On the Fly!: Hobo Literature and Songs, 1879–1941

The first anthology of its kind, On the Fly! brings forth the lost voices of Hobohemia. Dozens of stories, poems, songs, stories, and articles produced by hoboes are brought together to create an insider history of the subculture’s rise and fall. Adrenaline-charged tales of train hopping, scams, and political agitation are combined with humorous and satirical songs, razor sharp reportage and unique insights into the lives of the women and men who crisscrossed America in search of survival and adventure.

From iconic figures such as labor martyr Joe Hill and socialist novelist Jack London through to pioneering blues and country musicians, and little-known correspondents for the likes of the Hobo News, the authors and songwriters contained in On the Fly! run the full gamut of Hobohemia’s wide cultural and geographical embrace. With little of the original memoirs, literature, and verse remaining in print, this collection, aided by a glossary of hobo vernacular and numerous illustrations and photos, provides a comprehensive and entertaining guide to the life and times of a uniquely American icon. Read on to enter a world where hoboes, tramps, radicals, and bums gather in jungles, flop houses, and boxcars; where gandy dancers, bindlestiffs, and timber beasts roam the rails once more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: PM Press
• Release date: Sep 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781629635323

Book preview

A Tight Squeeze

William Staats

Although hobo life and lore were to change greatly over the next fifty or sixty years, one thing remained central: the excitement, hardship, and danger involved in hopping a train. By May 1869, the First Intercontinental Railway, linking the San Francisco Bay to the Missouri River, was completed and within four decades an extensive network, including 1,312 separate railroads, would allow travelers, paying or otherwise, to easily cross the country. Over time technological standardization, the increasing length of trains, and the large number of former railway workers forced out of work encouraged and facilitated a culture in which it became physically easier to grab a free ride and acquire the knowledge required to do so.

The ability to travel and find work, as well as build a reputation as a profesh, or master rider, all hinged upon locating a locomotive and then hanging on for dear life while evading railroad police and unsympathetic workers. Little surprise then that almost every memoir and study of any length included one, if not many, tales of train hopping, as well as much philosophizing upon the subject. In this early hobo memoir from 1879 William Staats recounts his tutelage at the hands of the Evangelist in riding the rails and avoiding railroad employees who might remove him or demand payment for continued travel.

The two travelers boarded a western bound freight train at Brighton. There being no accessible boxcar, they were compelled to content themselves with a seat on the rear steps of the caboose, where they were discovered and incontinently bounced after being carried some twenty miles. Ben thought this ejectment finished their ride on that train, but the Evangelist—whose name was Horton—corrected him. Creeping along in the shadow of the train until it started, they again seated themselves on the steps. This time they made but ten miles before they were discovered, when some strong adjectives were used and some hard names called, and they were warned if caught on the train again they would be dealt with in a most summary manner.

Wait for another train! exclaimed the Evangelist. Certainly not, why we have only been bounced twice!

He instructed Ben to crouch under the cars at the center of the train, and when it started walk with it, so long as he could keep up. When he found the rate of speed getting too much for him, he was to mount a ladder but not put in appearance on the roof until positive that the crew was not around.

The crew of a freight train consists of the fireman and engineer, who remain in the locomotive’s cab, a conductor, who, while the train is in motion, generally remains in his caboose, and two brakemen, front and rear, supposed to remain on top, but who, after the train has started, usually betake themselves to the engine-cab and caboose respectively. On the night runs all carry lanterns, and through them their approach is easily discernible by the sly tramp. It will now be understood why Ben was to delay mounting to the top.

Having clung to the ladder for some time he slowly raised his head above the roof and surveyed the situation. Not a light appeared in sight, but on the next car he saw the dark outlines of a man, and heard the Evangelist crooning to himself a revival hymn. He mounted to the roof, and both men sat down immediately over their respective ladders, ready to go down them on the slightest provocation. Much after the fashion of prairie-dogs, sitting at the mouth of their holes, prepared at the faintest disturbance to show a clean pair of heels and faint whisk of a tail. Several times during the ensuing hour the light of the front brakeman appeared as that individual attended to easing the train down grades. And each time our two travelers suddenly disappear; reappearing again when the coast was clear. Having gone about sixteen miles, the train side tracked to allow an eastern-bound express to pass. Ben and his companion crouched under the cars until they again started, when the ladders were resumed and ultimately the roof.

