This study has pictured the life and the problems of the group of homeless migratory and casual workers in Chicago. It now remains to sum up the findings of the investigation and to outline the recommendations which seem to flow from the facts.[72]
1. The homeless casual and migratory workers, while found in all parts of the city, are segregated in great numbers in four distinct areas: West Madison Street, Lower South State Street (near the Loop), North Clark Street, and Upper State Street (the Negro section).
2. The number of homeless men in these areas fluctuates greatly with the seasons and with conditions of employment.
3. The concentration of casual and migratory workers in this city is the natural result of two factors: (a) the development of Chicago as a great industrial community with diversified enterprises requiring a variety of unskilled as well as skilled laborers, and (b) the position of Chicago as a center of transportation, of commerce and of employment for the states of the Mississippi Valley.
4. The homeless men in Chicago fall into five groups: (a) the seasonal laborer, (b) the migratory, casual laborer, the hobo, (c) the migratory non-worker, the tramp, (d) the non-migratory casual laborer, the so-called “home guard,” (e) the bum. Groups b, c, d, and e constitute what are known in economic writings as “The Residuum of Industry.” In addition to these groups of the homeless casual and migratory workers are the groups of seasonal laborers and the men out of work, which expand and contract with the periods of economic depression and of industrial prosperity.
5. The causes which reduce a man to the status of a homeless migratory and casual worker may be classified under five main heads as follows:
a) Unemployment and Seasonal Work: these maladjustments of modern industry which disorganize the routine of life of the individual and destroy regular habits of work.
b) Industrial Inadequacy: “the misfits of industry,” whether due to physical handicaps, mental deficiency, occupational disease, or lack of vocational training.
c) Defects of Personality: as feeble-mindedness, constitutional inferiority, or egocentricity, which lead to the conflict of the person with constituted authority in industry, society, and government.
d) Crises in the Life of the Person: as family conflicts, misconduct, and crime, which exile a man from home and community and detach him from normal social ties.
e) Racial or National Discrimination: where race, nationality, or social class of the person enters as a factor of adverse selection for employment.
f) Wanderlust: the desire for new experience, excitement, and adventure, which moves the boy “to see the world.”
6. To satisfy the wants and wishes of the thousands of homeless migratory and casual workers at the lowest possible cost, specialized institutions and enterprises have been established in Chicago. These include:
a) Employment agencies.
b) Restaurants and lodging-houses.
c) Barber colleges.
d) Outfitting stores and clothing exchanges.
e) Pawnshops.
f) Movies and burlesques.
g) Missions.
h) Local political and social organizations, as “The Industrial Workers of the World” and the “Hobo College.”
i) Secular street meetings and radical bookstores.
7. Chicago as the great clearing house of employment for the states of the Mississippi Valley naturally and inevitably becomes the temporary home of men out of work for the entire region. The following appear to be the facts in regard to the workers and the conditions of employment:
a) Fluctuations of industry, such as seasonal changes, and of unemployment, force large numbers of men into the group of homeless migratory and casual workers.
b) At the same time, the homeless migratory and casual worker develops irregular habits of work and a life-policy of “living from hand to mouth.”
c) Employment records indicate that the lower grade of casual workers prefer work by the day, or employment by the week or two, to “permanent” positions of three months or longer.
d) The Illinois Free Employment offices, efficiently administered with simple but well-kept records and with courteous treatment of applicants, placed 50,482 persons in the year ending September 30, 1922, mainly in positions in and near Chicago.
e) The private employment agencies dealing with the homeless man, about fifty in number, which are, in general, poorly equipped, with the minimum of record keeping required by law and with inconsiderate treatment of applicants, place about 200,000 men a year in positions, for the most part, outside of Chicago.
f) The law relating to private employment agencies as approved June 15, 1909, in force July 1, 1909, and as amended and approved June 7, 1911, in force July 1, 1911, appears not to be enforced in two points:
i) the requirement that sections three (3), four (4), and five (5) of the law be posted in a conspicuous place in each room of the agency; and
ii) the return to the applicant of three-fifths of the registration and other fees upon failure of applicant to accept position or upon his discharge for cause.
8. The health and hygiene of the homeless migratory and casual worker is of vital concern not only for his economic efficiency but also because of the relation of his high mobility to the spread of communicable diseases.
