The Hobo: The Sociology of the Homeless ManAnderson, Nels
General
The Hobo: The Sociology of the Homeless Man
Anderson, Nels
Chicago (Ill.) -- Social conditions; Tramps
It has been the policy of the Baptist Church on North LaSalle
Street and the Immanuel Baptist Church on South Michigan Avenue
more than other churches to feed homeless men. Dr. Johnston Myers
is pastor of the latter church, and probably the most talked-of
minister in Hobohemia when times are hard. Dr. Myers is contrasted
by homeless men with the Greensteins on South State Street.
“Mother” Greenstein’s “bread line” is known the country over.
These or their counterparts may be found in any city where hobos
gather.
DR. JAMES EADS HOW, “THE MILLIONAIRE HOBO”
How, a man of wealth and education, renounced all to share the
lot of the hobos. He is not an imposing personality, but he is a
kindly, ingratiating, almost saintly man. He is a dreamer and a
visionary with a program for reforming the world. Every cent that
he does not spend for doughnuts and twenty-five-cent flops goes to
the “cause.” He hopes that other millionaires will see his good
works and imitate him.
How is a bachelor in his late forties. According to rumor, which
he neither affirms nor denies, he has two college degrees, one
of them in medicine. He plans soon to enter a college for a year
to study law, so as to be the better prepared to promote the
interests of the International Brotherhood Welfare Association and
the “Hobo College.” The I.W.W. believes the world will be reformed
by organization and direct action first, and education second.
How puts education first. He hopes to establish a central hobo
university to which the numerous hobo colleges in the large cities
will be feeders.
To How the hobos are a “chosen people” who have been denied their
own. They will come into their own in time. All his repeated
failures to build up a strong organization of migratory workers
have not shaken his faith in his vision. How still believes that
hobos and millionaires will sooner or later work together in
harmony to construct the House of Happiness for humanity.
DR. BEN L. REITMAN, “THE KING OF THE HOBOS”
With the exception of James Eads How, “the millionaire hobo,”
Reitman is known to more migratory workers than any other man in
the country. Several years ago, while he was roaming casually
over the United States, Reitman was dubbed by the papers the “King
of the Hobos.” This title was well earned by more than twenty years
on the road, including two or three tramps around the world.
[Illustration: DR. BEN L. REITMAN]
His own description of himself given to the papers several years
ago still holds:
I am an American by birth, a Jew by parentage, a Baptist
by adoption, a physician and teacher by profession,
cosmopolitan by choice, a Socialist by inclination, a
celebrity by accident, a tramp by twenty years’ experience,
and a reformer by inspiration.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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