This method of travelling seemed quite pleasant to him and he was beginning to rest more at ease, and recline on his back, when a note of warning from the Evangelist aroused him, and glancing along the train he perceived lights approaching from both directions. The tramps immediately disappeared in the darkness, while the conductor and front brakeman met on the identical car to which our friend Ben was clinging. After some instructions had been given the brakeman, the political disquietudes of the day became a topic of conversation, and so interested did they become, that placing their lanterns on the roof they sat down themselves, to the intense disgust of our friend, who dared not elevate his head.

Unfortunately for him the train was a through freight and had just entered on one of the longest runs of the division. The perch that had been comfortable enough for a short occupancy, soon became quite unendurable with the continued jolting of the car. His feet grew stiff and his hands sore. Besides he had to cling close to the ladder in constant terror lest the timbers of the bridges they frequently crossed should sweep him off. To add to his misery both of the train men were great consumers of tobacco, and facing Ben’s ladder they poured upon his devoted head a torrent of tobacco juice. Moments grew to the dignity of hours, minutes to ages. Never had he been so thoroughly disgusted with politics. He wished he belonged to a despotism where the discussion of them was punishable with death. Not only dared he not elevate his head, but he was afraid to turn his face skywards at all, lest he receive in the eyes and mouth a charge of the amber juice that was being so liberally bestowed upon him.

Our hero was certainly in an unenviable position. If he ascended to the roof and gave himself up, the conductor had threatened in case he was again caught on the train to hand him over to the authorities the first stop that was made; a procedure that, under the vagrant laws would insure him ninety days in the work house; enough to totally wreck his expectations. On the other hand if he fell to the ground he was sure to be either killed or badly mangled. In this sad predicament his over-strained feelings found vent in a groan.

Railroad men, as a class, are superstitious. There are spots along each crews’ route that are vested with supernatural properties. We knew a practical man of good common sense, an engineer, who solemnly avers that on crossing a certain bridge at midnight, a large white dog always springs across the track immediately his engine leaves the bridge. Another man, a brakeman, would have deserted his train sooner than omit changing his lantern three times, from his right hand into his left, the first time he walked the train. Whatever it is in the human fabrication that yearns after the incomprehensible we know not; but that such a force is established there is verified by the scores of different religious beliefs; founded on faith or fancy as you please.

The Administration was receiving a hearty endorsement from the conductor when Ben’s groan struck on his ear. A sudden silence ensued. The conductor looked at the brakeman, and the brakeman looked at the conductor. Neither spoke. Another smothered groan came floating from out the surrounding darkness. The conductor was suddenly reminded that his way bills needed overhauling and the brakeman discovered that his presence was needed at the front of the train. Ben was left master of the situation, though unaware of the influence his groans had had in placing him there. He dragged his stiffened limbs to the top of the car, and indulged in a luxurious rub of his bespattered countenance. Presently he was joined by the Evangelist and the two recounted their experiences.

By constant watchfulness and much dodging down the ladders, they retained possession of the train during the night, and the first glimpses of the morning sun found them at Columbus; having made over one hundred and twenty miles on the train Ben had thought it impossible to ride. Stiff, sore, tired and sleepy, but in possession of the satisfaction of having taken a long step on their journey, our friends dismounted and took a look around them. While they still stood by the train the conductor passed. He gave them one look of astonishment, and with the remark, Well, I’ll be blowed! went on his way.

Travelers playing cards in a boxcar, circa 1900.

Rhyming Bob, photographed in Snohomish, Washington, 1900.

Only a Tramp

Unknown

This ballad decrying the maltreatment of tramps was first published in Henry de Marsan’s Singers Journal in the 1870s. A number of later variations referring to boxcars, such as that recorded by Grand Ole Opry mainstays Sam and Kirk McGee, can be found in Norm Cohen’s collection Long Steel Rail: The Railroad in American Folksong.

I’m a broken-down man, without money or credit,

My clothes are all tattered and torn;

Not a friend have I got in this cold, dreary world—

Oh! I wish I had never been born!

In vain I have searched for employment,

Sleeping out on the ground cold and damp;

I am stared in the face by starvation—

Oh! Pity the fate of a tramp!

Chorus:

They tell me to work for a living,

And not through the country to stamp;

And yet, when I ask for employment,

They say I am only a tramp.