9. The homeless migratory and casual workers constitute a womanless group. The results of this sex isolation are:
a) No opportunity for the expression and sublimation of the sex impulse in the normal life of the family.
b) In a few cases, the substitution for marriage of free unions more or less casual, usually terminated at the will of the man without due regard to the claims of the woman.
c) The dependence of the greatest number of homeless men upon the professional prostitute of the lowest grade and the cheapest sort.
d) The prevalence of sex perversions, as masturbation and homosexuality.
10. The attraction for the boy of excitement and adventure renders him peculiarly susceptible to the “call of the road.”
a) Hundreds of Chicago boys, mainly but not entirely of wage-earning families, every spring “beat their way” to the harvest fields, impelled by wanderlust, and the opportunity for work away from home.
b) Of these a certain proportion acquire the migratory habit and may pass through successive stages from a high-grade seasonal worker to the lowest type of bum.
c) The boy on the road and in the city is constantly under the pressure of homosexual exploitation by confirmed perverts in the migratory group.
d) Certain areas of the city frequented by boys have been found to be resorts and rendezvous for homosexual prostitution.
11. While the majority of the homeless migratory workers are American citizens of native stock:
a) They are in large numbers for practical purposes disfranchised because they seldom remain in any community long enough to secure legal residence.
b) They constitute a shifting and shiftless group without property and family, and with no effective participation in the civic life of the community.
c) According to statements from police authorities they contribute but slightly to the volume of serious crime.
d) Both on the road and in the city, they are at all times subject to arbitrary handling and arrest by private and public police and to summary trial and sentence by the court.
e) The attitude of Chicago, like that of other communities toward the homeless man, has been a policy of defense intrusted to the police department for execution.
12. Social service to the homeless migratory and casual worker has for the most part been remedial rather than preventive; unorganized and haphazard rather than organized and co-ordinated.
a) Professional beggars and fakers exploit public sympathy and credulity for individual gain to the disadvantage of the men who need and deserve assistance.
b) The missions and certain churches feed, clothe, and provide shelter for several thousand men during the winter months.
c) The Dawes Hotel, the Christian Industrial League, and the Salvation Army hotels provide lodging at a low charge.
d) The Salvation Army maintains the Industrial Home with workshops which accommodate a limited number of men.
e) The United Charities and the Central Charity (Catholic) Bureau, although concerned mainly with family relief, give certain forms of assistance to the homeless man.
f) The Jewish Social Service Bureau maintains a department for homeless men, which acts as a referring agency to two shelter houses.
g) The American Legion and other patriotic organizations have provided assistance of various types to the ex-service man out of employment.
h) The Municipal Lodging House, which closed its doors in 1918, has not been reopened, despite the evident need of the winters of 1920-21 and 1921-22.
i) The Cook County agent provides free transportation to non-residents to place of legal residence and refers residents to Oak Forest Infirmary.
j) The county and city hospitals and dispensaries provide free medical care.
k) Unco-ordinated effort of the organizations for service to the homeless man has resulted in duplication of activities, a low standard of work, and the neglect of a constructive program of rehabilitation.
The findings of this study indicate conclusively: (a) that any fundamental solution of the problem is national and not local, and (b) that the problem of the homeless migratory worker is but an aspect of the larger problems of industry, such as unemployment, seasonal work, and labor turnover.
National Program
The committee approves, as a national program for the control of the problem, the recommendations suggested by the studies on unemployment and migratory laborers contained in the Final Report of the Commission on Industrial Relations (pp. 114-15; 103):
1. The enactment of appropriate legislation modifying the title of the Bureau of Immigration to “Bureau of Immigration and Employment” and providing the statutory authority and appropriations necessary for—
a) The establishment of a national employment system,[73] under the Department of Labor, with a staff of well-paid and specially qualified officials in the main offices at least.
b) The licensing, regulation, and supervision of all private employment agencies doing an interstate business.
c) The investigation and preparation of plans for the regularization of employment, the decasualization of labor, the utilization of public work to fill in periods of business depression, insurance against unemployment in such trades and industries as may seem desirable, and other measures designed to promote regularity and steadiness of employment.
