel that he too could make “his way” so he left. All five of the boys left home before they were sixteen. Each felt that he was wasting his time about home while the other boys were seeing the country and making good money. Only one of the five boys returned home. The others roamed the country following migratory work. One married but only lived with his wife a year and then deserted her.
The father always blamed W. for leading the boys away. W. used to send presents to the other members of the family. He used to send the mother money now and then. He was the idol of the rest of the children and they left home to follow in his footsteps.
A visit to the “jungles” at the junction of any railroad or at the outskirts of any large city or even small town reveals the extent to which the tramp is consciously and enthusiastically imitated. Around the camp fire watching the coffee pot boil or the “mulligan” cook, the boys are often found mingling with the tramps and listening in on their stories of adventure.
To boys the tramp is not a problem, but a human being, and an interesting one at that. He has no cares nor burdens to hold him down. All he is concerned with is to live and seek adventure, and in this he personifies the heroes in the stories the boys have read. Tramp life is an invitation to a career of varied experiences and adventures. All this is a promise and a challenge. A promise that all the wishes that disturb him shall be fulfilled and a challenge to leave the work-a-day world that he is bound to.
No single cause can be found to explain how a man may be reduced to the status of a homeless, migratory, and casual laborer. In any given case all of the factors analyzed above may have entered into the process of economic and social degradation. Indeed, the conjunction of several of these causes is necessary to explain the extent and the nature of the casualization and mobility of labor in this country. Unemployment and seasonal work disorganize the routine of life of the individual worker and destroy regular habits of work but at the same time thousands of boys and men moved by wanderlust are eager to escape the monotony of stable and settled existence. No matter how perfect a social and economic order may yet be devised there will always remain certain “misfits,” the industrially inadequate, the unstable and egocentric, who will ever tend to conflict with constituted authority in industry, society, and government.
The description, however, of these causes of vagabondage—(a) unemployment and seasonal work, (b) industrial inadequacy, (c) defects of personality, (d) crises in the life of the person, (e) racial or national discrimination, (f) wanderlust—is a necessary condition to any solution of the problem of the homeless man. A program is remedial and not preventive that does not grapple with the fundamental causes here revealed. These causes have roots at the very core of our American life, in our industrial system, in education, cultural and vocational, in family relations, in the problems of racial and immigrant adjustment, and in the opportunity offered or denied by society for the expression of the wishes of the person.