Oh! the rich ones at home by their bright, cheery firesides,

With plenty so temptingly stored,

Have oftimes refused me and sneered with contempt,

When I asked for the crumbs from their board;

And if through the cravings of hunger,

With a loaf I should dare to decamp,

They at once set the dogs loose upon me,

Because I am only a tramp.

But the day will yet come when the rich man and me

Will be laid ’neath the same mother earth;

His joys and my sorrows will then be forgotten.

When, I hope, better times will have birth;

Yet, my friends, you should sometimes remember

That every poor man’s not a scamp,

For there’s many a true heart still beating

Beneath the old coat of a tramp.

A hobo jungle, 1895.

Illustration from the San Francisco Call, 1900.

Leaves from a Diary: A Tramp Around the World

Sam Clover

Born in the UK, Sam Clover immigrated to the United States at the age of ten in 1869. Informed eleven years later that he would have to gain more life experience before taking up a position at the Chicago Times, he set off on a major journey, clocking up what he later claimed was forty thousand miles. Having seen the United States by boxcar and sailed as far as Australia and New Zealand, he gained the promised position sixteen months later and continued to work as a journalist for the rest of his life. Two books resulted from his time as a hobo, sailor, and circus hand, 1884’s memoir Leaves from a Diary: A Tramp Around the World, from which this excerpt concerning rail riding and fairground hustles is drawn, and the 1897 semifictional Paul Travers’ Adventures.

Upon inquiry we found that we had stumbled upon the Salt Lake branch road, so thanking our lucky stars, we kept steadily onward, hoping to reach the Mormon City before night. Here I was fortunate enough to fall in with an old Chicago friend, who treated us like princes during our short stay in that beautiful valley. But Utah was not California, and we were anxious to be moving, so on the third day I said good-bye to my hospitable friend, and with my comrade started back to Ogden.

We arrived just as an emigrant train was about to pull out, and, jumping aboard, I went to the conductor and told him our fix. He agreed to carry us to the end of his division, after a little parley, giving us to understand it was because we had not attempted to steal a ride that made him so lenient. At the end of this section a kind-hearted brakeman took us in charge, and we rode to the end of his division in the tool chest attached to the caboose, it being under his immediate supervision. The next ride we made was between the tender and mail car of a through express, which carried us to Reno, Nevada, before the conductor discovered our presence.

Then, for the first time, we did a little drilling, i.e., walking, but, before night, at a small station, managed to bribe a brakeman on a freight train, with a pocket-knife and pair of suspenders, in consideration of which we were allowed to hang on to an iron ladder, between two cars, all night long. By carefully watching the conductor’s movements, we managed to stick to that freight until it reached Sacramento, Cal.

Here Charley felt at home, and it being well toward evening, led the way to one of the river wharves. We found a boat almost ready to steam out for ’Frisco and by skillfully dodging the gate keeper managed to steal aboard unperceived, when we at once stowed away among a pile of freight on the lower deck forward. A calm sense of rest stole over me as I lay there, snugly hid, and gazed up at the shining moon, shedding her benignant rays upon the surface of the water, as we glided swiftly down the Sacramento river. The last I remember was kicking Charley for snoring so loudly, being afraid he would arouse the deck hands, and then I was in the land of dreams. When I awoke, we were moored to the wharf at San Francisco and the freight was being rapidly unloaded; our long and hard-fought trip was over, at least for the present, the Golden Gate lay right ahead and the city of hills and red-wood dwellings was open to our critical investigation.

Breakfast was naturally our first thought, the second, how to obtain it; neither of us had a cent, nor had we anything available to raise money upon; all desirable articles we possessed at the start, having long since been parted with to help soften the hearts of the various brakesmen we happened across while on the tramp, and into whose good graces we had been anxious to ingratiate ourselves.

My comrade, however, was not long in solving this conundrum, and confidently led the way up Market Street toward the business center of the city. Our road led past the magnificent Palace Hotel, with its hundreds of windows about which I had read not a little, but the hasty glance I gave it did not impress me very deeply as to its pre-eminence, so far as architecture went, over some others I had seen, and I thought of our State Street hostelrie, away back at home, and heartily wished I were inside it. A small, and very dingy-looking store on DuPont Street closely verging on the Chinese quarters, was where my companion finally halted and into which he at once entered. Fifteen minutes later he emerged, and in answer to my look of inquiry, carelessly jingled some silver pieces in his pocket; it was very evident his mission had been successful and we lost no time in getting outside of the first square meal it had been our good fortune to sit down to for weeks. Our hunger appeased, we began to review our position.