2. The immediate creation of a special board made up of the properly qualified officials from the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Interior, and Labor, and from the Board of Army Engineers to prepare plans for performing the largest possible amount of public work during the winter, and to devise a program for the future for performing, during periods of depression, such public work as road building, construction of public building, reforestation, irrigation, and drainage of swamps. The success attending the construction of the Panama Canal indicates the enormous national construction works which might be done to the advantage of the entire nation during such periods of depression. Similar boards or commissions should be established in the various states and municipalities.
3. The Interstate Commerce Commission should be directed by Congress to investigate and report the most feasible plan of providing for the transportation of workers at the lowest reasonable rates, and, at the same time, measures necessary to eliminate the stealing of rides on railways. If special transportation rates for workers are provided, tickets may be issued only to those who secure employment through public employment agencies.
4. The establishment by states, municipalities, and, through the Department of Labor, the federal government, of sanitary workingmen’s hotels in which the prices for accommodations shall be adjusted to the cost of operation. If such workingmen’s hotels are established, the Post Office Department should establish branch postal savings banks in connection therewith.
5. The establishment by the municipal, state, and federal governments of colonies or farms for “down-and-outs” in order to rehabilitate them by means of proper food, regular habits of living and regular work that will train them for lives of usefulness. Such colonies should provide for hospital treatment of cases which require it.
The Chicago Plan for the Homeless Man
For the local situation and for such action as lies in the hands (a) of the citizens of this community, (b) of the city of Chicago, (c) of Cook County, and (d) of the state of Illinois, this committee recommends:
I. As a Program for Immediate Action—
1. The establishment of a Municipal Clearing House for Non-Family Men.
a) Purpose:
i) To provide facilities for the registration, examination, classification, and treatment of homeless migratory and casual workers in order, on the basis of individual case-study.
ii) To secure by reference to the appropriate agency emergency relief, physical and mental rehabilitation, industrial training, commitment to institutional care, return to legal residence, and satisfactory employment.
b) Organization: The Clearing House will maintain the following departments:
i) Information Bureau: to provide information in regard to employment, public institutions, social agencies, indorsed hotels, and lodging-houses, etc.
ii) Registration: by card, giving name, age, occupation, physical condition, reference, residence, nearest relative or friend, number of lodgings, disposition, and all other information.
iii) Vocational Clinic: to provide medical, psychiatric, psychological, and social examination as a basis of treatment.
iv) Records Office: to record findings of examination, to clear with other agencies, local and national, and to enter recommendations and results of treatment.
v) Social Service Bureau: to provide for both immediate and after-care service for the men under the supervision of the Clearing House.
c) Personnel: to consist of director, clerical force, interviewers, social workers, and experts, as physician, psychiatrist, psychologist, and sociologist.
d) Intake of Clearing House: registrants to be referred to the Clearing House by:
i) Citizens, to whom homeless men have applied for relief.
ii) Missions, where food or lodging have been received by homeless men.
iii) Charities.
iv) Travelers’ Aid Society.
v) Local organizations.
vi) Police Department: closing of police stations to lodgers and provision for supply of such applicants with tickets of admission to the Clearing House; direction by police to the Clearing House of persons found for the first time begging.
vii) Courts, police stations, House of Correction, and county jail: provision to every homeless man or boy upon discharge with ticket of admission to Clearing House guaranteeing three days’ liberty with food, lodging, and an opportunity for honest employment.
e) Classification: As a result of examination in the Vocational Clinic the men will be divided for treatment into three groups: (1) boys and youths, (2) employable men, and (3) unemployable men. The unemployable will be further divided into: (i) the physically handicapped, (ii) the mentally defective, (iii) alcoholics and drug addicts, (iv) the habitually idle, (v) the untrained, and (vi) the aged.
f) Treatment: Upon the basis of the preceding examination and classification, the men will be given the following services:
i) Those in need of emergency relief, temporary lodging, meals and bath, by the agencies in the field and by the Municipal Lodging House (when reopened).
ii) Those in need of clean clothes, free laundry work at the Municipal Laundry (to be established).
iii) Those who are proper charges of other communities and who may be better cared for there, transportation from relatives or from Cook County agent.
iv) Those in need of medical service, treatment at the Cook County Hospital, Municipal Tuberculosis Sanitarium, or dispensaries, and observation at the Psychopathic Hospital.
v) For the unemployable physically disabled, education as provided in the Chicago plan for the physically handicapped (under consideration by the state in co-operation with private agencies).
