In the second part of her series on the American Hobo Sheena Morrison focuses on the search for work. A selection:
By the 1910s the depressions of the prior century had effectively blurred the distinction between workers who were connected to places because of their crafts – farmers, mill hands and miners – and the hoboes, the transient and unstable workforce. When the freight train started moving, all headed out for it.
Men who were connected by the on-again, off-again pulse of unemployment during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century joined various organizations that advocated on their behalf. Many hoboes sought membership with the well-known Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), a union that represented workers from all industries. This was primarily because as card-carrying IWW members they were sometimes granted leniency by the train crewmembers and railroad police if they were caught riding the trains illegally. The red union card of IWW sometimes elevated a man’s status from undeserving unemployed to deserving in the eyes of local police, and he would not be thrown in jail for vagrancy.
Overwhelmingly, they joined the International Brotherhood Welfare Association, which was specifically dedicated to the plight and concerns of the hobo. So when James Eads How, dubbed the millionaire hobo by newspapers and founder of the International Brotherhood Welfare Association, called for all hoboes to march on Washington to protest the lack of jobs, an estimated half a million men were expected to respond.
“Second Coxey’s Army Threatens Capital.” That How’s work among hobos was deemed an eccentric obsession among his contemporaries was mockingly reflected in 1911 news headlines’ announcement of the event that intentionally connected it with the failed protest-in-boots almost two decades earlier . . .
Under the tutelage of IBWA, hoboes, whose appellation was once synonymous with tramp and bum, worked toward distancing themselves from disparaging stereotypes. It seems that much of IBWA’s resources successfully went into programs to refute the idea that hoboes do not work, especially in the West. “Hobo Laborers Wanted” or “Hobos Wanted” could be found advertised in help wanted columns of local newspapers between Chicago and the Pacific coast. Western farmers, construction foremen, and lumber bosses came to associate the word hobo with a laborer who was young and virile. Consequently, when an employer whose livelihood was dependent upon seasonal workers asked for a hobo, he expected an industrious worker, one he could depend on to get the job done.