Charley’s destination was Los Angeles, where his folks resided, and as he had been absent from them two years, he was naturally anxious to get home, and exhausted his best arguments in the vain effort to induce me to accompany him thither. I had other plans, however, and was not to be dissuaded from them, so, seeing I was determined as to my course, he finally gave in, and after generously dividing his stock of borrowed capital we parted.

The next three or four hours I spent in wandering aimlessly about the principal streets of the city and in feasting my eyes upon those prominent places of interest, more or less familiar to me from descriptive accounts gathered from time to time in newspaper articles. About three in the afternoon, as I stood in contemplative mood on the steps of the Post Office building, cogitating as to my next move, I was accosted by a rather dapper-looking, sharp-eyed man who inquired if I were not from Cincinnati. I quickly undeceived him on this point and in the conversation that ensued casually made known my situation, thinking perhaps he might be able to assist me in the furtherance of my scheme, which was to ship before the mast on any of the foreign-bound vessels then lying in port. Vessel business, however, was not in his line as I soon discovered.

Finding I had not dined he took me to dinner, and during the progress of the meal unfolded a little plan of his own to which he required an assistant. The State fair was about to be held at Sacramento and he wanted me to go with him there and tend a stand in a large booth, where I was to preside over the sale of some precious eye-water, my new acquaintance giving me to understand that he was a doctor and the inventor and sole agent on the Pacific coast for the most inestimable liquid treasure for weak eyes ever yet discovered.

He was a beautiful, smooth talker, this Dr. Queechy, and I imagine there were few moves on the world’s board that he was not fully posted on. While I felt confident he was a quack and his medicine trash, I thought there could be no harm in accepting his proposition for a few days, especially as he offered me a good percentage on all the eye-water lotion I should sell besides paying my food and lodging while the fair lasted; so I accepted his terms and agreed to go at once to Sacramento, as the fair opened next day.

We had big flaring cards posted around the stand setting forth in large type the virtues of the wonderful and miraculous eye-water, compounded by that prince of philanthropists Dr. Queechy; also, on the stand were distributed a number of small dodgers, purporting to be testimonials from distinguished patients from all parts of the Union who had used the celebrated lotion with the most beneficial results.

Here I stayed all day, giving out hand-bills to the country visitors as they strolled past, and selling them my eye-water at fifty cents per bottle (with full directions for use accompanying each purchase). I took in fifteen dollars the first day, and after locking up the stock in a large box, retired in high glee to a cheap hotel where I enjoyed the luxuries of a good square meal and a bed. Meanwhile I had seen nothing of my employer, but as he had informed me he should be very busy I supposed he would be visible next day.

In the morning, I repaired to the stand and fixed the stock ready for business. What easy victims those Californians were to the doctor’s charms; I know now that the famous eye-water was nothing but aqua pura, with (as the doctor tersely put it) the taste taken out; but how it sold! That day I took in nearly twenty dollars and still the professor had not shown up, not that I cared very much but I thought his non-appearance strange.

The fair lasted four days and at the close I was possessed of nearly ninety-five dollars in gold and silver; bottles all gone and my patron still non est. Chancing across a policeman, with whom I was on speaking terms, I described my employer and inquired if he knew him. He did. I then learned for the first time why I was employed and the cause of his disappearance. The eye-water business was a blind, and the pseudo doctor’s real profession was that of a gambler. He was a faker, or professional swindler, and in conjunction with an accomplice, had hired a carriage and team, bribed all the policemen on the grounds to wink at his business, and had introduced his latest effort a lottery scheme, on an entirely new system. By the payment of a dollar the victim received a check on which was printed a number supposed to be equivalent to a prize. He was a cunning operator, as his modus operandi, explained by my friend, the policeman, will show. The purchaser pays a dollar and in return gets ticket No. 40. The gentlemanly agent offers him five, ten or fifteen dollars for it. He refuses, thinking it a fifty-dollar prize or perhaps larger. Won’t take fifteen for it eh? says the dealer. The answer is in the negative. Round goes the wheel, No. 40 draws a blank. On the contrary, if he accepts three or four dollars for the ticket, he finds that it has drawn twenty, thirty or fifty dollars, as the case may be. This then was his real business, and as the policeman remarked, He drove a slashing trade. But the first day’s transactions settled him; he wanted too much. In the evening a burly Californian, one of the victims, discovered the imposition, and quietly gathering a few friends sought out the clever swindlers. They smashed the lottery arrangement into splinters, which, by the way was quite a work of art, and then gave the couple five minutes start. They needed no second hint to leave town for they saw the gentlemen of the glorious climate of California meant business, and they hastily cleared for parts unknown. This of course, explained his not appearing to receive the dividend for the sale of the eye-water, and I remained sole legatee, provided he did not appear to put in a claim later.