vi) For the unemployable but physically able-bodied, individual arrangements for industrial education.
vii) For the aged and permanently physically disabled, placement in the Oak Forest Home.
viii) For the employable, references with vocational diagnosis and recommendation to the Illinois Free Employment offices and other employment agencies.
ix) For persons under the supervision of the Municipal Clearing House, when desirable, individual case work and after-care.
x) For incorrigible vagrants and beggars for whom no constructive treatment is provided in the program for immediate action (see constructive treatment in “Program for Future Action”) commitment to the House of Correction.
g) Administration: The Clearing House to be administered by the city of Chicago under the City Department of Public Welfare; the director of the Clearing House to be also superintendent of the Lodging House and of the Municipal Laundry and the Municipal Bath House, a physician on full time to be assigned by the City Department of Public Health, a psychiatrist and psychologist by the state criminologist of the State Department of Public Welfare.
h) Advisory Committee: Under the auspices of the Chicago Council of Social Agencies, an advisory committee to the director of the Clearing House be organized to be composed of public and private agencies and civic, philanthropic, commercial, industrial, and labor organizations, co-operating with the Clearing House.
i) Financing: An appeal to be made at once to the city council for funds to equip and maintain the Municipal Clearing House, Municipal Lodging House, Laundry and Bath House, to provide for the following budget:
Tentative Annual Budget for Caring Adequately for Homeless Transient Men in Chicago
| Clearing House | Maximum* | Minimum |
| Rent of headquarters, including light and heat | $ 2,500.00 | |
| Heat and light in free quarters | $ 1,000.00 | |
| Equipment | 1,000.00 | 1,000.00 |
| Office supplies, stationery, printing, etc. | 500.00 | 500.00 |
| Staff: | ||
| Superintendent | 6,000.00 | 4,000.00 |
| Assistant | 2,500.00 | |
| Six interviewers and field workers | 9,000.00 | |
| Two interviewers and field workers | 4,000.00 | |
| Two stenographers | 2,400.00 | |
| One stenographer | 1,500.00 | |
| Physician (part time) | 1,800.00 | |
| Psychiatrist (part time) | 1,800.00 | |
| Director of vocational guidance | 4,000.00 | |
| Janitors | 1,800.00 | 1,800.00 |
| ———— | ———— | |
| Total | $33,300.00 | $13,800.00 |
* The maximum budget represents expenditures in the event headquarters cannot be secured free of rent, services of physician and psychiatrist cannot be secured from city and Institute for Juvenile Research, and at a time when a full staff will be necessary.
2. The reopening of the Municipal Lodging House under the following conditions (adapted from “Program for Model Municipal Lodging House,” by Raymond Robins):
a) Administration: under the City Department of Public Health in close affiliation with the Clearing House for Homeless Men.
b) Purpose: to provide free, under humane and sanitary conditions, food, lodging, and bath, with definite direction for such permanent relief as is needed for any man or boy stranded in Chicago.
c) Registration and preliminary physical examination: made in Clearing House a condition to admission.
d) Standard of service:
i) Sanitary building.
ii) Wholesome food.
iii) Dormitories quiet, beds comfortable and clean.
iv) First-aid treatment: vaccination, bandages and simple medicaments furnished free.
v) Isolation ward for men suffering from inebriety, insanity, venereal diseases, etc.
vi) Fumigation of lodgers’ clothing, including hat and shoes, every night.
vii) Nightly shower bath required.
3. The establishment of a Municipal Laundry and a Municipal Bath House by the city of Chicago: to be operated in close affiliation with the Municipal Clearing House.
4. Utilization of existing facilities for industrial training: Co-operation with existing educational institutions for the vocational training of boys and youths and of the physically handicapped, mentally defective, and industrially inadequate who are unemployable but willing to work. (See “Program for Future Action.”)
5. Employment agencies:
a) The extension of the service of the Illinois Free Employment office.
b) The enforcement of the law relating to private employment agencies: the requirement that sections three (3), four (4), and five (5), of the law be posted in a conspicuous place in each room of the agency; and the return to the applicant of three-fifths of the registration and other fees upon the failure of applicant to accept position or upon his discharge for cause.
c) The further study of private employment agencies and of labor camps in order to provide the homeless man with adequate protection against exploitation.
