The section of Grant Park facing the lake shore is no less popular. Along the shore from the Field Museum northward to Randolph Street the homeless men have access to the lake. They take advantage of the unimproved condition of the park and make of the place, between the railroad tracks and the lake, a retreat, a resort, a social center. Here they wash their clothes, bathe, sew, mend shoes. Behind the Field Museum, on the section of the park that is still being used as a dump for rubbish, the hobos have established a series of camps or “jungles.” Here, not more than five minutes from the Loop, are numerous improvised shacks in which men live. Many men visit these sections only for the day. To them it is a good place to come to fish and they spend hours gazing at the water and trying to keep the little fish from biting. WHY MEN COME TO CHICAGO The hobo has no social centers other than the “stem,” and the “jungle.” He either spends his leisure in the “jungles” or in town. The “jungle” ordinarily is a station on his way to town. Life revolves for him around his contacts on the “stem,” and it is to town he hies himself whenever free to do so. Few casuals can give any reason for the attraction that the city has for them. Few have ever considered it. The explanations they give, when pressed for reasons, are more or less matter of fact and center in their material interests. Other motives, motives of which they are only half conscious, undoubtedly influence them. The city is the labor exchange for the migratory worker and even for the migratory non-worker who is often just as ambitious to travel. When he is tired of a job, or when the old job is finished, he goes to town to get another in some other part of the country. The labor exchanges facilitate this turnover of seasonal labor. They enable a man to leave the city “on the cushins.” This is the lure that draws him to the city. Hobohemia brings the job-seeking man and the man-seeking job together. Migrants have always known that a larger variety of jobs and a better assortment of good “shipments” were to be had in Chicago than elsewhere. Chicago is the greatest railway center in the United States. No one knows these facts better than the hobo. It is a fact that trains from all points of the compass are constantly entering and leaving the city over its 39 different railways. According to the _Chicago City Manual_, there are 2,840 miles of steam railways within the city limits. The mileage of steam railroad track in Chicago is equal to the entire railroad mileage in Switzerland and Belgium, and is greater than the steam railroad mileage found in each of the kingdoms of Denmark, Holland, Norway, and Portugal. Twenty-five through package cars leave Chicago every day for 18,000 shipping points in 44 states.