William Rovin’ Bill Aspinwall, likely photographed by Connecticut professor and clergyman John James McCook in the late 1890s.

Hobo John

Unknown

Originally composed and disseminated around campfires, most hobo songs spawned numerous variations before being standardized via songbooks and popular recordings. This take on the popular ballad Hobo John appeared in George Milburn’s 1930 compendium The Hobo’s Hornbook, but its reference to railroad baron Jay Gould’s daughter dates it back to the 1880s. While these lyrics see Gould’s progeny giving voice to the hatred of hoboes by railway owners and authorities, other versions see her imploring her father to be merciful.

The flyer was due when, twenty minutes late,

Around the bend came a hot-shot freight.

On the bumpers was a hobo john;

He’s a good old hobo, but he’s dead and gone,

Dead and gone, dead and gone,

He’s a good old hobo, but he’s dead and gone.

The old ’bo, he said before he died,

They’s one more route I’d like to ride

Tell me, podner, what can that be?

"It’s down in Louisiana on the old I.C.

On the old I.C., on the old I.C.

Down in Louisiana on the old I.C."

Jay Gould’s daughter said before she died,

"Pappy, fix the blinds so as the bums can’t ride;

If ride they must, let ’em ride the rod,

Let ’em put their trust in the hands of God,

In the hands of God, in the hands of God,

Let ’em put their trust in the hands of God."

A photograph taken in a Mulberry Bend backyard in New York City’s Five Points slum area during the 1890s by social reformer Jacob Riis.

A Watch-Night Service in San Francisco

Morley Roberts

The English essayist, biographer, and poet Morley Roberts traveled extensively in his youth, visiting and working in numerous countries, including Australia, the United States, and South Africa. Drawing on his experiences he produced a number of books, including 1904’s A Tramp’s Notebook, from which this excerpt, recalling a period of penury in San Francisco in 1885, is drawn. Blighted by illness, Roberts was forced to turn to religious charity for help and, as with so many before and after him, found that the priorities of the pious were less concerned with providing shelter, food, and genuine companionship than with swelling their own egos in the search for souls.

America is a hard place, for it has been made by hard men. People who would not be crushed in the East have gone to the West. The Puritan element has little softness in it, and in some places even now gives rise to phenomena of an excessive and religious brutality which tortures without pity, without sympathy. But not only is the Puritan hard; all other elements in America are hard too. The rougher emigrant, the unconquerable rebel, the natural adventurer, the desperado seeking a lawless realm, men who were iron and men with the fierce courage which carries its vices with its virtues, have made the United States. The rude individualist of Europe who felt the slow pressure of social atoms which precedes their welding, the beginning of socialism, is the father of America. He has little pity, little tolerance, little charity. In what States in America is there any poor law? Only an emigration agent, hungry for steamship percentages, will declare there are no poor there now. The survival of the fit is the survival of the strong; every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost might replace the legend on the silver dollar and the golden eagle, without any American denying it in his heart.

But if America as a whole is the dumping ground and Eldorado combined of the harder extruded elements of Europe, the same law of selection holds good there as well. With every degree of West longitude the fiber of the American grows harder. The Dustman Destiny sifting his cinders has his biggest mesh over the Pacific States. If charity and sympathy be to seek in the East, it is at a greater discount on the Slope. The only poor-house is the House of Correction. Perhaps San Francisco is one of the hardest, if not the hardest city in the world. Speaking from my own experience, and out of the experience gathered from a thousand miserable bedfellows in the streets, I can say I think it is, not even excepting Portland in Oregon. But let it be borne in mind that this is the verdict of the unsuccessful. Had I been lucky it might have seemed different.

