Chapter I: Front Matter

=TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE=

Footnotes have been placed at the end of their respective chapters.

THE HOBO
THE SOCIOLOGY OF THE HOMELESS MAN

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS

THE BAKER AND TAYLOR COMPANY, NEW YORK
THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, LONDON
THE MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA, TOKYO
THE MISSION BOOK COMPANY, SHANGHAI

THE HOBO

THE SOCIOLOGY OF THE
HOMELESS MAN

BY NELS ANDERSON

A STUDY PREPARED FOR THE CHICAGO
COUNCIL OF SOCIAL AGENCIES UNDER
THE DIRECTION OF THE COMMITTEE
ON HOMELESS MEN

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
CHICAGO · ILLINOIS

COPYRIGHT 1923 BY THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
PUBLISHED MAY 1923

COMPOSED AND PRINTED BY
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, U.S.A.

EDITOR’S PREFACE

The present volume is intended to be the first of a series of studies of the urban community and of city life. The old familiar problems of our communal and social life--poverty, crime, and vice--assume new and strange forms under the conditions of modern urban existence. Inherited custom, tradition, all our ancient social and political heritages--human nature itself--have changed and are changing under the influence of the modern urban environment.

The man whose restless disposition made him a pioneer on the frontier tends to become a “homeless man”--a hobo and a vagrant--in the modern city. From the point of view of their biological predispositions, the pioneer and the hobo are perhaps the same temperamental type; from the point of view of their socially acquired traits, they are something quite different.

The city, more than any other product of man’s genius and labors, represents the effort of mankind to remake the world in accordance with its wishes, but the city, once made, compels man to conform to the structure and the purposes he himself has imposed upon it. If it is true that man made the city, it is quite as true that the city is now making man. That is certainly a part of what we mean when we speak of the “urban” as contrasted with the “rural” mind. In any case, it is true that within the circle of these two tendencies, man’s disposition, on the one hand, to create a world in which he can live, and, on the other, to adapt himself to the world which he himself has created, all, or most all of the problems and the processes are included with which the student of society is positively concerned. These processes go on, and these problems arise everywhere that men, coming together in order to live, find themselves compelled to carry on a common and communal life. In cities, however, and particularly in great cities, where social life is more intense than elsewhere, the processes produce new and strange effects, and the problems are more poignant and pressing.

A changing population of from 30,000 to 75,000 homeless men in Chicago, living together within the area of thirty or forty city blocks, has created a milieu in which new and unusual personal types flourish and new and unsuspected problems have arisen.

If the city were to be identified, as it sometimes has been, with its mere physical structure, its buildings, streets, street railways, telephones, and other communal efficiencies; if the city were, in fact, a mere complex of mechanical and administrative devices for realizing certain clearly defined purposes, the problem of the city would be one of engineering and of administration merely. But this takes no account of human nature; it takes no account of what we have come to refer to in industry as the “problem of personnel.” At least it seems to assume that the individual men and women for whom these organized agencies--economic, social, and political--exist, and by whom they are conducted, remain, in all their varied associations and relations, practically the same. Recent observation, on the other hand, has led to the conclusion that human nature, as we ordinarily understand it, while it is based on certain fundamental but not clearly definable human traits and predispositions, is very largely a product of the environment, and particularly the human environment in which the individual happens to find himself. That means that every community, through the very character of the environment which it imposes upon the individuals that compose it, tends to determine the personal traits as it does determine the language, the vocation, social values, and, eventually, the personal opinions, of the individuals who compose it.

It is the purpose of this and the succeeding studies in this series to describe the changes that are taking place in the life of the city and its peoples, and to investigate the city’s problems in the light of these changes, and conditions of life generally of urban people. For this reason, this study of the “homeless man” has sought to see him, first of all, in his own habitat; in the social milieu which he has created for himself within the limits of the larger community by which he is surrounded, but from which he is, in large part, an outcast.

It is interesting to notice that within the area of his own social environment, the hobo has created, or at least there has grown up in response to his needs, a distinct and relatively independent local community, with its own economic, social, and social-political institutions.

It is assumed that the study here made of the “Hobohemia” of Chicago, as well as the studies that are being planned for other areas and aspects of the city and its life, will at least be comparable with the natural areas and the problematic aspects of other American cities. It is, in fact, the purpose of these studies to emphasize not so much the particular and local as the generic and universal aspects of the city and its life, and so make these studies not merely a contribution to our information but to our permanent scientific knowledge of the city as a communal type.