6. Public health and housing:
a) The further building of sanitary workingmen’s hotels with low charge for accommodations.
b) The maintenance and raising of standards of cheap hotels in Chicago through rigid inspection and tightening of requirements.
c) Medical examination, inspection, and supervision of men in flops, together with vaccination and hospitalization of needy cases.
7. Vagrancy Court: the reorganization of the Vagrancy Court for the hearing of cases of incorrigible vagrants and beggars on the basis of the investigations of the Clearing House.
8. Protection of the boy:
a) Prevention of aimless wandering through the provision of wholesome and stimulating recreation, through the extension of all activities for boys, and through the further development of vocational education and supervision. The Vocational Guidance Bureau of the Board of Education should be removed to an area of the city free from unwholesome contacts.
b) An educational campaign organized through the Mid-West Boy’s Club Federation should be carried on in all the boys’ organizations in Chicago showing the danger of “flipping” trains and playing in railroad yards. The National Safety Council has a great deal of material which could be used in such a campaign.
c) Co-operation with such organization as the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen, the special police organizations of the railroads, the Lake Carriers Association, and automobile clubs, in a program to prevent boys wandering away from home. Pamphlets should be prepared for distribution, asking for co-operation and enforcement of working certificate regulations in this and other states, child labor laws, juvenile court laws, etc.
d) The enlistment officers of the army, navy, and marine should demand the presentation of a birth certificate in all cases in which they doubt the age of the applicant.
e) The co-operation of the managers of the hotels and lodging-houses in an effort to keep boys under seventeen out of the hotels in the Hobohemian areas, or at least to use their influence in preventing boys and men from rooming together.
f) Because most of the contacts the boy has with tramps are unwholesome, the police should not permit boys to loiter or play in the areas most frequented by the tramp population; namely, West Madison Street, South State Street, North Clark Street, and adjacent territory. Parents ought to be made aware of the nature of the contacts the boy has with the tramp in these areas and in the parks.
g) The assignment of special plain-clothes policemen experienced in dealing with vagrants to the parks and other places in which tramps congregate. They should be instructed to pick up and hold in the Detention Home any boy under seventeen years found in company with a tramp.
h) More strenuous effort should be made to occupy the leisure time of boys who frequent the districts in which the tramps congregate. It is the boy with leisure time who is the most susceptible to the unwholesome contacts. Supervised recreation should be carried on to an extent that boys who play in Hobohemian areas might be attracted to other sections. When school is not in session a more extensive program of summer camps might help.
i) Since the Juvenile Court of Cook County is equipped to investigate the cases of vagrant boys under seventeen in Chicago, and return them to their homes, all vagrant boys apprehended by anyone in the daytime should be reported to the chief probation officer, Juvenile Court. Vagrant boys over seventeen should be directed to the Clearing House.
j) After five o’clock vagrant boys under seventeen should be turned over to the police who will take them to the Detention Home, from which home they will be taken to the office of the chief probation officer the first thing in the morning.
k) Whenever a boy under seventeen is taken in custody by the police, because of contact with tramps, or whenever a boy is held as a complaining witness against a tramp, he should always be reported to the Juvenile Court. It is the responsibility of the court to put the boy in touch with some proper individual or agency, so that he will be adequately supervised and befriended in the future.
9. Publicity and public co-operation: the education of the public through news items in the daily press and editorial comment; public co-operation through tickets of admission to the Clearing House providing food and lodging in the Municipal Lodging House constantly to be distributed through societies, institutions, hotels, business offices, churches, clubs, housewives, and other citizens.
II. A Program for Future Action—
1. That a bond issue be submitted for approval to the voters of the city of Chicago providing for the erection of adequate buildings for a Municipal Clearing House, Municipal Lodging House, and Municipal Laundry and Bath House.
2. That an Industrial Institute be established by the state of Illinois in Chicago for the vocational training of the physically handicapped, mentally defective, and industrially inadequate, who are unemployable, but willing to work.
3. That a State Farm Colony for Industrial Rehabilitation be established by the state of Illinois for the compulsory detention and re-education of unemployables, such as beggars, vagrants, petty criminals, who are unwilling to receive industrial training.
4. That a Department of Industrial Training of the House of Correction be opened, pending the establishment of the State Farm Colony for Industrial Rehabilitation, for the commitment and re-education of unemployables, such as beggars, vagrants, and petty criminals.