I came into the city with a quarter of a dollar, two bits, or one shilling and a halfpenny in my possession. Starvation and sleeping on boards when I was by no means well broke me down and at the same time embittered me. On the third day I saw some of my equal outcasts inspecting a bill on a telegraph pole in Kearny Street, and on reading it I found it a religious advertisement of some services to be held in a street running out of Kearny, I believe in Upper California Street. At the bottom of the bill was a notice that men out of work and starving who attended the meeting would be given a meal. Having been starving only some twenty-four hours I sneered and walked on. My agnosticism was bitter in those days, bitter and polemic.

But I got no work. The streets were full of idle men. They stood in melancholy groups at corners, sheltering from the rain. I knew no one but a few of my equals. I could get no ship; the city was full of sailors. I starved another twenty-four hours, and I went to the service. I said I went for the warmth of the room, for I was ill-clad and wet. I found the place half full of out-o’-works, and sat down by the door. The preacher was a man of a type especially disagreeable to me; he looked like a business man who had cultivated an aspect of goodness and benevolence and piety on business principles. Without being able to say he was a hypocrite, he struck me as being one. He was not bad-looking, and about thirty-five; he had a band of adoring girls and women about him. I was desolate and disliked him and went away.

But I returned.

I went up to him and told him brutally that I disbelieved in him and in everything he believed in, explaining that I wanted nothing on false pretenses. My attitude surprised him, but he was kind (still with that insufferable air of being a really first-class good man), and he bade me have something to eat. I took it and went, feeling that I had no place on the earth.

But a little later I met an old friend from British Columbia. He was by way of being a religious man, and he had a hankering to convert me. Failing personally, he cast about for some other means, and selected this very preacher as his instrument. Having asked me to eat with him at a ten-cent hash house, he inveigled me to an evening service, and for the warmth I went with him. I became curious about these religious types, and attended a series of services. I was interested half in a morbid way, half psychologically. Scott, my friend, found me hard, but my interest made him hope. He took me, not at all unwilling, to hear a well-known revivalist who combined religion with anecdotes. He told stories well, and filled a church every night for ten days. During these days I heard him attentively, as I might have listened to any well-told lecture on any pseudo-science. But my intellect was unconvinced, my conscience untouched, and Scott gave me up. I attended a number of services by myself; I was lonely, poor, hopeless, living an inward life. The subjective became real at times, the objective faded. I had a little occasional work, and expected some money to reach me early in the year. But I had no energy, I divided my time between the Free Library and churches. And it drew on to Christmas.

It was a miserable time of rain, and Christmas Day found me hopeless of a meal. But by chance I came across a man whom I had fed, and he returned my hospitality by dining me for fifteen cents at the What Cheer House, a well-known poor restaurant in San Francisco. Then followed some days of more than semi-starvation, and I grew rather light-headed. The last day of the year dawned and I spent it foodless, friendless, solitary. But after a long evening’s aimless wandering about the city I came back to California Street, and at ten o’clock went to the Watch-Night Service in the room of the first preacher I had heard.

The hall was a big square one, capable of seating some three hundred people. There was a raised platform at the end; a broad passageway all round the room had seats on both sides of it, and made a small square of seats in the center. I sat down in the middle of this middle square, and the room was soon nearly full. The service began with a hymn. I neither sang nor rose, and I noticed numbers who did not. In peculiar isolation of mind my heart warmed to these, and I was conscious of rising hostility for the creatures of praise. There was one strong young fellow about three places from me who remained seated. Glancing behind the backs of those who were standing between us I caught his eye, which met mine casually and perhaps lightened a little. He had a rather fine face, intelligent, possibly at better times humorous. I was not so solitary.

A man singing on my left offered me a share of his hymn-book. I declined courteously. The woman on my right asked me to share hers. That I declined too. Some asked the young fellow to rise, but he refused quietly. Yet I noticed some of those who had remained seated gave in to solicitations or to the sound or to some memory, and rose. Yet many still remained. They were all men, and most of them young.

After the hymn followed prayer by the minister, who was surrounded on the dais by some dozen girls. I noticed that few were very good-looking; but in their faces was religious fervor. Yet they kept their eyes on the man. The prayer was long, intolerably and trickily eloquent and rhetorical, very self-conscious. The man posed before the throne. But I listened to every word, half absorbed though I was in myself. He was followed in prayer by ambitious and emotional people in the seats. One woman prayed for those who would not bow the knee. Once more a hymn followed, "Bringing Home the Sheaves.’