ROBERT E. PARK

COMMITTEE’S PREFACE

The Committee on Homeless Men was organized by the Executive Committee of the Chicago Council of Social Agencies on June 16, 1922, to study the problem of the migratory casual worker. Its members included men and women in contact with the problem of homeless men from different points of view.

Mr. Nels Anderson, a graduate student in sociology in the University of Chicago, was selected to make the study. Mr. Anderson was already thoroughly familiar with the life of the migratory casual worker. He had shared their experiences “on the road” and at work, and had visited the Hobohemian areas of many of the large western cities. In the summer of 1921, he made a study of 400 migrants. Early in 1922, through the generous assistance and encouragement of Dr. William A. Evans, Dr. Ben L. Reitman, and Joel D. Hunter, he began a study of homeless men in Chicago, in connection with a field-study course at the University of Chicago.

The assumption of this study by the Chicago Council of Social Agencies, in co-operation with the Juvenile Protective Association, enabled an enlargement of its scope.[1]

The object of this inquiry, from the standpoint of the Committee, was to secure those facts which would enable social agencies to deal intelligently with the problems created by the continuous ebb and flow, out of and into Chicago, of tens of thousands of foot-loose and homeless men. Only through an understanding both of the human nature of the migratory casual worker, and of the economic and social forces which have shaped his personality, could there be devised any fundamental program for social agencies interested in his welfare.

Earlier studies of the migratory casual workers in the United States have been limited almost entirely to statistical investigation. In the present inquiry a more intensive study of cases was decided upon in preference to an extensive statistical survey. For the past twelve months Mr. Anderson lived in Hobohemia, and in a natural and informal way secured upward of sixty life-histories, and collected, in addition, a mass of documents and other materials which are listed in Appendix B. Mr. Anderson has had, in certain parts of the field work, the assistance of C. W. Allen, L. G. Brown, G. F. Davis, B. W. Bridgman, F. C. Frey, E. H. Koster, G. S. Sobel, H. D. Wolf, and R. N. Wood, students in sociology at the University of Chicago, and has utilized the results of past studies of this subject by students in the department.

The Committee on Homeless Men held many meetings which were devoted to outlining the plan of investigation, to reports upon the progress of field work, and to the drafting of the findings and recommendations which appear as Appendix A.

The Committee and the author are indebted to the social agencies and to the many persons who co-operated in furnishing data for this investigation. They desire also to express their appreciation to Professor Robert E. Park for the inclusion of this volume as the first of a series of studies on the urban community of which he is editor, and for his services in the preparation of the manuscript for publication.

ERNEST W. BURGESS, _Chairman_
University of Chicago

WILFRED S. REYNOLDS, _Secretary_
Director, Chicago Council of Social Agencies

BRIGADIER JOHN E. ATKINS
Salvation Army, Workingman’s Palace

MISS JESSIE BINFORD
Juvenile Protective Association

MRS. JOSEPH T. BOWEN
Juvenile Protective Association

FREDERICK S. DEIBLER
Advisory Board, Illinois Free Employment Service

T. ARNOLD HILL
Chicago Urban League

JOEL D. HUNTER
United Charities of Chicago

M. J. KARPF
Jewish Social Service Bureau

GEORGE B. KILBEY
Chicago Christian Industrial League

REV. MOSES E. KILEY
Central Charity Bureau

BRIGADIER DAVID MILLER
Salvation Army

DR. BEN L. REITMAN
Chicago Department of Health

WILLOUGHBY G. WALLING
President, Chicago Council of Social Agencies

FOOTNOTES:

[1] A part of the investigation relating to the effects upon the boy of association with tramps, especially made for the Juvenile Protective Association, is not included in this report, but will appear in an early number of the _Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology_.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART I. HOBOHEMIA, THE HOME OF
THE HOMELESS MAN

PAGE

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xv

CHAPTER

I. HOBOHEMIA DEFINED 3

II. THE JUNGLES: THE HOMELESS MAN ABROAD 16

III. THE LODGING-HOUSE: THE HOMELESS MAN AT HOME 27

IV. “GETTING BY” IN HOBOHEMIA 40

PART II. TYPES OF HOBOS

CHAPTER

V. WHY DO MEN LEAVE HOME? 61

VI. THE HOBO AND THE TRAMP 87

VII. THE HOME GUARD AND THE BUM 96

VIII. WORK 107

PART III. THE HOBO PROBLEM

CHAPTER

IX. HEALTH 125

X. SEX LIFE OF THE HOMELESS MAN 137

XI. THE HOBO AS A CITIZEN 150