The air is not without merit, and has a good lilt and swing. I noted it tempted me to sing it, for I knew the tune well, and in the volume of voices was an emotional attraction. I repressed the inclination even to move my lips. But some others rose and joined in. My fellow on the left did not. The sermon followed, and I felt as if I had escaped a humiliation.

What the preacher said I cannot remember, nor is it of any importance. He was not an intellectual man, nor had he many gifts beyond his rather sleek manner and a soft manageable voice. He was obviously proud of that, and reckoned it an instrument of success. It became as monotonous to me as the slow oily swell of a tropic sea in calm. I would have preferred a Boanerges, a bitter John Knox. The intent of his sermon was the usual one at such periods; this was the end of the year, the beginning was at hand. Naturally he addressed himself to those who were not of his flock; it seemed to me, as it doubtless seemed to others, that he spoke to me directly.

The custom of mankind to divide time into years has had an effect on us, and we cannot help feeling it. Childhood does not understand how artificial the portioning of time is; the New Year affects us even when we recognize the fact. It required no florid eloquence of the preacher to convince me of past folly and weakness; but it was that weakness that made me weak now in my allowing his insistence on the New Year to affect me. I was weak, lonely, foolish. Oh, I acknowledged I wanted help! But could I get help here?

It was past eleven when they rose to sing another hymn. Many who had not sung before sang now. Some of the girls from the platform came down and offered us hymn-books. A few took them half-shamefacedly; some declined with thanks; some ignored the extended book. And after two hymns were sung and some more prayers said, it was half-past eleven. They announced five minutes for silent meditation. Looking round, I saw my friend on the left sitting with folded arms. He was obviously in no need of five minutes.

In the Free Library I had renewed much of my ancient scientific reading, and I used it now to control some slight emotional weakness, and to explain it to myself. Half-starved, nay more than half-starved, as I was, such weakness was likely; I was amenable to suggestion. I asked myself a dozen crucial questions, and was bitterly amused to know how the preacher would evade answering them if put to him. Such a creature could not succeed, as all great teachers have done, in subduing the intellect by the force of his own personality. But all the same the hour, the time, and the song followed by silence, and the silence by song, affected me and affected many. What had I to look forward to when I went out into the street? And if I yielded they might, nay would, help me to work. I laughed a little at myself, and was scornful of my thoughts. They were singing again.

This time the band of women left the dais and in a body went slowly round and round the aisle isolating the center seats from the platform and the sides. From the platform the preacher called on the others to rise and join them, for it was nearly twelve o’clock, the New Year was at hand. Most of the congregation obeyed him, I counted but fifteen or twenty who refused.

The volume of the singing increased as the seats emptied, in it there was religious fervor; it appealed strongly even to me. I saw some young fellows rise and join the procession; perhaps three or four. There were now less than twelve seated. The preacher spoke to us personally; he insisted on the passing minutes of the dying year. And still the singers passed us. Some leant over and called to us. Our bitter band lessened one by one.

Then from the procession came these girl acolytes, and, dividing themselves, they appealed to us and prayed. They were not beautiful perhaps, but they were women. We outcasts of the prairie and the camp fire and the streets had been greatly divorced from feminine sweet influences, and these succeeded where speech and prayer and song had failed. As one spoke to me I saw hard resolution wither in many. What woman had spoken kindly to them in this hard land since they left their eastern homes? Why should they pain them? And as they joined the singing band of believers the girls came to those of us who still stayed, and doubled and redoubled their entreaties. That it was not what they said, but those who said it, massing influences and suggestion, showed itself when he who had been stubborn to one yielded with moist eyes to two. And three overcame him who had mutely resisted less.

They knew their strength, and spoke softly with the voice of loving women. And not a soul had spoken to me so in my far and weary songless passage from the Atlantic States to the Pacific Coast. Long-repressed emotions rose in me as the hair of one brushed my cheek, as the hand of another lay upon my shoulder and mutely bade me rise; as another called me, as another beckoned. I looked round like a half-fascinated beast, and I caught the eye again of the man on my left. He and I were the only ones left sitting there. All the rest had risen and were singing with the singers.

In his eye, I doubt not, I saw what he saw in mine. A look of encouragement, a demand for it, doubt, an emotional struggle, and deeper than all a queer bitter amusement, that said plainly, If you fail me, I fall, but I would rather not play the hypocrite in these hard times. We nodded rather mentally than actually, and were encouraged, I knew if I yielded I was yielding to something founded essentially on sex, and for my honesty’s sake I would not fail.

My child, it is no use, I said to her who spoke to me, and, struggling with myself, I put her hand from me. But still they moved past and sang, and the girls would not leave me till the first stroke of midnight sounded from the clock upon the wall. They then went one by one and joined the band. I turned again to my man, and conscious of my own hard fight, I knew what his had been. We looked at each other, and being men, were half ashamed that another should know we had acted rightly according to our code, and had won a victory over ourselves.

And now we were truly outcasts, for no one spoke to us again. The preacher prayed and we still sat there. But he cast us no word, and the urgent women were good only to their conquered. Perhaps in their souls was some sense of personal defeat; they had been rejected as women and as angels of the Lord. We two at any rate sat beyond the reach of their graciousness; their eyes were averted or lifted up; we lay in outer darkness.

As they began to sing once more we both rose and with a friendly look at each other went out into the streets of the hostile city. It is easy to understand why we did not speak.

I never saw him again.

Boxcars in Pennsylvania, 1863.

Two hoboes who had been removed from a train, circa 1900.

The Dying Hobo / Streams of Whiskey (The Hobo’s Last Lament)

Unknown

The poem and song Bingen on the Rhine was parodied by everyone from convicts to cowboys during the nineteenth century, with a hobo flavored take first emerging in the 1880s. This particular version was published in the International Brotherhood Welfare Association’s Hobo News magazine in June 1917, taking its place amid the issue’s other reports, manifestoes, and rhetorical broadsides. As with many other hobo songs some of the lyrics are shared with other songs, in this case the second stanza’s comic refrains with the more famous Big Rock Candy Mountain.

Beside a western water tank

One cold November day,

Inside an empty boxcar

A dying hobo lay;

His old pal stood beside him

With low and drooping head,

Listening to the last words

As the dying hobo said:

"I am going to a better land,

Where everything is bright;

Where the handouts grow on bushes

And you sleep out every night.

And you do not have to work at all,

And never change your socks,

And streams of goodly whiskey

Come trickling down the rocks."

"Tell the bunch around Market Street,

That my face, no more, they’ll view,

Tell them I’ve caught a fast freight,

And that I’m going straight on through."

"Tell them not to weep for me,

No tears in their eyes must lurk,

For I’m going to a better land,

Where they hate that word called work."

"Hark! I hear her whistling,

I must catch her on the fly;

I would like one scoop of beer

Once more before I die."

The Hobo stooped, his head fell back,

He’d sung his last refrain;

His old pal stole his coat and hat

And caught an East-bound train.

Lodgers photographed by Jacob Riis while waiting to leave New York’s Mulberry St. police station in the 1890s.

Jack London portrait taken for the Bain News Service, 1911.

Two Thousand Stiffs

Jack London

Socialist, celebrity, and adventurer, Jack London was a prolific writer who produced twenty-three novels—among them the classics The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and The Iron Heel—as well as dozens of essays and short stories during his forty years of life. Escaping labor in a cannery at the age of thirteen, he worked at sea before becoming a hobo four years later. Later crediting his radicalism to the arrest and mistreatment he suffered during this time, he documented his experiences in various stories, as well as in the 1907 memoir The Road.

The following excerpt from that book recounts his experiences during the 1893 Coxey’s Army protest. Initiated by Populist businessman Jacob Coxey, this event saw thousands of unemployed people travel from different points of the country to Washington, DC. There they set up camp but found that their demands, principally that the government fund public works schemes to alleviate the nation’s economic depression, fell on deaf ears. Taking part in the western leg of the journey, led by General Charles T. Kelly, London later recalled the campaign’s battles with rail authorities, as well as his own hustles and eventual abandonment of the cause.

Astiff is a tramp. It was once my fortune to travel a few weeks with a push that numbered two thousand. This was known as Kelly’s Army. Across the wild and woolly West, clear from California, General Kelly and his heroes had captured trains; but they fell down when they crossed the Missouri and went up against the effete East. The East hadn’t the slightest intention of giving free